I have failed my son by passing on my sweet habit

With his son going under the dentist’s drill, Will Gore feels severe parental guilt

The Candy Man can, and will, ruin your teeth (Getty Images)

As a parent, it’s easy to beat yourself up when things don’t go well for your children. Flunked a spelling test? Probably should have helped them practice. Struggle to make polite conversation with new people? We must have failed with their early socialisation. Son eventually realises he won’t turn pro at football? Well, I have warned him about that one.

Food failures have been high on our guilt agenda. We started well with both our offspring: one of my daughter’s first meals after moving onto solids was a pork and cider casserole. Maybe, as it turns out, it was too much, too soon. By the age of five or six, she was a desperately fussy eater; and only now, nearly a decade later, is she expanding her repertoire away from fish fingers, pizza and Quorn nuggets.