There's one serious defect in this kids malarkey. The little sods don't come with instruction books!
The first one we got seemed to work OK, but there was nothing - but nothing - included in all the rather messy packaging as to where the batteries go and where the "off" switch was located.
Mind you, he's 21 now, and seems to be capable of running himself (almost), so I suppose we must have done something half-right.
Seriously, however, with both of ours we solemnly vowed that we were going to bring them up just so, with a conscious decision not to make the mistakes our own parents had made (ah, the arrogance of youth!). As a result we made a shed-load of different mistakes. But - and this is what amazed me - kids are tougher than Teflon. Whatever mistakes you make and whatever crap you come up with, provided you let them know you love 'em and that they're valued, they're pretty resilient.