How Cooking Can Give Your Children Self Confidence AND Learn How To Follow Directions

Cooking with kids is often employed by creative and intrepid classroom teachers. Remember though, that you are your child’s first and best teacher, so take a page out of the teacher’s manual and cook with your children. Cooking promotes language development, cooperation, following directions, sequencing and a host of other skills, both social and academic. It pays to start early.

Please be sure to check out my Squidoo lens called Teaching Your Kids To Cook. It describes more of the benefits of teaching your children cooking in your own kitchens and is part of my new segment called Kids Can Cook.

Language Skills

Children begin to develop large muscle coordination long before they develop fine motor coordination, so while you wouldn’t ask a two-year-old to measure out a teaspoon of baking soda, you could certainly ask him/her to hand you the box of baking soda. With young children, you also can ask them to get plastic containers out of the cabinet or just talk to them about the ingredients you are using. You can play naming games ranging from “point to the butter,” to “What is this called?” depending on the child’s language development.

Exposure to vocabulary is vital in a child’s language development, but it just seems silly to show a toddler flashcards. Language play is much more meaningful and has more impact when it is presented in a relaxed and context-based environment. The non-teacher translation of that is to teach cooking terminology while you are actually cooking.

Following Directions

When you get right down to it, cooking is really about following directions. We all start cooking with the directions right in front of us. If we practice enough, we can cook with the directions stored in our heads. Cooking with kids is a wonderful way to reinforce following directions. You can show real life examples of what happens when you do and do not follow directions. Use high heat instead of low heat, and you end up burning your onions. I’m not suggesting that you ruin your food, but I think it is important to talk to your kids about why you do things in a certain way and what could happen if you don’t.

Cooking with two or more children can be stressful, but this scenario also gives you the opportunity to teach cooperation. You can assign separate steps to different children (Jimmy, you crack the eggs, and Mary, you stir them in), or you can have the children share steps (Jimmy, you crack one egg and stir it in; Mary, you crack the next one and stir it in).

Either way, it’s important that you encourage them to work together and frequently reinforce the enjoyment of cooking as well as pointing out how proud you are that the children are working together. This is a great time to use words like “sharing,” “cooperation,” and “taking turns.” Again, teaching these concepts in a natural, contextually rich setting will help to reinforce the concepts with your kids.

Self Confidence

One of the greatest gifts that cooking with your kids can give is helping to instill confidence in your children. Knowing that they can start and then complete a task can help to build self esteem and confidence. Knowing that they helped to put lunch, dinner or dessert on the table and that the rest of the family is enjoying it can really be a confidence booster, even for the most timid or shy children.

Now, remember that your kids, especially at first, might be hesitant in the kitchen and will certainly make mistakes. It is up to you as the parent to encourage your child/children every step of the way and to frame mistakes as learning experiences. Always keep the “feel” of the cooking experience positive and relaxed. Learn to laugh at the little mistakes, and buy stock in Brawny!

Teaching Your Kids How To Cook

Update - I have built a Squidoo lens on this topic of Teaching Your Kids to Cook that looks at these benefits in much more detail. Please check it out and leave me a comment at the end of the lens.

My daughters love to help me cook and they really enjoy helping mom bake cookies and banana bread. I thought it was about time to address the topic of "Kids Can Cook" and the great experiences one can have teaching their kids how to prepare delicious meals at home in you very own kitchen.

I know there are cooking schools for kids out there. I get emails every week from parents asking me to recommend cooking schools for their kids, some of them only 6 and 8 years old. I think cooking classes for kids are great, but I also believe this is a great opportunity to spend a little time in the kitchen bonding with our children while teaching them some skills they will have the rest of their lives.

Remember - "We All Have To Eat, So Learn To Cook & Eat Well!"

My youngest daughter is 9 years old with cerebral palsy but that doesn’t stop her from standing in her "stander" helping me whisk a sauce, stir the pot or grind herbs in the mortar & pestle. Is it demanding? Do they ask a lot of questions? Does it take longer to get the meal on the table? Yes, Yes and Yes but it is worth every second.

Some Advantages of Cooking With Your Kids

spending quality time with your children

teaching them life skills they will use for the rest of their lives

they tend to try eating more varieties of foods when they are involved with cooking them

they just might develop a greater appreciation for food

they learn food doesn’t just magically appear from the refrigerator

it’s a great learning experience - they learn about where food comes

An Example Of What I’m Describing

A few weeks ago, my 9 year old daughter Maddie wanted to help me caramelize an onion that I was going to serve with her favorite meal of steak with demi-glace sauce. I asked her to take a small bite of raw onion so she would have something to compare it to. She did and her reaction is what you would think it would be.

After we finished caramelizing the onion I again asked her give it a taste. She "reluctantly" gave it a try and was blown away at the sweet delicious flavor from this transformed substance. So much so that she wanted to write about it for my web site. So here is my daughter Maddie’s first web posting and I hope it’s not her last.

Caramelized Onions

By Maddie in Third Grade

Have you ever tasted a caramelized onion? It tastes like sugar. It tastes sweet, like putting caramel on onions, which is why it is called “caramelizing.”  
 
You might be asking yourself, “How do I do it?” Caramelizing onions is easy if you know how to do it.  But if you don’t know how to caramelize onions, don’t get scared because that’s why I am here.
 
First, you need to know a raw onion tastes really spicy; it makes your throat burn, like putting pepper in your mouth and it’s very sour.  That is why I don’t eat them plain and like to caramelize them.  Here are my step-by-step instructions to caramelizing an onion.
 
What is caramelizing? By definition, “The process of causing sugar or the natural sugars in food to darken to a golden brown and develop a rich flavor by cooking on a constant heat.”  And what does that mean? To make something really sweet!
 
Start by getting an onion and cut it in half.  Slice a skinny piece off both ends of the halves so when you are cutting the onion into slices, you make the onion stand up so it is easier to cut.  After you have finished that, slice up your onion halves.  Pop up all the rings in the middle so it looks kind of like a giant ring.
 
Next, turn on the stove to medium-low heat.  Put a little butter in the pan. Now it time to caramelize the onion rings. Put the onion rings in the pan and start moving the onion rings with a wooden spoon for 10 -13 minutes but don’t let them burn but its ok if they brown a little bit.  Then, you have your caramelized onions.  You did it!

photo credit

How Does Daddy Caramelize Onions?

Be sure to read my cooking technique on how to caramelize onions. It says essentially the same thing but with more words. Check out How to Caramelize Onions

What Are You Cooking With Your Kids at Home?

Let me know what kind of cooking you are doing with your children in your kitchens in the comments area below. We can all learn from each other, what types of foods our kids enjoy cooking and eating the most.

Thanks,

RG