Teaching Kids to Cook: insights from the Parent Powerline

Teaching Kids to Cook: insights from the Parent Powerline
Saturday, June 24, 2023 by Becky Cerling Powers

Categories: Parent Powerline

I love cookies. Always have.

So, from the time our three children were babies, I kept the cookie jar filled with homemade cookies. But by the time our children were about 15, 12, and 10, my weight was steadily climbing up, up, up.

I decided to stop making cookies and other homemade desserts.

“I eat too much of that stuff when it’s around,” I told the family.

None of them complained.

They just started baking goodies themselves when they got hungry for sweets – all of them, including Dad. So, I found myself in a family of cooks, and I just had to learn to keep my hands out of the cookie jar when they filled it.

Thinking back, this probably happened because Dennis and I encouraged our children to learn the basics of cooking from the time they were little and eager to “help.”

Because cooking is an essential skill.

Children grow up, move away from home and live where their jobs are. If they are teens and their parents work all day, it helps a lot if they know how to start the supper meal when they come home from school. Today, cooking lessons need to be a natural part of growing up.So, what is the best way to teach children to cook?

First, start them young.

In a cheerful home, children usually begin to show an interest in helping to cook at age 2 or 3. They can help by dumping measured ingredients into the mix and by licking spoons and beaters. Many 4- and 5-year-olds can learn to crack eggs, too.

Primary school children can read recipes aloud as their reading skills improve. And they can learn to measure ingredients.

And...big bonus -- cooking helps children learn math in a natural way.

They learn to measure ingredients and easily grasp the idea of fractions when they help you divide a dessert into quarters or sixths so each one in the family gets a piece. If two children want to eat three cookies, you show them how to divide the cookies equally, so that each one gets 1 ½ cookies.

But, second…expect spills and accidents!

Everyone spills something sometime. Children spill more than adults because they are less experienced and less coordinated. When children spill, it’s a learning opportunity – an opportunity for you to teach them what to do with accidental spills and mess.

So, show children where you keep the cleaning rags and show them the clean-up process. Then, the next time there is a spill, just remind your child, in a matter-of-fact way, where he can find the rags.

Unless kids are being deliberately naughty or goofing off, treat spills calmly. Accidents are a natural part of life. So…no scolding, no punishment.

But…know when to refuse cooking lessons!

Older children who have developed good cooking skills can be a great help to parents who are in a hurry or under stress. But when you are under pressure, your small, inexperienced cooks should not be allowed underfoot. They can cause serious accidents.

For a working parent, weekends may be a better time for cooking lessons with the littles than weekdays.

As children grow, build up gradually to simple recipes.

After children learn to read recipes and measure, they can begin putting together easy recipes, first under supervision and then on their own. When I found a recipe easy enough for the children to prepare by themselves, I wrote very simple directions for it in a notebook that we kept handy in a kitchen cupboard.

Once in a while I assigned a child the task of making a simple entree or dessert by themselves for a family meal. Children need lots of praise from Mom and Dad when they achieve this milestone.

As children’s skills improve, they can tackle harder and harder recipes. Our children were baking and selling bread to a couple neighbors by age 12.