Benefits of Cooking with Children

Benefits:

Exposure to New Food Choices
Appreciation for Homemade
Better Eating Habits/Food
Family Time
Math Practice
Confidence
Life Skills

1. Improved Relationships

I once heard that children spell love as ‘T-I-M-E’. I think this is true. Just like we love spending time with our husband or wife, our children like spending time with us.

And the more time we spend together, the better we get along.

Children like spending time with their parents. They love it when they get to learn from their parents and have fun. A great benefit of cooking with kids is that they learn and have fun as well!

2. Fun Learning Opportunities

Children can sharpen their Math and English skills when they cook.

Often cookbooks are made with Imperial or Metric measurements. Depending on where you grew up, you may need to convert the amounts to know what to measure.

Cookbooks also have repetitive wording (e.g. Sift flour and baking powder, Peel carrots and zucchini). This is great reading material for children and it encourages them to read confidently.

3. At-Home Cooking is Healthier than Takeout.

When you cook with your children at home, you promote healthier habits in your family. Most at-home cooking is far healthier as it contains less saturated fat and sugar.

You and your children are more mindful of the ingredients as you measure them out.

Furthermore, you can look up healthy recipes and cook those instead of the unhealthy snacks you usually find in shops, takeout venues, or restaurants.

4. Reduced Preservatives

Have you ever wondered why your homemade bread only tastes good for a day, but your local supermarket’s bread tastes good for much longer? Or why shop-bought berries outlive the ones you grow in your backyard by a couple of days? That’s because it has tons of preservatives.

And one reason is that a lot of takeout food has way too many preservatives.

But, one of the benefits of cooking with kids is that your food will have fewer preservatives. You’ll teach your kids that you value clean, healthier food too.

5. Opportunities for Deeper Discussions

As you spend time doing anything with your children, you’ll notice deeper discussions happen.

A benefit of cooking with children, or teenagers is that there are far more opportunities to have deeper discussions such as:

What was your childhood like?
What is your favorite childhood memory?
How should I behave in this situation
My friend says x, what do you think, Dad?
I had a tough day, could we talk about it ?

One of the benefits of cooking with kids is that you will get to know your child better through these conversations. It can also be a wonderful time to teach them about the moral implications of certain actions or coach them on other important subjects.

6. Cooking with Kids Teaches Life Skills

Cooking teaches children important life skills. It obviously teaches kids how to take care of themselves in the long run, but it can also teach:

teamwork as children work with family members
problem-solving skills as kids have to substitute ingredients
critical thinking skills which might occur as children work out why the souffle' didn’t rise!

As such, baking once a week with your children is a great idea.

7. Children can soon cook for the family

I once heard of a mother with 11 children who said she lived like a queen because she had taught her children to do everything, and now the mother had very few things she needed to do as she had so many wonderful and willing helpers!

We’d all love children like this.

And perhaps this is one of the best benefits of cooking with kids. You can teach them to help you out regularly. Why not give them the responsibility of cooking for the family one night of the week? This will also require them to meal-plan, which is another skill you can teach them.

8. Cooking with Kids Enhances Motor Skills, Concentration, and Control

Neat cooking requires concentration. The younger children are the more concentration that is required.

As children practice the skill of concentration, their motor skills improve and they become better able to conduct fiddly tasks with ease.

9. Encourages Responsibility as Children Clean up after Themselves

We all want responsible children. And one of the benefits of cooking with kids is that you teach them to be responsible.

If they want to cook, they have to make sure they clean up after themselves. And almost all kids want to cook!

10. It Can Be Very tasty!

I used to love going through my moms recipe box, and trying out new ones. My parents were very good about being the lucky recipients to "taste test"

If you teach your children to cook well, you’ll soon be the beneficiary of some wonderful meals.– my parents loved it and I loved the praise!

