The Fat Diaries: The Kid-Safe Kitchen
“Mom can I help?”
Chances are if you hear this phrase; a) your child is under the age of five; b) there’s nothing they find interesting on TV; and c) the task they offer help with is the last thing you would want a small child to participate in.
Lately my youngest has tried to help me fold laundry (by wadding up the stacks of clothes I’ve already folded), sweep the floor (by spinning the broom around in wide arcs and knocking over ornaments), and even surprised me one afternoon by cleaning the bathroom without being asked – that is, she made a soapy foam out of bubble bath in the sink and smeared suds over everything. With most of this stuff I can grin and bear it. After all, who knows when she’ll be so eager to help me again? Also, with a little practice and patience, she’s become a big help to me. I’ve already got her setting the table and sorting clothes. But now… she wants to help me cook.
When we moved into a place with an actual kitchen (not a kitchenette) I knew exactly what to do: using blue electrical tape I made a distinct line on the floor. My kids were not allowed to cross that line. This worked for a good year, until my daughter decided that she wanted in on whatever cool secret stuff I was doing in there. She would stand next to me while I mixed and we’d talk about this princess or that princess. Whenever I was using the stove or taking something out of the oven I’d shout, “BLUE LINE!” and she’d retreat to the line until I gave her the all-clear.
The prospect of letting her help me is daunting. There are a lot of hazards in the kitchen like knives, burners, graters, raw meat, and boiling water. The counter is usually cluttered with devices and ingredients so a lot of my work is done on the fly, balanced precariously on the sink or in mid-air. Any cooking I wanted to do with lil’ girl would require moving it to the kitchen table first so she could reach. These are minor things I’m sure, but they bring me to my last stumbling block. I hate cooking.
Cooking, as my sister-in-law describes it, is an insidious combination of agonizing stress and mind-numbing boredom. Dragging myself to the kitchen to start cooking is one of the hardest parts of my day, and I work with clenched teeth and white knuckles to get a meal prepared with as little hassle as possible. Get in, make food, get out. Pre-heating, precise timing, or anything else requiring patience and finesse can reduce me to a high-strung snarling wolverine in an apron. So add an eager-to-help three-year-old to that mix and you have my perfect nightmare.
I started small at first. I asked the kid to read off the directions on the pizza box to me. She wasn’t fooled for an instant. I was at a loss as to what she could help with, however. This wasn’t like baking a cake. I’d done baking with the kids before, mixes with few ingredients like brownies and breads were fun ways to while away an afternoon. I didn’t want to have cake every day, however and coming up with something healthy was a big challenge.
We made our first breakthrough with biscuits. I usually make drop biscuits in muffin tins to go with soup, but I had another hour before supper and thought “why not?” For the first time in my life, I rolled out the biscuit dough. We didn’t have cookie cutters, so I got out the tiny shape cutters from my kids’ play-doh kit. I showed both the kids (the boy was suddenly interested too) how to cut out the shapes… and then I relaxed. They weren’t great at it, most of the times, they forgot what we were doing. “Start at the edges and work in,” had no meaning for them, but I didn’t let it worry me. I’d made enough tiny biscuits for supper, so they took as long as they liked and they had a lot of fun.
Of course, this set a precedent for dinner-time helping, so I’m wracking my brain for little things they can do to help. I’ve discovered that kids can:
- Poke holes in potatoes with forks
- Wash vegetables and beans in a colander
- Make cornbread mix or pancake mix
- Prepare rice in a rice-cooker
- Spin a salad
If anyone else has any ideas, please post them. I’m learning more as I go and I’m going to start experimenting with peanut butter sandwiches next week. I guess it’s not easy for me to take that step back and see how capable my kids are growing. I keep thinking that they’re too young to learn these skills, but if I make an effort and give them a chance, great things can happen. I’m also teaching them how to eat as I do it. Having short conversations about why we should eat broccoli and letting them snack on the peas we’re shelling is teaching them about nutrition too. They might not always be able to help with every meal and some nights I'm just too frazzled to deal with their brand of help, but hopefully with a lot of patience I’ll be training up two very talented helpers. They might hate to make food, like me, but they’ll at least appreciate food.
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