When my now five-year-old grandson was younger, we enjoyed an easygoing relationship, the kind often represented as idyllic in popular media culture — harmonious, reciprocal, restorative.

We would walk the woods together, gather berries, cavort. He ran towards me when I appeared at his door, asked me to sit beside him at meals. We shared bowls of purple grapes while we built garages out of magnet tiles, “assisted” one another in the garden, drew pictures, consulted about the weather and planned possible treats.

Over the last several months, however, our relationship has changed as his personality and behaviour develop. He is less favourably inclined towards me and more unforgiving if I misstep or mistake boundaries that are important to him.

I had picked him up for years from his daycare, for example, but when he moved to a new school this fall, he became increasingly upset if I, rather than his mother or father, came to get him.