Let's bake a cake

Welcome, brave soul! If you’re here, you’re probably trying to figure out how to survive the daily chaos of raising kids without losing your sanity—or at least finding where you left it last.

I love baking. I used to have a little home business making fancy royal icing cookies and wedding cakes. At times it was stressful, but I loved it. I learned some valuable lessons…

·        Patience is a virtue. Impatience will lead you to cut a slice too soon, and you'll discover that molten chocolate is hotter than the surface of the sun.

·        Frosting covers a multitude of sins. Burnt edges? Lopsided cake? Smear on enough frosting, and no one will ever know your struggles.

·        Flour is sneaky. No matter how careful you are, flour will find its way onto every surface of your kitchen. And your clothes. And your face.

·        Sugar is like glitter. Once you spill it, you’ll be finding granules in the weirdest places for weeks. Bonus lesson: ants love sugar more than you do.

So, we’re going to make a cake. A parenting cake….a big one, with layers (3), and lots of frosting and of course we have to decorate it.

You start with the base layer, ensuring it’s firm and well-baked because the whole cake will topple if the base is wobbly. Next, you add the second layer, ensuring it’s perfectly aligned with the base so the cake remains stable and strong.

As you continue building, the third layer adds height and structure, creating the essence of the cake. This layer must be carefully placed to keep the cake balanced and cohesive.

Then comes the frosting, where you spread wisdom and guidance, sweetening the entire cake with love and care, making sure it all sticks together.

Finally, you add the decorative touches, adjusting and refining the details to make the cake not just delicious but beautiful and well-rounded.

I’m so sorry I have to do this but now that you have this amazing cake, I want you to turn it into a tasteless pyramid. We are going to call this pyramid the parenting pyramid. This parenting pyramid was developed by The Arbinger Company (Arbinger Institute. (1998). The Parenting Pyramid. Brigham Young University-Idaho. https://content.byui.edu/file/91e7c911-20c5-4b9f-b8fc-9e4b1b37b6fc/1/Parenting_Pyramid_article.pdf).

Just like baking a cake, the parenting pyramid requires patience, precision, and careful layering, with each step building on the previous one to create something strong, sweet, and satisfying.

Think of the parenting pyramid as your trusty guide in the wild world of parenthood. Picture a pyramid, but instead of ancient secrets and mummies, it’s filled with dirty laundry, endless snack requests, and the occasional toy lodged in your foot.

Now, here’s the fun part: the parenting pyramid isn’t just about making sure your kids eat their veggies and don’t turn the living room into a war zone. It’s about building a solid foundation so you can correct their behavior without sounding like a broken record or transforming into the “because I said so” monster.

At the bottom of the pyramid, it all starts with you—yes, YOU! Before you can expect to manage your kids, you’ve got to manage yourself. It’s about understanding why your patience level drops faster than your phone battery and figuring out how to keep calm when someone spills juice on the carpet you just cleaned.

Next up, if you’ve got a partner in crime, your relationship is the second layer. Because let’s face it, if you two are on the same page, it’s easier to survive the bedtime battles and snack negotiations without a meltdown (yours or theirs).

Then, there’s the parent-child relationship, where you try to bond over something other than arguing about screen time. This is where you figure out how to connect with your kids so they’ll (hopefully) listen to you more than the talking cartoon animals on TV.

Only after all that do we get to the fun stuff—teaching and correcting. But here’s the secret: if you’ve laid the right groundwork, your kids might just listen when you ask them to stop drawing on the walls… or at least they’ll pretend to!

So, join me as we climb this sticky, sometimes steep, but always rewarding pyramid. We’ll laugh, we’ll cry (mostly happy tears, but no promises), and we’ll figure out how to raise these tiny humans together. Welcome to the Parenting Pyramid—where every day is an adventure, and no one ever said it would be easy!