What Pastries Can Teach Us About Effective Parenting

When sibling rivalry conquers mediocre parenting

The galette is a French tradition for Epiphany, celebrating the arrival of the three kings in Bethlehem. It’s a baklava like tart filled with almond paste. A bean is hidden in it and whoever finds it becomes king or queen for the day and gets to wear a snazzy paper crown.

Because I grew up in the French Caribbean, I always have a buche de Noel at Christmas and a galette for January 6. I am not flexible on this matter.

However, I am also not a planner.

The bakery I was going to buy the tart from at the last minute had a case of COVID among the staff and closed abruptly.

I found another bakery across town run by a real Frenchman who cross- examined me to make sure I knew a galette was not a Mardi Gras 3 Kings cake.

He was sold out but I talked him into making one for me. (I can be very persuasive.)

I arrived at 5 p.m. only to find that the baker had completely forgotten to make it, having confused me with the woman with the 4 p.m. pickup who also spoke French.

He’d sold the last galette.

So I bought a quiche instead.

I am nothing if not flexible. (At least when reality is involved. Never get into a pissing match with reality. It always wins.)

Plus when the universe tells me I should cut carbs, I’m gonna listen.

Is there a lesson here?

Yes. But not the one you think.

Growing up, my younger son always found the bean and my older son was convinced that there was a giant family conspiracy to rob him of his birthright — that we were cheating, year in and year out, in favor of the younger.

Not true.

Thing 2 just happened to be the guy you’d bring with you to the casino for good luck.

But one year Thing 1 alerted us that he was on to our elaborate, albeit non existent con, and he was not going to let us get away with it that year.

Can you guess what happened?

Yes, we succumbed to the emotional blackmail in the interest of “fairness”.

Why we were compelled to commit galette fraud to “prove” that the universe was a fair place I don’t remember.

But I think we failed as parents.

One, the universe is not a fair place.

Two, helping our kids digest disappointment and rancor is our job as parents.

We took the easy way out.

I wish we hadn’t.

So buying quiche when every galette des rois in the Triangle area (NC) was sold out was a lesson in managing disappointment about conspiracies served up by the universe, both imagined and real, past and present.

The quiche I bought instead of the Galette Des Rois.