Where it came from I wouldn’t like to say. I was tired and I’d been unwell for a few days, but my reaction was, in retrospect, a little over the top.

It didn’t seem to worry S- though. At least not too much. She looked at me wonderingly with those blue eyes as I stood over her and gave her all six barrels.

‘No,’ I said, the decibels rising with every syllable. ‘No, no, no, S-. Don’t do that. DON’T do that. NO!’

What was it that had set me off? Something major, obviously. Something earthshattering. Something that threated to tear the fabric of our family apart.

Well, actually it was that she’d just spilt her drink all over the kitchen table.

For the third time, admittedly. And deliberately, yes. Challengingly, for sure. But for the Lord’s sake it was just a few drops of juice. A miniscule amount of housework. And I’d absolutely blown a gasket.

When I look back I think she was trying to reassure me because when I picked her up from her high chair she clung to me and patted me on the shoulder. ‘Aaahh,’ she said. ‘Aaah’. [Her version of 'all better' or 'come on, old chap, it's not as bad as all that', I think.]

But I was still steaming. A few minutes later, changing her nappy [diaper] ready for her afternoon sleep, I almost boiled over.

Instead I stood up and walked out of the room [shutting the child safety gate behind me, obviously]. I went down the hall and into the kitchen, where I bellowed out my frustration for a good couple of minutes – luckily our neighbours all work during the day, so no one could hear my rather unbecoming vocalisations. Then I went back in and finished her nappy and put her down in the cot.

Later, when I was supposed to be washing the dishes, I stood and stared out of the window, feeling very ashamed of myself.

There’s a school of thought that says adoption gives you the chance to be better parents because you can put theory into practice. You can be more considered. You can apply what the social workers teach you to call a therapeutic approach to your parenting.

I knew that the next time she knocked over her drink [and there would be a next time, of course] I’d have to come up with something slightly less apoplectic. Something that an impartial observer might consider more suited to the occasion. Something – actually almost anything would be better, come to think of it.

One of the hardest things seems to be learning, as the cliche puts it, how to lose a battle so as to win the war.

G- and I are both bookworms, and so I thought it might be useful/interesting/not completely dull to list some of our recommended books on parenting.

Then I remembered that one of the things we had to do way back when we went to our adoption panel to be approved for a child was to provide a reading list.

Don’t ask me why [perhaps it was just to show what swots we are]. The panel certainly didn’t – ask us about our reading, I mean. [Perhaps they could tell - that we were swots, I mean.]

So was it a complete waste of time? Well, almost but not quite, because I can now save myself a bit of effort and cut and paste the list.

• Archer C. First steps in parenting the child who hurts. Jessica Kingsley Publishers 1999.
• Campbell N. Blue-eyed son. Pan 2005.
• Cleese J, Skynner R. Families and how to survive them. Vermillion 1993
• Fahlberg V. A child’s journey through placement. BAAF 1994
• Ford G. The contented toddler years. Vermillion 2006
• Faber A, Mazlish E. How to talk so kids will listen and listen so kids will talk. Piccadilly Press, 2001
• Gerhardt S. Why love matters. Routledge, 2004.
• Hirst M. Loving and living with traumatised children. Reflections by adoptive parents. BAAF 2006
• Layard R. Happiness. Allen Lane 2006.
• The adopter’s handbook. BAAF 2006
• Stoppard M. Complete baby and childcare. Dorland Kindersley 2006
• Verrier N. The primal wound. Gateway 1999.

The one that our social workers were keen on was The Primal Wound by Nancy Verrier. This helped introduce us to social work thinking on adoption and to theories on the damaging effects of childhood trauma, abandonment and loss. But it is a bit of a slog, and any reader should bear in mind that it’s based almost exclusively on research with adopted adults who were relinquished as babies. Here in the UK at least, that’s an increasingly rare phenomenon, and there was always a question in my mind as to how up-to-date the book is.

So which ones did we really like? Well, Sue Gerhardt’s Why Love Matters, which does a fantastic job of explaining early child development, and the one with a long title about talking by Faber and Mazlish. This one’s brilliant at encouraging a healthy relationship with your kids.

Nicky Campbell, who’s a TV presenter in the UK, was adopted and his book is an interesting insight into how it feels to have both birth and adoptive parents [as well as a large extended family]. He’s particularly eloquent on the subject of identity and how adoption affects the jigsaw of your personality.

Richard Layard’s Happiness is nothing less than a prescription for a healthier society and a better environment for us to bring our kids up in. That to me is worth at least a look – which you can do from here.

The other author I should mention is Gina Ford. We found that S- really benefited from routine and stability, especially in the early days and some of Ford’s ideas were helpful. The single most useful advice we had on daytime sleep came from The Contented Baby, and this was to manage things in terms not so much of how long your children stay down but how long they are awake before their naps. That to me was a revelation.

Oh, just one more – ok, two. Murkoff, Eisenberg and Hathaway’s What to expect books are useful aide memoires, and surprisingly amusing, too. But we wouldn’t be without Penelope Leach. Baby and Child [Penguin 1989] might be a bit old now, but to me Leach is the guru. I hang on her every word.