Conclusion: Benefits of Cooking With Kids

It may take a bit of patience at first, but if you stick with it, and you can hack a few puddles of honey on the floor, you’ll soon have an Iron Chef in the making. A good way to keep things in perspective is to make sure the activity is about having fun with your kids. It’s not about making the perfect cake or lasagna. It’s about growing closer to your kids. Our children are wonderful, and we get the privilege of seeing them grow and learn. We can help them do this by teaching them foundational skills like baking or mixing up a salad. But, there are innumerable benefits of cooking with children so I encourage you to start now!

Cooking with Kids Builds a Strong Mind and Body

Head Start encourages everyone to learn how to make informed food choices and develop eating and activity habits that support both children and families! In celebration of National Nutrition Month, NHSA invited board-certified pediatrician Dr. Nimali Fernando to share five reasons why cooking with kids is a great investment in the health of the whole child and the whole family.

Helping kids learn to love nutritious food is one of the main ways we can help our children reach their full potential. For parents, the barriers to raising a child that eats a healthy diet may seem overwhelming. Access to affordable food and the time and knowledge to prepare it do not always seem within reach. Cooking with kids is one simple activity that parents can commit to that will make raising a healthy, happy child more fun, and can help a child’s development and confidence, too.

Here are five reasons why cooking with kids is a great investment in the health of the whole child and the whole family:

Cooking together creates mindfulness. When kids learn to cook, they are learning to use all of their senses to appreciate food. As we are preparing foods, we can take time to appreciate the beauty of a shiny red pepper as we cut it, how fragrant an orange skin is when we peel it, or how bumpy the top of a head of broccoli is when we wash it. That mindful appreciation can also be applied to the mealtime, when we find time to enjoy family connections.
Cooking helps children to be creative. When we cook with children we are showing them that they can add their own unique spin to a recipe and come up with ideas that others will love. Not all of their creations may be family favorites, but it can be fun to try new things. Dr. Yum’s Meal-O-Matic is a great tool that helps families customize their own recipes based on the foods you have available, and can be a fun way to get creative in the kitchen with a yummy result.
Cooking with children gives them confidence. As kids start to get better in the kitchen by helping you and then learning to do things independently, they gain confidence in this new skill. Our kids grow up far too fast and before you know it, their “kitchen confidence” as a kid will go miles to help them be self-sufficient as a young adult, with valuable skills to prepare meals for themselves.
Cooking as a family helps a child’s development. The kitchen is the ultimate classroom where science, math, language, and motor skills can come to life. Practice counting while you stir, measure, or sort foods to encourage an understanding of math and build fine and gross motor skills. After chopping, plop ends of the green onions into water to watch roots grow. Find fun new words to describe the way foods look, feel, taste, smell, and even sound when we prepare them. The lessons are endless.
Cooking helps children appreciate healthy food. There are numerous studies that show that when children get involved in cooking, they become healthier eaters. Dr. Yum’s Preschool Food Adventure is a cooking and nutrition program for preschoolers in the classroom and was written by a team of experts at the Dr. Yum Project. Our research of 400 preschool-aged children and experience with many hundreds more shows that after just nine lessons students enjoy food more, refuse food less, are more interested in trying foods, eat a wider variety of foods, and look forward to mealtimes more!

Want to learn more? Join NHSA, Dr. Fernando, and The Dr. Yum Project team for our next webinar, Parenting Around Food: Concepts to Raise Healthy Kids at Mealtimes and Beyond or visit doctoryum.org for more about ways to enjoy cooking with kids, including tons of family-friendly recipes.

https://nhsa.org/resource/cooking-with-kids-builds-strong-mind-body/

Webinar: Parenting Around Food

Raising a healthy eater can be a challenge. Dr. Nimali and The Dr. Yum Project team (including a pediatrician, dietitian, and early childhood educator) will guide you through parenting principles that will help you raise a happy and healthy eater. These principles can even be used outside of mealtimes to raise resilient, well-adjusted children.

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