Sometimes a sure fire way to feel your age is to talk to children.

The other day my youngest was repeating the same whinge over and over. I responded with “you are like a broken record” to which he gave me a look and kept going about his day.

About half an hour later he started up again. And I once again responded with “see like I said you are like a broken record”. This time he stared at me and then yelled with exasperation “I don’t understand what you mean”.

After talking to him for a few minutes I learnt that his young mind, that has never used or probably even seen a record, had totally misunderstood what this saying means. To him a broken record is when someone runs faster/jumps higher/does more than everyone else. So he couldn’t understand why me saying he was like a broken record was a bad thing.

Once I explained to him how a record works and what the saying means I could see the lightbulb moment when he said “oh that makes sense now”

It did make me sit back and think. How many other sayings are now redundant and would get the same strange look from my children?

• Parenting