When you have kids, you want to expose them to all of the greatness of the world, but you also need to protect them from its dangers, and this tricky negotiation is why many parents choose not to introduce their children to the kitchen. With bubbling pots and pans, sharp knives, and electronic gadgets running, it can seem like a space that is just too hostile for a kid's presence.
But spending time cooking together in the kitchen is immensely valuable. It's wonderful quality time, and you'll be teaching your kids a very important skill. Here are three tips to make sure your parent-child cooking sessions go totally to plan.
Re-organise your storage. When you have kids, you might just have to re-think your kitchen's storage solutions. To encourage your children to be curious about foods, certain foods should be on their eye line (but keep sweets out of reach!), but they also need to be kept away things like toxic cleaning products and sharp knives. You may even want to invest in some additional high-up storage so that anything dangerous is totally out of harm's way and you can enjoy your kitchen safely together. You could even talk to a renovation company that specializes in kitchens to make sure your new storage spaces add to the decor instead of looking out of place.
Buy them their own kitchen kit. Your kids will get really excited about spending time in the kitchen with you if you buy them their own pieces of kitchen kit that are theirs to use and nobody else's. Of course, this shouldn't involve dangerous items like knives, but you could let them pick out things like spatulas, whisks, piping bags for decorating cakes, and their own measuring spoons (which will double as a way to get a sneaky maths lesson into the kitchen!).
Use them in every part of the kitchen. The great thing about cooking is that it is such a multi-faceted skill that there are multiple ways that you can get your kids interested in the cooking and food prep process. If you have really young kids who shouldn't handle knives or hot pans, you can still get them involved by showing them how to wash vegetables or how to sift flour into a bowl when making a cake. And if they are teens with no confidence in the kitchen, ask them how they would like to help (by choosing recipes, picking out ingredients, cake decorating etc…) and use an area of interest to boost their culinary confidence.
Enjoy the time you spend with your children in the kitchen!
Share22 October 2015
Hello! Welcome to my blog! My name is Julie and I live in a large house in the suburbs of Perth, Australia. My husband and I moved into our current home a couple of years ago and since then we have been working to transform it into our dream place. The house itself is lovely, but the interior looked like something from the 1970s. When we started our renovation project we didn't have a clue what we were doing. However, with each job we completed and each mistake we made, we learnt a new skill. I decided I would like to share what we have learnt here.