It’s no secret that I love cake. I love baking it and I love decorating it. Most of all though, I love eating it. (Did I just say the word ‘love’ four times whilst talking about cake?).
I’m passing on my obsession with cake to my kids too. One of our favourite things to do together is bake cupcakes. Aside from the end product, it’s fun to do and occupies the sprogs for an hour. Yesterday afternoon Dino Boy, Thing Two and I baked a batch of scrumptious chocolate ones.
Whilst letting Dino Boy and Thing Two measure out the ingredients and put the mixture into the cases, I realised something about myself that I wanted to share with you. As you may remember from previous posts, one of the issues I struggle with is control. Mostly, trying to control everything and everyone in my life so I can prevent any disasters from occurring (because I’m that powerful).
Anyway, what I noticed today was that I am getting much better at letting my kids do things independently. I am much less concerned with controlling the outcome of what they are doing. Today I didn’t care that the whole egg (including shell) ended up in the mixing bowl. It didn’t send me into a panic that cake batter went over the edges of my pretty blue gingham cases. I didn’t hold the bowl as they added the ingredients to the mixing bowl in order to prevent spillage.
I feel like I’m letting go (I might break out into song). I’m actually extending to my children, the trust that they deserve. Whatever the result of the activity is, they did it themselves and can feel a sense of achievement and increased self belief. At the end of the day what’s important is that the kiddiwinkles enjoyed the activity and the cakes were edible. Yay!
