Parent of the Week: Kris

This is Kris. She and her precious adorable daughter Audrey love, love, love to cook together and Kris writes about it at In the Kitchen with Audrey. Kris always has amazing ideas for cooking with kids, so I asked her to compile her Top Ten Terrific Tips for Cooking With Kids! Drumroll please…

My name is Kris and I started cooking with my daughter, Audrey, about a year ago. She was just under two-years-old and always in the way. I noticed while visiting my in-laws that they simply gave her something to do when she got underfoot. Sounded like a good idea to me. I wanted to find a book or website to help me know what fun activities a two-year-old could do in the kitchen but had no luck. That is why I started recording our journey. Along the way I just started posting tips. Here are some of my favorites:

10. Pick a family favorite recipe, one you know how to make very well. This way you can concentrate on the toddler, not the cookbook. Audrey makes a fabulous Oven Baked Chicken recipe that requires little more than chicken, butter, and breadcrumbs.

9. Take your child shopping for ingredients if you can. Audrey loves to choose between two packages of chicken and always wants to put things in the shopping cart. They know us at the grocery store now.

8. Let her help clean up and get ready for cooking. Audrey loves to spray the table and wipe it with a rag. I filled a bottle with 1 part cleaner to 9 parts water. I also give her a dry rag as I know she will spray too much cleaner.

7. Don’t worry about the messes; they clean up. Audrey still gets flour all over the place when we bake or spills sugar as she tries to measure. I will sometimes stop a project to clean up large spills and get the rest after.

6. Keep them busy. Ask her to get a spoon out of the drawer or something unbreakable out of the pantry. This really lets children feel a part of the project and is an easy way to include them.

5. Let her try to do some of the hard stuff. Audrey loves to crack eggs. After working on it for a year she is still pretty bad. She now loves to try to fish out the egg shells. It is a part of the learning process.

4. A great tip from Rachel Ray is to always keep a trash bowl handy. I keep a kitchen towel as well. You never know what your child might try while you step away to throw something in the trash. Audrey always licks things.

3. If you can, buy her a special spatula or Curious Chef knife. Audrey has her own drawer and loves to get her utensils out to cook with. For that matter, so do I. It makes us feel special to have our own tools.

2. Be sure to let everyone know how much of a help she was with the project. Audrey once told me the reason I was enjoying the dinner was because she made it. She has a sense of pride and accomplishment.

1. Have fun! This was a hard lesson for me to learn. For so long Audrey was having a blast and I was worrying about the outcome of the dish. I always keep frozen pizzas in case of disaster. It happens to me more often than to Audrey.

I hope you are able to use some of these tips to help you have more fun with your child(ren) in the kitchen. If you need more ideas please visit In the Kitchen With Audrey to see what we are up to. We cook most days and love to share our adventures.

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Thought for the Weekend

"Children are people we should be spending a lot of time talking to, listening to and helping because they're new here." -Deb Lewis

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The Case for Yes...and Sweet Simplicity Designs Giveaway Winner!

I'm feverishly writing on the ideas you all gave me. In the meantime, here's the very first post I ever wrote. A long, long time ago way, way back in a time called August. Ha! I think you'll enjoy it.

source

All too often I hear parents remark on how much their preschooler uses the word ‘no.’ “She says ‘no’ to everything! She takes hard-headed to a new level!” or “I think the only word he knows is ‘no!’”  and in the same breath, parents also remark on how their little one “repeats everything I say- you have to be so careful!” Interesting, isn’t it, how clear the connection seems in writing but not in practice? Preschoolers say ‘no’ because they hear ‘no.’

At an age in which the transition from the helplessness of being a baby to the stark realization that the self is an independent human separate from mommy is, at best, abrupt, I think our kids need to hear ‘yes’ more. It’s time that we, as parents, evaluate why exactly we say ‘no’ as much as we do.

Maybe it’s habit. Toddlers and preschoolers have endless energy and seem to get into everything they physically can. Perhaps we are so used to saying no (“No, honey, you can’t fill the bathtub up with your spaghetti” “No, you can’t wear your swimsuit to school when it’s snowing outside”) that it becomes an automatic response rather than a well-thought reply.

Or maybe our ‘no’s’ have more selfish undertones. After all, filling pots and pans with water then throwing giant play-doh balls into them does not lend itself to the quiet, clean household most of us desire.

Whatever the reason, the truth is that ‘no’ often stifles a child’s ability to make realdecisions that affect his or her life. In order to help children become independent adults, we must allow them to (gulp) make both wrong and right decisions, for this is how they learn.

I challenge parents to start saying ‘yes.’ Yes, you can sleep with all 74 of your stuffed animals on your bed. Yes, you can wear your sweatshirt inside out if the tag bothers you. Yes, you can absolutely have carrots with your breakfast and cereal with your dinner. By not automatically refusing an idea that, to us as adults seems silly or ‘wrong’, we not only empower our children to make their own decisions but also let them know that we support and respect them as people.
One of the best real life examples of a parent saying ‘yes’ is seeing a child at the grocery store wearing his or her Halloween costume when Halloween was months ago. Why not? Instead of “no, we don’t wear Halloween costumes when it’s not Halloween,” what’s the harm in “how did you ever come up with such a creative way to get more use out of the costume I made for you? You will probably have grown out of it by next Halloween, so I’m glad you have the chance to wear it again!”?

Of course, there are times when we must tell children ‘no’ (e.g., when safety is a risk). However, most of the time a ‘no’ can become a ‘yes.’ Think of it this way: instead of sharing with a child what he can’t do, try communicating what he can do:

Instead of

-Don’t paint on the wall
-Don’t skateboard in the street
-Don’t throw the ball in the house

Try

-Paints are for paper
-I'm happy to move the cars out of the garage so you can skateboard there
-I'd love to throw the ball with you in the backyard


Giving children real options and letting them choose what best suits their needs in situations like these not only saves us the time and frustration of, say, cleaning paint off the walls, but it also allows children to feel like their opinions matter (and they do matter!).

I suspect that children whose parents respect them as people and allow them to have a say in their life decisions will be more compliant when a parent does say no, because the child will know that your use of ‘no’ is not indiscriminant or meaningless.

Next time, before you say ‘no’ to a request your child has made, ask yourself why. Will it put my child or others in danger? Do I have a substantial reason to say ‘no’? If not, I challenge you to say ‘yes’!

Oh, the giveaway? You want to know the winner? Why of course you do! Random.org chose comment #6. (In case you're wondering, it's actually comment #7. As funny as Alicia from Ag.gray.gate's comment was, my Canadian bloggy friend was ineligible for this giveaway.)

And the winner is...

Shoot me an email, Heather, and I'll put you in contact with Liz so you can redeem your prize. A very special thanks to Liz from Sweet Simplicity Designs for hosting AGP's very first Giveaway. I'd say it was a huge success. And thank you to everyone for entering and tweeting it. Stay tuned...I've got more in store for you...winky face! Read more...