Nadiya’s recipefor ahappy family
WEDNESDAY Bake Off winner has her hands full juggling a busy career and being a mum. She shares her tips for helping homelife to go smoothly
With Fiora McFarlane Red is the hot colour for autumn – so why not add a flash of colour to your feet? Ruched boot, dune.co.uk NADIYA Hussain’s house sounds like a great place to be if you’re a child.
You misbehave, you get strapped into a T-shirt with your sibling until you’re giggling so much you can’t argue any more. You want everyone to know you’re sad without having to say anything? There’s a special place for that.
The 32-year-old Bake Off winner has impressed legions of fans with her kitchen skills. And it seems she has some great ideas when it comes to parenting, too.
Here, she shares her tips and tricks to make family life a little easier. “The busier I get, the more thought I need to put into juggling work and home life.
“I’m really lucky, though, because when I’m not around, my husband Abdal, who still works a full-time IT job, manages to drop the kids off, pick them up and reheat the food (he doesn’t cook but he’s very good at reheating).
“It’s all about balancing. Somehow we manage and it doesn’t feel like a struggle, but I think he’s really good at making me feel like it’s not a struggle. So when there are things I can’t keep up with, he just does them.
“When my little girl Maryam turned one-and-a-half (now six), she became a completely different person. I found the, ‘No, I’m not going to listen to you’ phase really difficult because the boys (Musa, now 10, and Dawud, nine) just got on with whatever I told them to do.
“I learned that rather than trying to deal with it, it’s better to hand them over and vent your anger without venting it on them.
“I lived in Leeds then and there weren’t many people around. I remember having days where she’d be screaming and shouting and saying, ‘No’ to everything. As soon as my husband walked in, I’d literally hand her over and say, ‘It’s been one of those days’.
“Then she’d be good as gold for him. But what you can’t do is wait for a miraculous change. They will ride the phase out. There’s no point getting anxious.” “I try my very best not to be in work mode all the time.
“Some days I’m too busy, so they’ll go off and do their own thing. But other days, I’ll put everything off until the children go to bed. Then I realise I also have a husband and he needs attention, too. So some nights and some weekends, I’ll give to him.” “I cook with my little girl but the boys are really good in the kitchen, so they go off and do their own thing now.
“Maryam loves cooking and she’s not a mess-maker. She tidies up as she goes along. But that’s the rule in our house – if you make the mess, you have to tidy it up.
“They’ve learned the consequence of being messy and it’s made them really tidy, whereas my husband uses every pan, knife and board in the house for a spaghetti bolognese.” “Whenever the kids have a squabble, we have a big T-shirt of their dad’s and they have to wear it.
“We stick them both in the T-shirt and they have to be as close together as is physically possible.
“And then we just leave them.
“They end up giggling and having a great time – I don’t even have to intervene.” “We have a little corner by the stairs. That’s the corner where if you’re sad, you sit there and somebody knows.
“We all get wrapped up in other things and sometimes forget to ask, ‘How are you? How was your day?’
“I learned that from my husband. He said, ‘Look, I’m not a mind reader, if you’re upset, you’ve got to tell me.’
“With kids, sometimes they don’t want to talk about it, but they want you to know they’re upset. And sometimes you don’t.
“As a parent, I feel really bad when I don’t know. So we have the step where if they’re feeling sad, they go and sit on it. Even I sit on that step if I’m upset about something. It works.” “Switch everything off for family time. We have a box and all the phones, including mine, go in there. We lock it and the key goes away. Everything goes in this box. Even if it buzzes or rings, we don’t touch it.” ●Nadiya’s British Food Adventure by Nadiya Hussain is published by Michael Joseph, priced £20.
The rule in our house is that if you make a mess, you tidy up