FOR the other half and myself, a lot of our five years of parenthood has been spent feeling clueless and useless.

As time as gone on, we have attempted to trust our instincts, but we still find ourselves caught out by something from time to time, or hit for six by a new development.

This happened again recently when we booked our daughter an appointment with the dentist.

We have been strict with her teeth brushing so we didn’t expect that there would be anything untoward to report. It was a shock, therefore, that I received a proper dressing down when said dentist raised her head from the examination to report that our daughter would need two fillings.

I was in an incredulous daze from the news and so didn’t quite take in the telling off, which implied that we’d been allowing our daughter to eat too many sweets and that we had neglected her brushing.

It was only afterwards, when I slunk home to pass on the bad news to my husband, that I started to feel a little bit defensive and angry.

Hand on heart, we have never allowed our little girl to eat too much rubbish. For drinks, she is given milk or water, and occasionally has fruit juice and squash. Only on a very rare occasion does she have any lemonade.

After school, I allow her a biscuit or sweet treat along with the rest of her food and that’s it.

Her dad and I supervise her brushing – she even has an electric toothbrush – and we have been doing so for several years.

As is the way these days, we turned, in our shock, to the Internet, where we read countless stories of other parents who’d been hit for six by similar news.

Even worse, we read that the worst enemy of her teeth is too much fruit acid. We have relentlessly supplied fruit as an alternative to sweeties, and it is possibly these raisins, apples, grapes, oranges and strawberries which have done the damage.

I confessed all to my own parents, who were incredibly sympathetic. My mother told me that, when I was a child, my dentist tried to blame my prominent teeth (I have large tombstone teeth which were completely ‘buck’ until seven years of a brace and multiple extractions sorted out the top layer) on the fact that I had sucked both my thumb and a dummy.

In fact, I never did either of those things, neither did I chew pencils – something she blamed for an arc at the base of one of my front teeth which had actually been chipped when I fell in a playground.

Mum said that a nicer dentist had revealed that my teeth were softer and prone to damage. And, for whatever reason, it’s true that, despite years of taking excellent care of my nashers - even flossing regularly - I have a mouth full of fillings.

Sometimes you feel you just can’t win.