Teach Your Children to Cook!

In each home, around in the world, there is nothing more comforting than the smell of delightful aromas coming from the kitchen.

Yet, so many girls and boys are coming of age and do not know how to cook. What's more, young women seem to see it as a sign of their liberation. 

Being dependent upon other people for food is not a sign of liberation; it's a sign that you don't know how to do something as fundamental as providing a home-cooked meal for yourself, nor for anyone else. 

“If you are a chef, no matter how good a chef you are, it’s not good cooking for yourself; the joy is in cooking for others - it’s the same with music.”

— will.i.am

The irony is that children love to cook. Why are they coming-of-age bereft of this skill? Let's not dwell on the reasons here, but let's work quickly to fix the problem.

7 Easy Steps to Teach Your Child how to Cook

Step 1) Correct the Problem

It begins with you. If you're a mother who is not providing nourishing meals for her family, you must first learn to correct this.

(The variables of family are too numerous today to keep up with, hence, we'll take the less-complicated version: mom cooks and dad brings home the bread.)

YouTube is full of chefs dying to teach you how to cook. By studying two or three of their recipes, you will completely change the environment in your home and be cooking 5-star meals before you know it. 

Now that your children have a role model to emulate, you can begin to teach little John and little Mary how to cook a meal or two.

Step 2) First Teach Them Only What Their Hands Can Do

In the beginning, you'll have them do things like shell peas and tear up lettuce for the salad. Before they are old enough to be responsible with a knife, you'll have them do any task that doesn't involve sharp items.

Step 3) Peeling Progression

Around the age of six, you can show them how to peel potatoes, carrots, cucumbers, and anything else you can think of. Let the peeling of anything become their domain. 

By the way, these are not chores. Helping to prepare the food should be seen as fun time in the kitchen with mom (which means that you should NEVER complain about having to make dinner).

Step 4) Salad’s On

By the age of seven or eight, if not sooner, they should be able to prepare a salad on their own. Give your children the task of making the salad once or twice a week, or more often if you prefer. 

Step 5) Carbs Galore

Next come the preparation and cooking of the rice and potatoes. This next step involves the stovetop, so they have to be old enough to handle a flame. If you have a gas top, the pressing concern here is that they are responsible and focused enough to remember to turn the flame all the way off. 

If not, you should supervise them until they are. In the meantime, show your children how to rinse the rice. Next, show them how to measure the water, bring the rice to a boil, cover and let simmer for 20 minutes. There are tricks to making a perfect bowl of rice, so if you know these tricks (I don't), then be sure to include them. 

Next, they can learn to make mashed potatoes. They peel, wash, and boil the potatoes. Drain the potatoes (you may have to help here, because the pan may be too heavy for them), add butter and milk and mash. If you don't like mashing potatoes, the good news is that children love it. You will never have to mash potatoes again.

Step 6) The Big Fish

Next, show them how to prepare the main dish. I recommend beginning with fish, which is less complicated to prepare. Show John and Jane how to wash the fish, put it in a baking dish, make the sauce, pour it over the fish, and cook it. 

Step 7) Early Graduation

Once they complete all three of these steps successfully, you are now ready to grant your children the privilege of cooking an entire meal. They should be around nine or ten by this time (could be sooner!).

You now get to sit back, enjoy a cup of tea and some conversation with your spouse, and wait for what will soon be a delicious meal.

Moving forward, let your children take over the kitchen at least one night during the week to learn how to master the art of cooking and to give yourself a break. 

“A chef’s palate is born out of his childhood, and one thing all chefs have in common is a mother who can cook.”

— Marco Pierre White

By the time your children are 11 and 13, they should be able to handle an entire Thanksgiving dinner for ten people all by themselves. 

I only know this because when my children were these ages, I was recovering from the flu and not up to cooking our annual Thanksgiving dinner. 

I was lying in bed the day before Thanksgiving, and, while not contagious anymore, I was still exhausted. My intention was to call my guests that morning and let them know that I  wouldn't be able to host the Thanksgiving dinner that year.

My daughter came in quietly and said in a low voice, Mom, do you think I could make the Thanksgiving dinner, so we don't have to cancel our party?"

"Do you think you can handle it?" I ask, quite frankly, incredulously. 

"Yes," I'm sure I can."

"Then I think it's a fabulous idea!"

“Always remember: If you’re alone in the kitchen and you drop the lamb, you can always just pick it up. Who’s going to know?”

— Julia Child

Truthfully, and I'm not the kind of mother who exaggerates her children's accomplishments, but it was one of the best Thanksgiving dinners ever. 

The other point to mention is that, at their ages, it would never have occurred to me that they could handle a meal of this magnitude. 

Homeschooled kids, I have found, are like this. Nothing is ever too big to tackle. By the time they reach the teens, if homeschooled well, they will know how to teach themselves just about anything one can learn, within reason. 

