Up at 7am, breakfast over by 7.45am sharp.
Nap alone in room at 8.45am for one hour exactly.
If still malingering at 8.46am, woken smartly and brought back on parade.
Midmorning snack at 10am to last no longer than 25 minutes.
A bit of R&R at 10.30.
Bed again at 11.45am precisely.
Bugle call again 2pm, with a late lunch to be consumed within the following 75 minutes.
Walk in fresh air at 4pm.
Home to tea which must be completed by 5pm.
Off with army fatigues, bath at 5.45pm, supper at 6pm.
Lights out no later than 7pm, in bed in the dark with the door shut.
Any deviation from above routine may be punished by withdrawal of rusks and high chair.
The above may sound like a military timetable designed to put some discipline into raw army recruits who unaccountably need to sleep a lot.
It is, in fact, the routine devised by Britain's latest child-care guru on how best to take care of a four-week-old baby.
Scottish nanny Gina Ford, author of Contented Little Baby Book, is credited, if that is the word, with putting a R in the month for parents.
R stands for routine. "For years routine was a dirty word in child rearing,'' says Gina Ford in a recent interview. "But I believe passionately that there is no comparison between a baby who is demand-fed and a baby who is in a routine from day one.
"Today's parents have been brainwashed into thinking it's damaging to let a baby cry for more than 10 minutes. But that's nonsense.''
Moms are people too
For those who side with Sergeant Ford, US paediatrician Benjamin Spock started the rot in the 1960s and things have been on a downward slide ever since.
His Baby & Childcare was a world best-seller, becoming a bible for a generation of women who wanted to rear their children differently from their mothers, while also needing encouragement that following their own instincts was okay.
His manual combined practical and medical advice with an acknowledgement that babies and Moms are people too and that managing such human interaction can be a very imprecise science.
Labelled permissive by its detractors, Spock has been blamed for everything from the Vietnam war to the rise of hippie power. He was followed by a new crop of child experts, Mums like Penelope Leach and Miriam Stoppard who drew from their own experience and continued to promote a kind of toddler power.
Now the tide seems to be turning again. Gina Ford's latest book, From Confident Baby To Confident Child, seems set to follow its predecessor into the best-seller lists.
Setting up routines must seem attractive to mothers working outside the home who need a timetable if they are to combine home and work.
It's also true that bad parenting is now blamed for a myriad social ills, in Ireland as in Britain. But must we go all the way back to baby boot camp?
Authoritarian
No, says Irish psychologist Anne O'Connor, who lists three styles of parenting as the authoritarian, the permissive and the authoritative.
"Authoritarian parents are very strict with rigid boundaries and quite harsh consequences or sanctions if the boundaries are crossed.
"The permissive parent in contrast believes that almost anything goes. Bad behaviour is ignored and the child is given a lot of control.''
Authoritative parents are more likely to get the balance right strict but clear, there is freedom, there is listening, but there are also boundaries. "This is a flexible style of parenting,'' says Anne.
Gina Ford is single with no children. Asked whether as a non-parent she is qualified to offer pearls of maternal wisdom, she is defensive.
If you had a heart attack, she asks, would you prefer to be treated by a doctor who had two himself, or one who has treated hundreds of heart attack victims?
It's an interesting question, given that many would feel what Gina Ford lacks in attacking this subject is just that heart.