If there was some kind of award for lecture-giving, I would definitely be in the running to win it. It doesn’t take much for the download of information to begin… sometimes I catch myself mid-lecture before I even realise I’m delivering one. Dave secretly snickers in the background when he witnesses me in full flight.

We are about to launch ourselves into the school year for the first time. Already, the kids have been the recipients of a number of impassioned speeches about how we are going to get ourselves ready in the morning and the practices that will need to be put in place to ensure maximum efficiency.

There is definitely a component of control to these speeches. ‘If I can just give them enough information, perhaps that will make a difference when they come to face a situation that is unknown or dangerous’. But I’m learning more and more as I descend into the realities of parenting how little control I really do have.

I like to think of it as ‘anticipation’. The equipping of information and knowledge in these formative years, and the security that my kids will at least have some idea of how to behave as a result.

Of course, I could just be completely deluded. How can I learn to tell?

This post is part of the Five Minute Friday writing challenge. Each week I join with this talented group of writers, free writing for five minutes in accordance with a prompt. Today’s prompt is ‘control’.