My son is learning to accommodate his little sister’s adoration – or is it malice?

‘Trouble starts when her wish to sit beside him transforms into a desire to sit on top of him.’ Photograph: Benjamin Simeneta/Alamy

My son has recently started reading to his sister. This is adorable, but it also happens to be convenient, since my wife and I are well within that phase of life where any act of sitting on the floor is to be rationed, if not avoided entirely. So, at least once or twice a week, he now takes our place, thumbing through her thick-card picture books and reciting their humdrum contents to his delighted charge.

There is an aspect of the performative here – he is old enough to know when he’s being cute and that said cuteness is usually rewarded – but all artifice is inevitably forgotten once he becomes rapt himself, leaving them giggling together on the carpet.