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Though it may upset us, we can neither force our children to believe nor to go through the motions of religious practice. Indeed, it would be quite hypocritical for us to do so, having gone through such phases in our own lives. In my case, I had boldly proclaimed my disbelief at their age, moderating it to an uncertain agnosticism only in time.

My parents did insist I continue to go to church on Sundays, which I complied with for a while, although I insisted on sitting right at the back, where no one could see me. No big deal: my older brothers were away at university, my sister was in the choir and my parents were leading the service. It might have been expected that a teenage boy wouldn’t be very keen on sitting alone with the old ladies in the congregation.

But my parents had rather more authority and influence than I find I have. Much like us, they strived to preserve the innocence of their children for as long as possible, and steer us away from bad influences. Unlike us, they were assisted by the technological limitations of the day. We had computers in the house, but they weren’t connected to the internet. The television was in the living room, viewing restricted to certain times and content.

In my case, they may also have been assisted by my shy temperament. I was a reluctant learner, but I was no tearaway. If they insisted I play in an orchestra, that was that, regardless of my clear lack of musical talent. And attending the Christian youth club on a Sunday night, run by my mum: non-negotiable. If my peers returned to school on Monday morning talking about Baywatch and computer games, I could only pretend to know what they were talking about.

Our attempts to safeguard our own children seem to have been far less successful. Though our eldest now concedes that our rather stringent views on smartphones for kids helped them to focus on their studies and achieve excellent results, our youngest remains unconvinced. Like his dad before him, he just feels deprived in light of all the content his friends have access to. Unlike his dad, he’s not so willing to comply.

So it’s payback time. Everything our parents went through with their children, we now go through with ours. It’s our turn now to go through what they went through with us. After doing everything right — taking me to church and Sunday School weekly from infancy — I returned from a Christian youth festival in Scotland, declaring that I no longer believed in God. Just months after being Confirmed into the Anglican Communion, I was standing in opposition to everything I’d been raised on.

And here we are at the same juncture. After a childhood witnessing prayer in the home, eating tayyib and halal, and learning good manners, the youngest has decided this just isn’t for him. He doesn’t want to pray, go to the mosque, meet Muslims or sit with learned scholars. Most of all, he doesn’t want to associate with people his companions have advised are extreme, foreign and weird. Unlike his dad, his rejection of faith doesn’t seem to be grounded in any kind of philosophical consideration. He just wants to have fun like normal kids.

This is where we diverge. For while I had a four year-long crush on a girl in my form at school, I was a hopeless nerd, completely out of her league, as she inhabited the world of the cool kids. But our lad is not a nerd like me. He’s hansom, strong and articulate. Actually, he reminds me a lot of my best mate from college. Not the greatest encouragement, having been carried along for the ride through his own great rebellion.

All we can do at this juncture, it seems, is advise. Not that our advice is in any way welcome, or likely to be absorbed. Forcing him to pray would be counterproductive; he would just hate it even more. As for belief, that is purely a matter of conscience: you can’t force a person to believe. All we can really do is pray, hoping that in time he will find his way, just as we all did. When that might be, only God knows.

Faith isn’t something you inherit. You have to strive for it, if you want it. It has to be made real, and sometimes it can only be made real by experience. Some people find it in their youth, some only in later life. Others never find it at all. Could we as parents have done things differently? Undoubtedly. But that’s no guarantee that we and they would not still be tested one way or another. Have we failed? Only time will tell.