It’s true. The children always wake up my wife and not me. They do this in the usual ways: standing really close to her and whispering “mummy”, “mummy”. Why do they do that? I mean whisper. What’s the point of whispering if you’re trying to wake someone up? or they cough quietly or they play their Ace card: sob quietly.

Anyway,  so why do the children never come to my side of the bed and wake me up?

Well, I used to suffer from sleep paralysis, a condition where your mind wakes up before your body. You remain conscious but are completely paralysed. Not one part of your body will respond, you can’t even yell out. It can be unbearable.

The worst part, however, is that you are rarely alone. There’s usually someone in your bedroom with you. Standing in the corner. Looming over you. Breathing heavily.  Some people call it the Sleep Paralysis Demon. In my case, they were small and ran around and around the bed making little grunting noises. They knew I was there and were waiting for me. (Sleep paralysis is probably what people interpret as alien abductions as well as ghost and demon possessions).

You can probably see where this is going now… When my eldest son was about 2 years old he crept into our bedroom, upset, but he arrived at my bedside just as I was emerging from a bout of sleep paralysis. As you know, toddlers tend not to respect your personal space.

I absolutely flattened him.

Several years later he told his little sister to never, ever wake daddy up.

So this is why the children only ever wake up mummy. It’s not a parenting technique I’d recommend. On the other hand, it only ever happened once but its effects have lasted a decade. Just saying s’all.