One warning, though: while your children are capable of cooking a full meal long before they will be ready to move out, you don't want to give up your place in the kitchen for more than one or two nights a week. 

There will never be anything as comforting as "mom" in the kitchen, whipping up a fabulous meal. No one can fill the shoes of your child's mother, ever. 

They're your shoes to walk in; enjoy the journey.

Don’t miss your copy of:  Top Ten YouTube Cooking Channels. With the download, you’ll also get a link to a great film about a famous chef that’s guaranteed to inspire you.

Join Elizabeth’s signature parenting course: Raise Your Child Well to live a life he loves.

Elizabeth Y. Hanson is a Love and Leadership certified parenting coach with 17 years experience working in children’s education.

Homeschooling Is a Better Investment for Your Family Than Gold

One of the reasons I hear moms saying they don't want to homeschool is because they don't want to make the investment in their time that homeschooling requires. They believe they need more time for themselves. 

The passage of time is a fascinating phenomenon. Our minutes become hours; our hours, days; our days, weeks and then months and then years—but as time is passing us by, we tend to experience the passage of time as minutes and hours.

We don't think about the cumulative effect of these minutes and hours on the quality of our lives. We don't stop to think of what we'll have in ten or twenty years if we add them up. Instead of focusing on the big picture, we can get caught up in the demands of the moment and make short-term decisions that don't have long-term gains.

This is especially true when it comes to our children. 

“Time is a brisk wind, for each hour it brings something new... but who can understand and measure its sharp breath, its mystery and its design?”

— Paracelsus

Sometimes being a parent can be exhausting because no matter what you're doing, you've always got your family's needs to consider. But the time when your children are young passes, and it passes quickly, and looking back you see the years at a glance, and you've forgotten most of what the minutes, hours and even days felt like.

Which is why older people always tell younger people to enjoy their children while they're young. Childhood goes by like the blink of an eye, as the saying goes.

You blink once, and they're grown.

If you focused more on the years, if you keep the end in sight—the end being the amazing adults your children will grow up to become—you'll not feel so overwhelmed with what will be soon become forgotten, minor inconveniences. 

Especially if you're thinking about homeschooling.

You've got to keep things in perspective. Rather than focus on all the time you won't have for yourself, why not focus on the amazing family you're building and the great treasure you'll have when you're finished? 

A wholesome, loving family is a treasure—a better investment than gold—and when your children are grown you can both relax and reap the rewards of your hard work. Your treasure has been polished and its jewels are clearly visible. 

Rome wasn't built in a day, neither is a beautiful family. 

Homeschooling affords you the opportunity to better mold your children's characters and expose them to the world of ideas and knowledge. You will teach them to set the table and say "yes, please" and "no, thank you."

You will teach them to read, and you'll lay the foundation for their subsequent literacy. You will lay the foundation for people that give rather than take; for people that gladly serve others rather than suffer a sense of entitlement. 

Raising and educating your children well is far easier to do when you aren't having to counteract the negative lessons they are learning in school. Many public schooled children lose their natural curiosity, they don't love learning, and they could care less about ideas.

They just want to get out of "boring" school. The language and behavior on the school grounds is less than desirable, so one also has to battle the negative societal influences children are exposed to in public schools.

“It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.”

— Frederick Douglass

At home, as you teach your children about such things as the stars in the sky and the tidal patterns of the oceans, on the contrary, you will encourage their natural curiosity and water their love of knowledge. 

You will give your children important gifts that gold could never buy: the love of learning, the importance of family, and the discipline to sacrifice immediate pleasures for hard-earned rewards.  Gifts that will accompany them through life and allow them to lead more fulfilling and meaningful lives when they're grown. 

You will also strengthen the ties of your family, so it doesn't become fragile and begin to disintegrate like so many families in America today. 

While homeschooling may make you feel like you need more minutes in the day, with the right perspective you can defeat that sinking feeling. The minutes will soon be years, and your grown children will visit you one day, and the person they grow up to be will make you proud. 

Don't fret over not having enough time for yourself. One day you'll have too much time on your hands, and you'll wonder what to do with it. For now, focus on building the beautiful family you are blessed to have. 

Then later, when you look back through the eyes of an older person, and you are able to enjoy the company and activities of loving children and grandchildren, you'll know your time was well spent. 

A parent, when his or her children are grown, will never be heard to say, "I wish I had more time for myself when my children were young."

On the contrary, you'll hear them express regret at the things they never did with their children, and you'll hear them wish they could take time back. 

If you like this post and you're thinking of homeschooling, or you'd like to become a better homeschooler, please join the waiting list for my upcoming course: How to Homeschool the Smart Way.

You might also like my free download Ten Books Every Well-Educated Child Should Read.

For help now with homeschooling, please feel free to schedule a one-hour consultation with me (that's usually all you'll need) http://bit.ly/2GJAZEr