Developing Cooking Competence

It’s interesting that when asked to share photos of their children helping, most parents selected pictures of home cooking projects. I was happy to see that many of the children exhibiting cooking skills were quite young. When it comes to encouraging children as helpers in the kitchen or any other environment, starting at an early age is important. A three-year-old is excited to learn how to slice a banana or a stalk of celery. An eight-year-old who hasn’t been taught how to slice fruits and vegetables may not be interested. I’m excited about family cooking projects and feel they have long-lasting importance.

Sadly, I’ve met college students who felt helpless away from home with no experience preparing their own food. In addition, they had never developed feelings of self-sufficiency and competence in creating healthy meals.

Cooking with young children can involve many forms of learning. Recently a mom sent me a video of her and her 16-month-old daughter happily working together on a cooking project. The two of them were stuffing zucchini boats with home-grown cherry tomatoes. The toddler’s job was picking up each of the tomatoes off the cutting board and putting it into a bowl.

This lively activity involving lots of eye-hand coordination and sensory experience as the little girl picked up each tomato up and chose whether to deposit it into the bowl or, occasionally, to pop it into her mouth. While they worked, her mom cheerfully narrated every step of the recipe, the ingredients, what they were going to do next, and how they were going to love eating it. Their cooking was full of cognitive, linguistic, and social stimulation, and the little girl’s face glowed with enthusiasm.

Years ago children were expected to help with cooking chores as part of their contribution to the household. Today their help may not feel essential, but people recognize that cooking experiences involve learning. There are even online lists of what skills they achieved at various ages. For example, one kitchen-skills checklist designates five as the age when children should be able to do simple things like tear lettuce or measure ingredients. Yet in our preschool, two- and three-year-olds engage routinely in cooking projects that involve measuring, tearing, and chopping food. They are excited about their accomplishments and love eating their products. Their budding cooking skills encourage them to expand their tastes and develop an understanding of healthy food.

Teaching children to cook builds sense of themselves as competent beings, and it also teaches them bigger lessons: the value of preparing food with love, the importance of not wasting, the good feeling of sharing food at a meal. Teaching a child to cook equips them with the ability to care for themselves but also to nurture and love others in tangible ways.

As we enter a season associated with consumption, it’s nice to partner with children to make nourishing food gifts for others and to give to those who experience food insecurity. When we give food, we give love.

Want to learn more? Read “ 26 Cooking Skills Any Kid Can Learn” on the Parents.com website.