Teach Them to Love to Cook-Let Them Help

My girls love to cook. At least one of them is usually asking if she can plan and make dinner. This isn’t to say that my boys don’t like to get into the kitchen, they do. But the girls seem to always be planning something to bake or asking if they can create a meal. I chalk up their love of the kitchen to the fact that I’ve always been open to letting them help. Kids need to learn the basics of the kitchen to build confidence and know how to be safe while enjoying creating their meals and snacks. A few days ago I was peeling and cutting carrots to store for easy snacking and cooking and Gabi asked if she could help. I showed her how to hold the carrot and peeler and she ended up peeling all of the carrots while I did the cutting.

This morning when I asked the little kids what they wanted for breakfast, Gabi said, “squished up eggs”, meaning-scrambled eggs. She asked if she could help me and off we went to the kitchen. I told her she could crack the first egg. I figured if she got shell into the measuring cup, it would be easier to remove it if there was only 1 egg. She successfully cracked the first 2.

This egg exploded. I think she got nervous. We had to take a few moments to clean everything up. I was careful not to get upset or make the clean-up look difficult because those things would discourage her from trying in the future. Accidents happen. All of us have spilled at one point or another. Clean up and move on!

After the clean-up she was helpful with the mixing.

She was proud of her accomplishment and will be more likely to ask to help in the future, which means she’ll be learning valuable skills about how to be in the kitchen and be a “big girl”.

Don’t be afraid to allow your kids to help with household tasks. I know it can be easy to want to just do it for them and get it done quicker and without the mistakes that inevitably happen. But they can’t learn to be successful if they aren’t allowed to make mistakes. If we guide and encourage we will end up with successful kiddos!

Doing the Dance of the Children~

This entry was posted on July 13, 2010 at 11:49 am and is filed under attitude, children, encouragement, family life, kids, mom, parenting. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.