Let Your Kids Help
It is very important that you allow your kids be involved in the meal process.
When kids get to help choose their foods, they do not feel force to eat those foods. When going to the grocery store take your kids, do not leave them at home. Let them pick out what vegetables and fruits they like; you never know what your kid could be interested until you let them pick out their own produce.
If your kids are older, you can have a kid’s night, where they can plan the meal and do most of the preparing of the meal, with adult supervision of course. It is good to let your kids help out with little things in cooking at a young age and increase with involvement of the meal as they get older.
When children are brought up in an environment that allows them to participate in cooking, they are less likely as teenagers to pick up fast food and more likely to make their own meal.
With younger children, you can let them help count ingredients out in recipes; they can count Tbs even cloves of garlic. When they get into fractions at school, it may help them see that four 1/4 cups is one whole cup. There are a lot of educational lessons that go along with food and cooking.
Published 05/21/10
