This week, I decided to take the reins and be a ‘great’ parent again by partaking in the glorious tradition of baking with my offspring (aka Cub) for the BBC Children in Need cake drive at school, thus sprinkling some extra smug feel-good glitter over my endeavour.

Any parent can tell you that cooking with a child can either make your heart rise or fall into a soggy mess like your worst soufflé (depending on your kitchen prowess).

I always picture it to be a great bonding exercise where we cuddle, talk, laugh and exchange kisses with floury noses, with the soundtrack of our lives playing in the background.

If you’re a puritan when it comes to letting children take the lead in the kitchen, it’s just a nightmare – there’s mess everywhere, they never measure anything right, they eat raw ingredients they shouldn’t, there’s snot (if they are very young), usually a spillage or two and the result just looks and tastes gross and you all must eat it with a big smile on your face. NO THANK YOU.

The reality in my house is even less dreamy. The combination of my need to control, my hatred of wasting time (eg, making something that tastes gross) and on this occasion a stinking cold led us to nearly call it a day on our mother-son relationship.

Stupidly, I thought it was high time I be a better parent and let him grow in his independence at the age of 10 (a little late I know, it’s much easier to be in charge of everything with your kids, shit gets done faster, but then you realise they are still struggling to use a knife and fork or have developed special powers to make you do everything for them. I refuse to have a son who is still living at home in his 40s with me looking after him – so it was time to act NOW). Cub during one of our many arguments, rightly said that perhaps I should have taught him more when he was younger: I felt guilty, apologised, then decided to flip it round 360 degrees – letting him know that in reality he’d had it easy thus far and should be grateful, rather than pointing out my shortcomings (what a prince).

The debacle started out really well – deciding first that Cub would be in complete control, I let him pick a recipe (notice the words ‘let him’ – more like forced him).

Anyway, he picked a New York baked cheesecake, FFS, which I’ve never made before, so this added a dimension of possible failure to the mix.

As if it wasn’t enough that the poor Cub had to bake a cheesecake from scratch (a reasonably difficult recipe for a novice), I now also decided he had to be in control of buying the ingredients, too. So, dear reader, I forced him. Yes, I forced him to go into the shop alone while I waited outside (I’m not negligent) to find the cream cheese, but not before we had a mammoth row on the way. I tried to coach him on where the cheese might be. “I don’t know”; “Well, what’s the main ingredient in cream cheese?”; “I don’t know”; “Do you think it’s cheese maybe?” “I don’t know”. This boy fucking loves cheese, so this whole line of answers was making me want to bash him and myself to death with a wooden spoon and was clearly a sign that he wasn’t enjoying any of it.

Anyway, after some debate over whether or not cream cheese is in fact cheese or some other fantastical product, and whether or not it is likely to live in the fridge section of our local shop, despite his daily 4 o’clock beeline for our fridge in search of said fromage, we agreed that he had enough knowhow to go and get the fucking cheese himself and 900 grams of it, with the added bonus of some Reece’s Pieces for effort.

So off he went, cash in hand like a lost puppy, I stood outside with our dog (aka teddy bear) looking up at me, judging me with her big brown eyes – why is he alone, why aren’t we with him, what if someone kidnaps him and takes him out the back of the shop or molests him in the freezer section?

IT’S OK! HE’LL BE OK! HE CAN DO THIS!!!

He did it!

He came back triumphant. He had asked a man to help (slightly cheating, but I’ll let it go) as he couldn’t find the cream cheese; that man had called the store manager, who then pointed out ‘soft cheese’ as a suitable alternative. Guilty feelings started washing over me: what must the man and the manager think about me letting a small child who doesn’t even know what cheese is into a shop all alone! I pushed those worries deep down where the sun don’t shine.

“Cub, you’ve done a wonderful job…but you’ve not bought enough, so you have to get some more.” I couldn’t crack now! But off he went happily! He looked so small and nervous as he collected his change from the cashier (he holds it in a weird way, like it’s some alien item – he really has no idea about the value of money, another thing I’ve failed to teach him yet).

And home we went. He measured out the ingredients himself, separated an egg yolk from the egg white and mixed and stirred and did amazingly well. The cheesecake came out delicious. I was beaming with pride and so was he.

I went to sleep relieved that I’d taken three hours out of my day to do this parenting lark with a deadline looming and it had gone well. I felt satisfied with myself and my mothering. I refrained from posting a pic on Facebook though and being too smug, realising how hard the whole thing had been and not wishing to now whitewash all that effort as something we do all the time with ease, making another mum feel bad for not baking more (they’ve got the right idea).

The next morning though, disaster struck again, as the Cub decided that no one else was now allowed to eat his cheesecake as he had put so much effort into it, and he wanted to buy the whole thing and eat it himself. This was more than I could take – the third cheesecake-related meltdown loomed. He was upset no one would like it, too, so if he bought the whole thing he could give money to charity, eat it all and avoid any sense of failure. You can’t fault his logic, so I set about constructing a complicated and charming argument to dissuade him and return to our original course. When this failed, I shouted at him, forbidding him from eating any more than one piece at school. He cried, I stomped around the kitchen and poor Wasband had to ameliorate the situation.

So, Charity Cheesecake was fun! I waited all day to see what happened at school – nervous as to the outcome: did it get sold? Did he have a tantrum, did someone criticise it? Turns out it all sold out – he had one piece, which he only ate half of because it was too rich (after all that).

The lesson I learned is this: don’t shout at your Cub at the end of a drawn-out battle; leave things alone – he could have figured out himself that he didn’t really want to eat the whole thing. Sometimes it’s hard to let go, especially when you are pretending to let go and you aren’t.

But, dear reader, if I gave my Cub full control of his life at this age, he would just eat popcorn/pizza and watch TV or play games 24/7, so we need some boundaries. We need to do other stuff to liven things up a bit. That said, I know what I would do if he wasn’t around: I’d eat crap and watch TV all day. An activity that was supposed to make me feel better about my parenting has just reminded me I’m a massive hypocrite. Isn’t that the lesson at the heart of all ‘good’ parenting deeds?

Hit me with your failed parenting deeds below in the comments, if you can be arsed.