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It’s scary how many teens, and even adults, don’t know how to cook basic meals. So we provide our children with the opportunity and time to learn in the kitchen. In Anarchy in the Kitchen – Pt 1 we detailed our children’s creative unschooling and their use of the tuff tray. Here we delve into the benefits of kids having more freedom to cook and tackle topics like safety, mess management, and mindset.
Benefits of cooking with our kids
Who enjoys cooking three meals per day (plus snacks), day in/day out; on top of the other parental responsibilities?
“No-one.”
But living off takeaways simultaneously screws your bank balance and cardiovascular system.
We think it’s wise to nurture the culinary confidence of children. They don’t need a Michelin star, but having skills to sustain themselves is clearly invaluable. It not only helps them feel more independent, but we won’t be the kid’s sad little serf in the kitchen, under servitude for their entire childhood.
There’s never a bad time to start cooking with your children. It could start with ingredient tasting when your baby is weaning; holding your toddler’s hand to slowly fold in flour to a cake batter; or sprinkling herbs into a tasty tomato sauce and ‘check for seasoning’. In no time they’ll be weighing ingredients and following entire recipes with you.
We struggled financially as new parents and making home cooked meals was a great way to save money. We’ve always been keen to get the kids involved. These days our kitchen is often like the three witches scene from Macbeth:
Double, double toil and trouble;
Shakespeare, William. “Macbeth.” Act 4, Scene 1.
Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.
The kids cackle and clatter around the kitchen, chopping and slicing, mixing ‘potions’ and ‘casting spells’. With a mix of their endless enthusiasm and infinite imagination, learning flourishes, particularly with food. Their confidence has blossomed and the kids are more than capable of being our sous chef or even cooking simple meals independently. It’s amazing to see!
And it all started with play…
Play kitchens vs. playing in the kitchen
We bought a play kitchen when the big two were toddlers. It lasted roughly a year, after a lot of use. The kids loved chopping wooden fruit/veg and making their own recipes. Using the oven was a novelty because we always told them stay away from the real one. Unfortunately, the play kitchen’s construction didn’t hold up to the intensity of their play. It was relegated to the garden as a mud-kitchen where it quickly weathered and ended up in the dump. A sad day!
As new parents we were naturally fearful for our children, shielding them from any risk. So in many ways a play kitchen was a great idea. But looking back, we recommend the greatest kitchen of all – the one you already have.
The one with real food.
The one with real danger.
Our attitude changed as we read books about Montessori education and its encouragement of ‘purposeful’ activities like chopping, peeling, etc. The Montessori concept of play being ‘work’ never clicked with us but facilitating more independence for our children certainly did. Cooking with our kids became a part of daily life. Annie, our youngest, has only ever used the real kitchen.
We knew the kids wouldn’t immediately prepare three-course meals. But by gently guiding and ultimately, allowing them to play with food, it’s clear how they continually acquire new skills and have a tonne of fun.
Nowadays, they’ll pull out one of the safety knives and prepare themselves a snack or even cook a small meal. It may not always be the ‘healthiest’ option, but having more agency over what they consume will ultimately help them recognise what their body needs.
Recently the kids have to shown flashes of interest in meal planning and nutrition. It’s clear that one day they’ll be completely independent home cooks.
Why is it important to cook with your child?
So much learning happens in the kitchen – from literacy, science and maths to less obvious creative and organisational skills. There is so much to say about this and how it supports our unschooling approach to home education that we’ll cover it in “Anarchy in the Kitchen – Part 3“!
Academics aside, the kitchen is a great place to spend time together. Being present with your child is probably the best thing you can do for them. It’s not always easy! Having a shared focus helps. Just try not to focus on all of the shit showering around you.
Being present with your child is probably the best thing you can do for them… a shared focus helps. Just try not to focus on the shit showering around you.
Carving out one-on-one time with our three can be tricky, but cooking (particularly something they like) is a great thing to do together. Intrinsic motivation and real purpose to that time will at worst result in a learning experience, and at best, create a multitude of happy memories of making tasty treats with love and laughter.
Cooking with your kids and letting them experiment with food is a simple way to grow their knowledge of nutrition and appreciation for healthy food. Whilst it’s unlikely to remove junk food from their life, it will gradually instil a positive association with wholesome meals.
Our kid’s love these books
The Very Best Baking Book for Children
Buy it now. [Amazon]
This is the ultimate children’s baking bible! Packed with easy to follow recipes and clear instructions, this cookbook is sure to become a treasured possession. We’ve made cakes, biscuits, muffins and more – so many yummy treats! With its beautiful binding and handy ribbon marker, it’s the perfect gift for any aspiring little baker.
