Heh. One thing I'm learning is never to phrase an order as a question. If I turn to James and say "Now, are you going to be a good boy tonight?", he looks me straight in the eye and says "I don't know". The dangers of having a logical son.

I think it was rmc28 who said recently that another danger of talking to young children entirely in questions is that they imitate the speech patterns they hear – so a year or two down the line you find they're phrasing all their communications to you in the form of patronising rhetorical questions, at which point you find out just how annoying it is firsthand :-)

Yes, I learned the hard way not to say "Do you want to go to bed now?" "No" he said. Oh bother.

"Ok then, you can go in 5 minutes"

"... and if you still think that's too soon, you can go in five minutes and a huff"? :-)

(but, yes, if it's something with no such wiggle room avoiding the question format is wise)