4Real Forums: Do your kids like to help with dinner?

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Topic: Do your kids like to help with dinner?

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Ruth
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Posted: Jan 24 2009 at 4:25pm \| IP Logged

Mine do!

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Ruth

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joann10
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Posted: Jan 24 2009 at 5:44pm \| IP Logged

Angela is so cute, and looks so proud of her cooking!

JodieLyn
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Posted: Jan 24 2009 at 6:00pm \| IP Logged

so sweet

and yes my kids love to help.. sometimes it's a very good thing the kitchen is too small for too many of them to be in at once

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LisaR
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Posted: Jan 24 2009 at 6:11pm \| IP Logged

so nice to pop over to your blog and see something nice instead of stomach turning

I let my kids cook and bake alot.
bake, because I don;t have a sweet tooth, and therefore am not motivated to make desserts often, and cook, because I'm either lazy or crazy!!!
seriously, your menu sounds delicious-I got a huge rice cooker at ALDI for 19.99 it is the best invention ever!!!

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dawn2006
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Posted: Jan 24 2009 at 8:54pm \| IP Logged

"lazy or crazy"

I love it!

My kids like to help.

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Dawn Farias | wife to Ariel | mom to Gabriel 9, Daniel 7, Elizabeth 5, and Michael 3 | blogger at Be Absorbed | native Texan but currently living near Seattle

ALmom
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Posted: Jan 24 2009 at 9:28pm \| IP Logged

Oh, Ruth, that picture is lovely. It reminds me of my own. Even the comment sounds familiar. I still see my grandmother laughing as my very little son pulled out a skillet and eggs and started cooking. He literally got tired of waiting. And besides, he never burns the eggs, I always have to be careful not to scrape the bottom of the pan when I serve my eggs.

By default the youngest boys are in charge of eggs. We do Sunday breakfast all together each having a different assignment.

My children like to help and to experiment on their own! It is interesting to watch. I have 2 children who have never ever in their lives followed a recipe. We've had some interesting things from them - pink cookies that tasted well - interesting. The youngest actually liked them so they did get eaten. They make some really good dishes now after one or two high interest ones.

Some follow recipes first and then branch off. My oldest is quite the gourmet. We have some pretty fancy dishes when she is home and decides to cook. I remember the oldest being scared of the oven at first because I told her it was hot (I had told her this about an iron and she just had to see if I was telling the truth and touched it to find out for herself) My 6 yo is a bit shy (probably a good thing) of the microwave now after his burn experience. (He was doing science experiments supposedly when we all thought he was working with an older making pretzels and pulled out overheated water on himself).

Baking is a favorite and since we don't have sweets around much, most of mine started with the sweets. My 11 yo boy started out very young with eggs (probably because I was very slow in the morning with a nursing baby and he is an early riser and is perpetually hungry so got tired of waiting for me to finally get things on the table)and then moved into chemistry interest which made him the best bread maker in the family. (Well my oldest also bakes bread quite well but she had a friend show her how while the 11 yo boy just figured it out. Neither learned from me as I have yet to even get bread to turn out consistently using a bread machine. Both do all the steps by hand). Everyone from the 9 yo up is fully capable of making an entire meal for us without anyone in the room(albeit our meals are relatively simple since I am not a good cook, but the 11 yo on up are much fancier than I am). The 9 yo generally gets one of the olders to actually place any dishes in the oven (heigth) but works on the stove top independently. The 6 yo still needs supervision and lots of guidance.

One of the favored activities, though, is baking something with me.

One tradition we have that started when our oldest was a baby is that the birthday child and I bake and decorate the birthday cake together. (The cake is from a box mix and I rarely do icing from scratch). They pick out what they want and then it becomes the big secret that surprises the rest of the family. We've had some interesting cakes:

exploding volcanos (didn't taste too good after the explosion)

train with candy people and such

battlefields

construction sites (brown sprinkles pouring out of dump trucks)

Complete medieval fortress with those candles that relite posed in odd positions to look like canons.

grand piano and violin (these were carved by dh and he and dd used hershey bar for the top, tootsie roll for the stick, and black and white kit kats for the keys. They even made a piano bench. I think they made a music stand with the violin and violin bow. (My dh has since gotten the job of cake carver since I cannot picture things in 3D so if the cake involves carving it becomes a daddy and birthday child thing)

airplanes of all variety and with some children they all end up smashed in huge piles or bombing runways or aircraft carriers.

garden

dog

Oh, and how could I forget the latest - a circuit board cake designed by the boys for daddy's birthday.

I don't think any of these would end up in any decorating books (except maybe the piano and violin) but we sure have fun. We have pictures in the children's albums of each birthday cake. The children love the chance to have a parent totally to themselves and no one else fighting them for the food fallout as we bake.

Even my 14 yo son will ask if he can make dinner from time to time. He likes to cook as long as I offer to do the clean up afterwards. The girls do both with ease. The 11 yo is a bit of the absent minded professor when it comes to clean-up

but if they have made dinner for me, I often suggest that the cook be excused from cleanup. If it is baking or other nonessential extras, I'll insist he come back and finish up the cleanup till it passes inspection. This is often a fair tradeoff in my books.

The girls and my 11 yo son are the best and most consistent cooks now. Oh and the 11 and 14 yo manage the grill for me. The girls go well beyond the cooking to include setting a beautiful table and presenting the meal in a pleasing way - not something they learned from me but something I'm learning from them. The boys are more like me.

Janet

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