The Usbourne First Cookbook
Buy it now. [Amazon]
From spaghetti bolognese to chocolate brownies, sausage rolls to pancakes, this cookbook has all the recipes your kid’s will need to get started. Our lot regularly cook up a storm with the Usborne First Cookbook.
Make it easier
Definitely the hardest thing about cooking with our kids is the hang ups we have. The kitchen can be dangerous and stressful!
There is sharp stuff, hot stuff and messy stuff.
What if they get Readybrek and milk everywhere and then bugger off leaving us to clean it up? What if they use tomorrow’s dinner ingredients in their creations (raw garlic, orange and sugar sauce anyone?!)?
Adding ‘fun’ and noise to the mix seems like a recipe for disaster. So how do we actually handle all of that?
Set up for success
First of all, success is not the end product of a recipe. We now set our expectation of success as surviving the process – hopefully with something edible at the end. We’re playing the long game and it’s important to put ourselves in our child’s shoes…
Imagine being asked to cook dinner in a giant’s kitchen. You’ve got a frying pan the size of a car tyre; a battle-ready longsword for a knife; a spatula like a galley oar; and veggies like something from James and the Giant Peach. Oh! You’ve also got to cook on your tiptoes… at head height!
Good Luck.
Kitchens are designed for adults, but there are ways of setting things up so kids can successfully use them too:
1. Raise them up
We wanted to get a learning tower when the kids were smaller but they weren’t widely available. These step stools have a surrounding frame to prevent little kids falling. We bumped in to some old school friends of Miles’ (Danny & Hannah Iwanejko) at their showstand during a local music festival. They make quality kids wooden toys and equipment. Our three spent hours playing at their learning towers. If you’re reading this in the UK, check out their business Out of the Chicken Shed.
We always did food prep with the kids at the tuff tray or the dining table. We now use Bolmen steps from Ikea – fairly tall with non-slip rubber feet, they’re stackable and can be tucked away. Perfect for bigger kids to access the kitchen surfaces safely.
2. Think about where and how you store stuff in the kitchen
What needs to be within your child’s reach? Utensils, fruit, milk, cereal, squash, etc. What needs to out of reach? Alcohol, chemicals, glass containers, any expensive ingredients. What things could be within their reach if you’re willing to accept it might get messy – flour, sugar, vinegar, baking soda. Can the child use things directly from the containers (eg. heavy bottles of milk)? If not, a jug might help, for example.
3. Give them the right tools for the job
Stuff gets dropped. Stuff will smash.
Cooking with our kids can be fucking frustrating at time but us adults have accidents too! Anything vaguely fragile dropped on the slate floor in our kitchen gets obliterated. One of the most impressive annihilations came from dropping a full 1Kg jar of Nutella. Miles was crying inside!
There’s a lot to be said for giving children materials that require care, non-breakable containers and tools are very useful if you don’t want to keep replacing things.
Kit out your kitchen
- Plastic serrated knives – They can help themselves if they want to prepare a snack – our supervision is not required. When cooking together we use our sharp knives so they learn to use them safely.
- Metal bowls for mixing and measuring – our set of Navaris stainless steel bowls with a nonslip base get used most days; either for food cooking or play.
- Silicone spatula and spoons etc – These are great for minimising waste and licking the bowl!
- Small pans – being smaller, they’re lighter and much easier to use.
- Appliances – Mixing large quantities of ingredients can be physically demanding for kids – either finish those tasks yourself, or use a stand mixer/food processor together.
- Aprons – they help you look the part. But we always forget to use ours. We’re always covered in some kind of gunk, so what’s a little more?
Safety tips for when cooking with your kids
Nurturing independent children means they’ll make food when we’re in the shower, folding clothes or, perish the thought, resting for a moment. Will they choke? Will they cut or hurt themselves?
It’s impossible to nanny kids every second of their waking life and frankly, who wants to? It’s exhausting! So surely our role is not to hide them from the world but show how to navigate it in a way that minimises danger without stifling them.
After making sure any obvious risks have been minimised, we can loosen up a little.
Lock it up
It’s obvious but a lack of impulse control and the blissful ignorance of babies and toddlers means they’d happily try to guzzle bleach and munch on dishwasher tablets of breakfast. We use these brilliant Aycorn magnetic cupboard locks to keep toxic stuff at bay.
Similarly, if you have an oven/microwave with a built-in lock function, use it. Or turn off appliances at the wall when you’re not using them. They’ll figure it out eventually but it’ll buy you time as their common sense becomes a little more common.
