Connect with your children through cooking

Create connections with your children and building relationships with them is about interacting and communicating on every occasion and opportunity you have with them.

I find that the easiest way to connect with your children is to involve them in daily interactions; such as your daily home chores, cooking, gardening, grocery shopping, or helping them with their homework … it is about interacting with them at any opportunity that you have.

Today we are looking at involving your children in the kitchen, i.e. cooking a dish. This activity will not only enable a fun family-connection time, but your child will benefit greatly from this experience as well.

Tips on how to get your child to join you in the kitchen

Several ways to get your child to join you in the kitchen: *age appropriate

  1. Get them to suggest their favourite dish.
  2. Go through the ingredients with them and plan cooking the dish together.
  3. Organise one day when both of you have some free time to spend together in the kitchen.

Creating the dish together *age appropriate

  1. Discuss the ingredients and lay them out on the bench.
  2. Get your child to help with chopping, rinsing, dicing, mixing ingredients etc
  3. When all the preparation is done, start heating up the pan.

Use an appropriate child-proof booster stool for your child to stand on, so that he or she is level with the pans.

Involve your child by letting them gradually to add the ingredients in to the pan and stir (age appropriate of course). I can assure nothing excites a child more than being physically involved in the process. Or stirring a cake mixture also works.

What would your child’s experience be like?

  • Excited – from being able to produce his or her favourite dish from scratch.
  • Confident – as he or she is able to experience the hands on preparation of the ingredients and fully participate in the actual “cooking” (with your help by supporting and guiding their hand)
  • Fun – being able to share the experience with the parent and seeing their favourite food come to life.

Connections with your child

Connecting with your children is about making time and fully participating and interacting with them. By creating the opportunity to share, you are enabling both of you to connect on a deeper level through touching, communicating and sharing, which in turn leads to a better relationship with your children.

Empowerment

On top of that, your child will be empowered with new knowledge through this experience, i.e. motor skills, verbal skills, vocabulary, learning about their five senses etc.

Have a fun day with your family.