Over the past several months, our family has really come to enjoy The Great British Baking Show.  We’ve recently taken to baking pasties with flakey pastry and are looking forward to delving into babka in the near future.  The show has been both entertaining and inspiring.

The participants in this competition must show both knowledge and skill in baking.  They are judged on their technical skill in both recipes they are familiar with and those they are not.  And the producers have just the right way of creating anticipation and excitement in the viewers.  Can the bakers get it just right?  Do they have what it takes?  The bakers and the viewers have no way of knowing until the product is finished.

Parenting

Parenting can be a bit like this.  We try to gain knowledge.  We put forth our best “skill.”  And yet, sometimes it seems like we won’t know if things have turned out or not until our kiddos are adults.  Like the show, there are so many twists and turns, ups and downs.  We must use both our knowledge and our experiences.  And we wait to see if we were able to parent effectively.  Aaand… both are time sensitive.  We only have so much time to get it “just right.”  At least this is how it feels somedays.

Learn.  Practice.  Repeat.

This is one of the reasons these blogs exist.  The bakers on The Great British Baking Show spend exuberant amounts of time learning to bake and trying it out.  Learn.  Practice.  Repeat.  We hope that through these blogs we can help parents learn, practice, and repeat.  Learn.  Practice.  Repeat. 

Over the next year, let’s learn, practice, and repeat together.  There is no such thing as perfect parenting and no such thing as “just right” parenting.  But we can work towards getting better at guiding our children and being more present for them.