Cooking... with children

If you're the not the artsy type or don't have ready access to the outdoors, it can sometimes be hard to find activities to enjoy with your children. Unless, of course, if you like to cook.

I grew up in a family where food was important, and my father loved (still does) going to the market and cooking very nice meals for all of us to enjoy. Unfortunately, I don't have any recollection of his ever teaching me how to hold a knife or how to make blanquette- though my grandmother taught me how to make vinaigrette, with tarragon. Most things I learned by observation and by trial and error. Perhaps I never asked to be taught or shown.

My daughter, by contrast, has been wanting to participate in food preparation for a few months at least. She's still young (4.5 years old) and not particularly well-coordinated, but as she's been growing older, her attention span and dexterity have both improved. Today, I try to encourage her to help me whenever she asks to, even if it means that it'll take me longer to fix lunch - or dinner.

I like to think that she'll assimilate the basic techniques that I try to teach her (really just a bag of tricks I've accumulated over the years), but I am more interested in her learning about where food comes from, how it's made, and what it takes to make it taste good, so that she'll grow up to have a choice to make her own food instead of relying on precooked meals.

In the hope that it will help other parents find a system that works for them, I'll make a quick list of rules and tricks that have worked for us:

• Dad is in charge: his word is final and not up for discussion
• Cooking is dangerous: there are lots of sharp and hot things - Dad knows what's safe and he'll tell you
• Daughter must ask before doing anything, particularly anything involving a knife of something hot, unless previously and explicitly authorized
• Messes are great: if your daughter wants to stick her hand inside a raw squid, let her
• Messes are cleaned up: little hands can also wield a sponge
• Anything not dangerous can be tasted or touched, warm or cold, including warm butter or cold pig fat (small amounts), for example, but not raw chicken, obviously...
• Peelers can be safe knives for 4 year olds, but little hands can have trouble handling them, so don't focus on technique: let the child peel the potato/turnip/kiwi however she wants and praise the results, if warranted.
• Giving a 4 year old a real, big-person, cooking knife is a mark of trust that will be appreciated (don't let it out of your sight and keep your hands close by), but daughter must ask before picking it up.
• Measuring a great activity for a child, and a good way to play with numbers
• Daughter needs a step stool or similar prop to be high enough to work at the counter
• Little eyes will be more affected by onions because they are closer to the chopping board
• Trusting a child will be rewarded by an improvement in behavior (I suspect that this works in other areas of life as well) and in the attention paid to the activity.
• Be prepared to repeat yourself, it's not because a child is cooking with you that she's not a child

Another thing that's really neat about cooking with a child is that they will get to ask all sorts of questions about the things we're preparing: "where are the fish's teeth?", "what's this black thing?" (a seed), "why is this turnip white and purple and that one yellow?", "will my tongue turn green if I eat this?" (let's try), etc... It's a great opportunity to answer questions, even if that means postponing an answer to look things up on the Internet.


We have a great time cooking together, and while a 4 year old can be silly and sometimes frustrating to cook with, it's a good way for me to spend some quality time with my daughter, especially as her younger brother (1 year old) cannot participate yet. She also likes to come to the market with me, and I sometimes let talk me into buying things that I normally wouldn't, as I try to encourage her curiosity.

Last but not least, cooking together makes it much more likely that my daughter will try, like, and eat the things that we prepare together - and that's never a bad thing.