Never underestimate the role modelling you may be unconscious of doing every day – especially as a parent!

I am making the most of having my youngest, who is 5 years old, at home with me this year two days a week – next year he will start kindergarten and these days of playing, interspersed with paid work, house work, and social engagements will cease (until school holidays of course).

This morning, I decided to bake a cake using some of the lemons my in-laws had generously given us from their trees. Hayden followed my every movement and always loves to help bake a cake – he sifts the flour, pours in the sugar, does some mixing, and then waits patiently to lick the spoon and bowl. I must have impressed him this time because he says he wants to be a dishwasher when he grows up!

Once the cake was in the oven, he set about making his own ‘cake’ – putting cut up white paper into a bowl (that’s the sugar), and from his toy food collection he added whole wooden eggs, boxes of pretend butter, wooden milk bottles, and proceeded to mix it all up, then put it under his Lego table to bake. When my oven timer went off, he took his out of the ‘oven’ as well.

In the mean time, whilst waiting for the cake to bake, I made a cup of tea and settled down to read the paper (as is my ritual around mid-morning at home). Hayden made himself his own morning tea (cherry tomatoes, cranberries, and a biscuit), told me he is pretending to be an adult, and then asked for a kids newspaper…. too cute – I found the comic section and we settled down into a companionable silence, eating and reading.

I will miss this next year….