I’m trying to be a better listener – but there’s only so much six-year-old I can take

‘Apparently, the people who are in our lives every day are the ones we become least curious about.’ Photograph: Catherine Falls Commercial/Getty Images (posed by models)

I read a book called You’re Not Listening, by Kate Murphy, which was designed to make the reader a better listener. It worked. I now listen my socks off. I listen to my girlfriend, I listen to my mum and, yeah, I even listen to my child – and he’s six.

You know when you catch yourself doing something you remember your own parents doing? Mine was a “mmhmm” sort of noise. I made it when my son was wanging on about the height of a spinosaurus’s crest, or something. “Mmhmm.” Out it came. The noise. From me. And I thought: I did that to pretend I’m listening, but I’m not. In that moment, I realised my parents hadn’t really listened to anything I had said until I was about 32.