Talk to your kids about safety
From our experience, we try not to dish out new safety rules in the heat of the moment unless someone is about to lose a finger. You could establish ‘best practices’, ask them for ‘safety suggestions’, or call it something more creative and little less wanky.
Discuss what the whole family can do to stay safe in the kitchen. Kids will probably come up with most of the ideas themselves. Write a list; draw some pictures and stick it up for you to refer to when things get carried away. People like to push against rules, but their own suggestions are much more likely to be followed along with a growing sense of hygiene and responsibility for each others safety.
Dealing with the stress
Whilst involving kids in the entire cooking process from day one is great, sometimes we need to reduce stress by preparing ingredients beforehand. When you’ve got one child wanting to cook; one doing Power Ranger fly kicks through the door; and another bellowing down the hallway to wipe their bum bum; it can be overwhelming!
Minimising sensory overload is often important too. Look out for our upcoming article on this.
Planning ahead
One of the most frustrating things we find about parenting is the constant move from one meal to the next. Plan what you’re cooking and know what you need.
A frequent mistake Miles makes is to try something new when everyone is starting to get hungry. Lack of confidence in the recipe along with ever-present kiddy chaos makes it more challenging. Save the new exciting recipe for times when there is support around or when you can cook at your own pace without getting to that hangry stage – you or the kids.
We got a magnetic dry wipe monthly planner and weekly planner for the fridge and try to use these as much as possible. It definitely makes things go more smoothly and reduces in the moment stress and decision fatigue.
Clean up as you go
The clean up is often when those incredibly enthusiastic little helpers strangely disappear. Getting pissed off at having to clean up afterwards is not the best way to encourage kids to get involved (we learned this the hard way!)
We try to model, where possible, the satisfaction of a job well done when we’re cleaning up. With multiple children you could also suggest that one of them does the washing up (basically playing with bubbles) whilst another adds ingredients, stirs, mixes etc.
Cleaning and tidying comes from a place where there is a solid concept of time and a deep understanding of its value. We’ve seen in our own kids that it’s is a developmental thing. As they get older, an understanding of why we tidy up is slowly, and we mean very… fucking… slowly, becoming more evident.
Getting pissed off at having to clean up afterwards is not the best way to encourage kids to get involved. We learned this the hard way!
Cleaning is a chore and can be a tough thing as a parent; mostly because it’s never-ending. Just like cooking, it’s easy to get frustrated with the monotony. But when we embrace it in a mindful way and they find us taking pleasure in the task; the children are more likely to do it themselves.
We’re less worried about the mess of cooking since we splashed out and bought the Deebot X1 Omni robot vacuum cleaner, which also mops, auto empties and cleans itself. Honestly, it’s a total game changer! We feel so much more relaxed about the mess on the floor if we know we’re not going to have to sweep and mop it up afterwards. Read our Deebot X1 Omni robot vacuum cleaner review.
Acceptance
Overcoming our own fear is perhaps the hardest part of nurturing an independent child. Will they make the right decisions? Will they do what we would do? Sometimes yes, sometimes maybe not. That’s bloody scary! But instead of kicking them out of the nest at 18 years old, to hurtle towards the floor at terminal velocity and hoping they’ll fly, we wanted to start the journey whilst they’re young.
It’s a long road though. Yet we imagine it’d feel a hell of a lot longer if we were cooking and cleaning for them nonstop for those 18+ years.
So in the meantime, we accept there will be mistakes and some (*ahem… a lot) of mess along the way.
What if they’re not that interested?
As unschoolers, we don’t seek to force our children’s interests but we have no problem exposing them to something quickly gratifying in the chance it might spark an interest. Our eldest likes cooking now and again, but if it involves anything sweet he always wants to get stuck in and lick the bowl afterwards.
Generally our children love being part of the cooking process even if it’s just for a few moments to add ingredients. It’s the perfect time to get them to try new flavours. Put something interesting in a dish and serve it to them at the table and we’re almost guaranteed to have a hunger strike. Yet, they’ll try anything from the cupboards when we’re cooking.
Have fun!
Why does anyone chose to do anything? Probably because there’s something in it for them or because it’s fun. If someone comes up with a bonkers idea like gingerbread glasses. Give it a go. Enjoyment is where the real intrinsic motivation to learn comes from.
The creation. The mix. The mess.
So make it as easy as possible for yourself, and get stuck in.
– If you haven’t already, read part one of Anarchy In the Kitchen or head straight to Anarchy In The Kitchen part three.
