YOU look at life differently when you become a parent.

Instead of staring at things straight-on, you suddenly have an out-of-body experience, your life-force uncoupling from the material body and leaving you gazing down from the rafters.

It's weird because you start seeing things -- mostly potential dangers and disasters -- that would go unobserved in your pre-children days.

My wife has always been good at this sort of thing; she can spot the hazard in any situation, the element of a plan most likely to go wrong.

In another life she would have been a first-class health-and-safety officer.

But I remember when it crystallised for me. It was at a wedding when Emily was a baby and I was feeding her a bottle in a marquee. My chair was next to the canvas of the tent and it occurred to me that if someone outside banged against it, Emily's head could be injured. I shuddered at the thought and promptly repositioned the chair and Emily.

It was then I realised what it meant to be a parent. And I could see a lifetime of worry ahead of me -- doubly so now that Matthew's here.

I understand why my parents used to fret about my brother and me when we were impressionable teenagers carousing on the town. Indeed they still worry now we're on the cusp of our forties.

I can see myself being exactly the same with my own children.