Julie Jay: It’s easy to think you know better from the sidelines of parenting

I once imagined a lot of baking in my parental future, but I'm not baking again with the children until one of them is old enough to go to the shop to buy the ingredients and to drive there

There is little that is more stressful than attempts at baking when parenting young children. Picture: iStock

MY LIFE is essentially divided into phases: BC (before children) and AD (after delivery).

Before having children, I had a completely different idea of how I would raise my children should I ever be lucky enough to have them.

There will be no screen time. No shouting. No additives in their food. My inner voice would insist, but even then, I knew, on some level, that I would probably be doing all of the above should I ever become a parent, because I had seen better-adjusted friends than me be completely and utterly bamboozled by the chaos that is parenting.

This week I experienced an out-of-body experience which saw me stuff some radioactive-looking yogurts into the trolley as hush money when my toddler once again threw a hissy fit on the shop floor.

These yogurts are the type of food item I once judged when I was a childless single lady about town whose Netflix algorithm hadn’t yet been turned upside down by Grizzy and the Lemmings.

What kind of monster buys such things for their children, pre-parenting Julie would opine. Well, it turns out, me, because I will do anything to get my children under control in a public setting, even if it means buying Ninja yogurts.

After all, who hasn’t tasted a yogurt and thought, “it’s nice, but I just wish there was more Ninja in here”?

Before having children, I promised myself I would never raise my voice.

Now, my default setting is virtually all times that of a sideline parent at a U14 county final. My days of ushering commands in whispered dulcet tones are long gone because, when I speak in anything less than megaphone levels, absolutely nobody takes any notice of me.

I now understand how Captain Boycott must have felt when he was ostracised in Mayo all those years ago — only in my case, I’m not even asking for rent from these tiny tormentors.

Baking with children

I once imagined a lot of baking in my parental future, complete with matching aprons, spoon licking, and waiting patiently for buns to cool on the rack before icing.

In reality, there is little that is more stressful than attempts at baking when parenting young children.

Aside from the process itself, neither my children nor I possess the self-restraint to ensure that these baked goods make it past their first hour out of the oven.

Instead, our produce is always polished off before I’ve even had a chance to lick my mixing bowl, and I am left clinging onto anything solid — the worktop, the fridge, the Dunnes delivery man — to recover from the trauma that has just been inflicted on me and my kitchen.

Baking with your children is the stuff of nightmares.

Flour is like DNA — there is no getting rid of it, no matter how hard you scrub. 

Breaking eggs? More like breaking hearts — with my five-year-old’s persistent refusal to take direction, suggesting that he might worryingly take after his father when driving to a new location in his inability to allow a co-pilot to take control.

Just this morning, the same five-year-old bounded in while I was on a rare video call with a friend and asked us to make “banana buns” together.

My friend oohed and aahed at how cute it was, him wanting to spend time with me, while I looked at my reflection on FaceTime and saw that I was indeed dead behind the eyes.

I’m still scraping banana off the ceiling from the last baking debacle, I explained, and she laughed in the way that people who have never been subjected to a child turning on a mixer minus a lid will do. 

It was like that outdoor challenge Hell and Back, but without a boozy lunch after to get the edge off your bleeding knees.

Children and crafts

Crafts is another fantasy I had before becoming a mammy, which I have had to accept is nothing more than that — a fantasy.

Like winning the Lotto or not getting penalty points. 

Perhaps when the two of them are old enough to work with a Crayola scissors, it might be a runner. 

But the last time I attempted to make snowmen at Christmas, it ended with the cat being covered in confetti and the two-year-old gluing my passport pages together — making it redundant for travel.

As a result of the most recent baking carnage, I have sworn that I am not baking again with the children until one of them is old enough to go to the shop to buy the ingredients and to drive there.

But bread is so easy to make, I hear the bakers amongst you cry. 

Well, you know what’s easier than baking bread? Buying it.