“My life, my choice,” said a tiny voice in the dark. They’d been studying the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child at school. “Why did you have a child if you don’t want to look after me?” she added, from the cabin bed. She’d been going for an hour and 40 minutes, as she did every night, getting in and out of bed, as I took her back and tucked her in, saying odd, sing-song phrases like “Rest your body!” with rising mania.

I typed “five-year-old sleep regression” into my phone – a term we modern parents use for the disrupted sleep that occurs at different stages of a child’s development. You can find anything you want on your phone, and my search told me there was indeed a sleep regression at five – just as there had been at nine months, 18 months and three years.

New Statesman