When I answered the door to Arthur, my youngest son, I asked how his day at school had been.
He started to tell me, but after a minute, he paused, and said: 'You haven't listened to a word I've said, have you?'
He was correct. I had been reading something on my phone, which was glued to my hand, when I opened the door and had continued to do so while he updated me.
Ironically, I was reading about 'car scrolling'. This is the phenomenon of parents spending a cheeky 15 minutes in the driveway of their home on returning from work, secretly scrolling on their phones in the car, before entering the house.
'Mum and dad are opting to scroll in secret lest they be accused of being hypocritical for telling their children to get off their screens,' according to the Wall Street Journal - in a piece designed to make readers feel better about their terrible parenting.
Fifteen minutes? Is that all!?
I have a confession to make. Last week, I spent, on average, five hours and 27 minutes on my phone each day. From the moment I wake up to the moment I go to bed, my phone is by my side. Worse, a lot of that screen time was in front of my children. I am a full-blown addict.
Every day, more evidence emerges about how spending time glued to smartphones is damaging our children.
Harry spends an average of five and a half hours on his phone every day. His very worst habit, according to his children, is grabbing his phone during mealtimes.
Earlier this month, the House of Lords passed a Conservative amendment banning smartphones in schools. Baroness Barran, the former Tory schools minister who brought the amendment, told peers: 'Smartphones are so often the gateway drug to social media.'
Everyone is wringing their hands over how we allowed these tiny, powerful computers to warp the minds of toddlers and teens. It is easy to blame the tech giants, but how much of the fault lies with us, the parents?
My children are now 14, 18, 20 and 23. They have grown up with me becoming steadily more wedded to my device. And they don't like it.
When Arthur, the youngest, was three, he would sometimes say 'get off your phone, Daddy' when I was meant to be doing bath time.
In a choice between him drowning and my phone getting waterlogged, it was a close run thing. His annoyance about my screen time is a lifetime resentment.
But my very worst habit, according to them, is grabbing my phone during mealtimes.
My intentions are always honourable: a fun conversation will begin about, say, which event Team GB won silver in at the 2026 winter Olympics - was it curling or skeleton? I will then reach for my iPhone, which always seems to be within arm's length on the kitchen counter, and Google away.
It enrages my wife and my children. ‘Just because you have the world’s encyclopaedia in your pocket, doesn’t mean you have to always consult it,’ Felix, 20, tells me.
‘And none of us really care if it was curling or skeleton? It’s only you.’ Ouch. (It was curling, by the way.)
I try to claim that this need to be informed is because I am a journalist. But Felix is right; it wasn’t important.
How do I know how much time I’ve frittered away on different apps? In the settings, there is a useful screen time log: the main villain is Instagram, the social media site; along with X, formerly Twitter; Bluesky, a social media site used by some journalists; LinkedIn, various news apps and puzzles.
Indeed, I could have read Middlemarch, War And Peace and Bleak House in the time I have spent trying to get to 'genius' level on a Spelling Bee phone puzzle this year.
Celia, my 18-year-old daughter, claims that I frequently just carry on playing when she's telling me her plans.
'It makes me sad because I feel like you don't really care about my day.' That's laying it on a bit thick, isn't it? 'Well, you often have to ask me to repeat what I've just said because you were looking at your phone and not listening to me.'
Fascinatingly, my children have picked up only some of my bad habits.
Alexander, 23, has chosen to turn his phone screen black and white - the internet, pictures, messages are all monochrome - so that he is less attracted to scrolling.
While Celia was revising for her Italian GCSE, she changed a setting to turn all her phone's messages into Italian, in a bid to stop herself endlessly talking to friends. This was only a partial success as she spent a long time using Google to translate messages. But she tried.
For the past few years, Arthur’s school insists that all phones are locked away for the entirety of the school day. So he at least has eight hours without it.
One of the few times that I am able to put my phone away is, ironically, when watching a bigger screen – in the cinema and with any gripping TV show, it never leaves my pocket.
But when the show ends, I instinctively reach for my phone.
I know I have a problem and am determined to do something about it.
Going cold turkey isn't the answer as I can't do my job with a so-called dumb phone. But I am going to start leaving my phone out of the room, especially during meals.
I do want to reset my relationship with my phone so I can be a better, more responsive father. For Lent I have given up the Spelling Bee game. So far, so good. The aim is to reduce my average screen time to three or even two hours a day.
'I think that's as likely as you winning a curling gold medal,' says Celia. Maybe if I turned my phone Italian, I might be able to do it.