It turns out the toddler years were the easy bit of parenting

In my naivety I thought the hardest part of having children would be those first few years - the sleepless nights, the nappy changing, the vomiting all over you at the very moment you've just put on a clean T-shirt - then the toddler stage when they need their teeth brushing and their bottoms wiping and instead of responding with a polite, 'why thanks dad, you're the best and we really appreciate all you do' they scream and scratch and kick you because you've put their Rice Krispies in the wrong coloured bowl.

- Steve Canavan

But it turns out I was wrong.

The toughest part is right now, aged six and eight, when you go from being a father to an Uber driver - the guy who spends 12 hours a day in his car, running them around and picking them up, the only difference being they don't pay you for the journey.

It is incredible and my life as I knew it has gone (not that I had much of a life previously, but you take my point), something that was very firmly hammered home at the weekend.

Friday had been a long and tiring day-the students at the university where I teach graduated (my favourite day of the year, not because it's the day that celebrates their three years of hard work and looks ahead to what they may go on to achieve, but because I get to wear a gown and a funny hat and to sit on a stage at the front looking all important) - and so when the kids burst into my bedroom next morning at their usual time of 6.57am (there is a strict rule that they have to stay in their own rooms until seven but my daughter can never quite last... 'but daddy, it's almost seven', I was feeling a little weary.

'Right, come on, you can't linger this morning,' Mrs Canavan told me, in the military-style voice she seems to have so perfected over the years.