Overlooked Education: The Importance of Teaching Your Children to Cook

When you are preparing dinner at the end of a busy day, usually the last thing that a parent wants to do is to clean up the mess of a small child who is trying to help in the kitchen. What's wrong with making a small mess in comparison to teaching a life-long skill? Invite your child to prepare the meal with you. In many homes today, this is the only quality time parents have to spend with their children. Discuss the menu and send your child to wash their hands thoroughly with soap and warm water. Then send your child on a treasure hunt to find the needed ingredients. For older children, give them a list and set the timer. See if they know their way around the kitchen well enough to find all ingredients before running out of time.

In addition to teaching your children to cook you are also teaching them very important math lessons: counting, measuring and estimating. Counting and measuring are a given, but have you considered teaching the concept of estimating? "How many potatoes do you think it will take to make mashed potatoes for our family of four?" "How much do you think this package of ground beef weighs? " "Do you think we need to pour the entire bag of chocolate chips into the cookie dough?" As you can see, the concept of estimation is all over your kitchen.

For young children who are not yet familiar with measuring cups and spoons, refer to them as "the biggest spoon" or "the smallest cup". This will develop into the realization that 1 cup is a lot more than 1/4 cup and a teaspoon is smaller than a tablespoon. The math possibilities are endless! Oh, don't forget to teach fractions when dividing a pizza or a cake. "We have 1 whole pizza. We will slice it into 8 pieces. When you eat 1 slice, you are eating 1/8th of this whole pizza! After you and I ate 2 slices each, we ate half of this pizza!" Wouldn't it be great if your four year old learned fractions?! That is what happens when you cook with your kids. What about your 8 year old who is struggling in math due to the fact that he gets confused by fractions. What a tutoring session!

Cooking with your kids also promotes creativity and accomplishments. Allow your child to roll the meatballs. Don't be afraid if they are touching raw meat. Use this as a great opportunity to teach them about food safety. While rolling the meatballs, if she chooses to roll them into huge balls, that OK. If she chooses to roll them into tiny balls, it's OK, too. Let them be creative. Let your child experiment to see what happens if you tuck a little cube of cheese into those meatballs. Will the cheese spill out of the tiny meatballs? Will the large meatballs stay together and keep the cheese from melting out?
If you bake a cake, let your child be in charge of frosting and decorating it. Let them create a masterpiece.

Let your child in on recipe "secrets". My son and I were making corn dogs one day. I showed him how to dip the hot dog into the cup of batter. He said," Is that how the hot dog gets in there?" There you have it folks, another mystery solved!

If you did not spend time in the kitchen while you were a child, do you remember what life was like when you first lived on your own? Do you remember the cravings for a home cooked meal while you dined on cheap instant noodle soup packages? If you were lucky enough, you might have been able to afford the occasional fast food burger. Just think how different your college life would have been had you known how to cook. There's a lot of food that can be cooked in a microwave. Don't you want things to be different for your children?

When your child leaves home and knows how to cook, they will have so many different options for them to choose from. You didn't think cooking was that big of a deal, did you? Your cooking savvy kid could get a job as a restaurant cook and earn some extra money while in college. Cooking in a restaurant takes a little more skill than flipping burgers...but then again, what's so wrong with flipping burgers? They will also learn to eat healthier. I'm not saying that they will eat healthy foods, but cooking your own food is healthier (and cheaper) than buying frozen dinners that are packed with sodium and preservatives. Most importantly, when your child gets married, he or she will know how to cook so they can survive on their own and eventually teach their children to cook. You can sleep at night knowing that no one will starve due to lack of skills.

Now you know how important it is to cook with your kids. Not only is it a great bonding time while they are young, but as you now realize, it will be an asset when they are older. Just think, in a few years, you will be going to your child's home to celebrate Thanksgiving dinner all because you took the time to teach them to cook.