5 Tips to Encourage Children to Help You in the Kitchen

Involving your kids into the house chores can be a lot of fun provided that you know how to engage them and make them feel appreciated for helping you with your home cleaning or tidying up duties. However, when it comes to cooking, many parents feel insecure as to when is the right time to let their kids do stuff in the kitchen and how to avoid accidents. The truth is that there is not a more or less suitable age for teaching your kids some cooking tricks, but there are activities that are more suitable for older kids and activities appropriate for younger ones.

According to psychologists, your kids can master a lot of useful skills through cooking. For example, they can learn how to manage their time, how to sort out products and most of all, how to be patient and understand that it takes time for a delicious meal to get ready. So, if your kids love spending time in the kitchen with you, that's great, but what if they need you to encourage them to leave the toys in the living room and help you with dinner preparation?

1. The first thing you have to teach your kids is that safety matters. They should know that they are not allowed to use sharp knives or any other potentially dangerous kitchen tools. When that lesson is learned, you can get started with kitchen activities suitable for your kids’ age.
2. Make the preparation of the dinner a game. You can assign your kid special tasks such as finding a certain ingredient in the kitchen cabinet, pouring, scooping, mixing ingredients. Needless to say, you should not forget about the award for the well-done job. However, it is important to be careful as to what kind of gifts your kid receives. If you are too generous, your kid might get used to the habit of receiving an award for every good thing they have done.
3. Letting your kids help you in the kitchen inevitably leads to a lot of mess. You'd better refrain yourself from asking kids to help you when you are in a hurry to prepare a dinner as the mess will be greater. Probably the least pleasant thing about cooking is namely the mess and you are probably not the biggest fan of mopping the floor and wiping the countertops. Then, you should not expect your kids to like it, either. Yet, you have to remember that they will follow your example, so you are the one to make them understand cleaning one's own mess is important. You can turn it into a game. Set a timer and the one who completes the assigned tasks faster is declared a winner.
4. Kids will always be kids, so if you want to make the kitchen atmosphere more exciting, CleanStartCleaningServices W3 suggests to substitute your measuring cups and tools with colorful ones. Get yourself and your kids aprons that have a print of their favorite animated hero.
5. Take your kids with you when you buy groceries for the week. Tell them about the ingredients you will need for preparing the next delicious meal. If your kids are old enough, you can take into account their suggestions for a dinner, buy the necessary ingredients and promise to cook the meal they want, provided that they help you with the preparation.

These were some proven methods for making your kids help you with the cooking chores and learn important lessons through cooking. Remember to be patient and don't get angry at the mess that will inevitably happen.

Thank you for this wonderful guest post. Demi Giles owns a small cleaning company based in London. In her free time, she enjoys writing about homemade cleaning detergents, DIY projects, and home organizing.