Monday, February 13, 2012

Making Cookies

Dear Jen,
Catina likes to help clean and bake a lot. I love the spirit behind her efforts and I am learning to become patient with her. I know that when we bake together the kitchen blows up. I also know that after she wipes the table down I will secretly need to wipe it again, but I do not want to discourage her from helping. I’ve seen moms redo what the child has done in front of them and I wonder what that does to them. At some point do they just want to throw the rag down and say forget it? That mom will just do it over anyway? I also am trying to teach her so when she does wipe a table I ask her to try to cover every spot. She’s only five so I know she won’t be perfect at it but I want to teach her well.
For Catina’s birthday she wanted Hello Kitty cookies. She insisted on frosting them herself so I created a sample and she copied it. She really did a great job but it did take a lot for me not to jump in and want to take over. Its probably better that she did them because my perfectionism would’ve taken over and I would have hated half of them. Since she did them I loved them all!
Praying I can keep this in mind throughout all my girls’ lives.
Ann
_________
Ann,
She did such a great job on her cookies! Adorable.
Even with my very young kids I’ve had to think about this lesson more than once. Just letting them sprinkle their own spices on their food has been an excersice in discipline for me. (Do you know that when they sprinkle spice on their own food not every piece gets a flake? I don’t think you understand, it’s not distributed evenly!) But I have absolutely no doubt this is one of those character traits that is being refined by parenthood. My want for them to feel proud of their accomplishments supercedes my desire to have things just so. (Or at least that’s what I’m going to continue repeating to myself until it feels real.)
Here’s to chaos and messiness and joyful, learned children!
Jen

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