I sometimes worry that my eight-year-old daughter is growing up too quickly. It’s nothing she’s said nor done: she’s neither a diva nor Belieber, yet. What worries me is her perception of time.

Hardly a day goes by when she’s bored out of her tiny little mind. She lives 100 metres from school and has friends on every corner, including one immediately upstairs. And if they’re not around (occasionally a problem in July), she’s always got the televisual marathon that is DR Ramasjang.

I, in contrast, grew up in the countryside. Sometimes I wake up in a panic, thinking I’m back in the 1980s. There were days back then that I thought would never end.

Even family parties, the scourge of my early existence (during which I could have spent a million years in Narnia and nobody – intoxicated, every last one of them – would have noticed), are fun for her. In my youth, children were still seen but not heard at adult occasions. Now they’re the centre of attention, like the party wouldn’t be able to function without them. Even if their little ‘circus shows’ (they even make their own tickets) do take me back to the boredom of the 1980s.

And this coming week, the city is once again pushing out the boat for the little blighters during the autumn half-term. As our previewer of the best events of offer contends, the week has increasingly become a burden for the nation’s grandparents – their tickers straining under the glare of the Tivoli lights.

And don’t forget Culture Night, this year celebrating its 20th anniversary. Most of the events are really child-friendly, and unlike some cities you could mention (not Madrid obviously, where they show Sesame Street at midnight), nobody frowns if your kids are up past 8pm.

But I’m not sure I’ll be attending. By Friday my kids are so zonked out by all the after-school activities and play-dates, that all they want to do is chill. It’s a time to slow down and chew things over, until the frenetic pace of the 21st century once again resumes on Saturday.