No kidding!

There is a Jamaican proverb “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day, teach him to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” When we spend the time to educate people and give them life skills, we are teaching them to be self-sufficient.

Some time ago I gasped as I read a mother tweet that she had to go make breakfast on a weekend morning for her older teen daughters. “Huh?” I wondered to myself. “Can’t they make their own pancakes at that age?”

While living at home, many teens will never have to cook a meal for the family, but by the time they go off to university, everything changes. Those who are unprepared are shocked to realise that there is no mommy, daddy or maid to cater to their every culinary whim.

My cooking skills, while taught in the home, were honed during my college years as I recreated dishes I was used to eating at home so I could feel less homesick. I had never cooked many of those dishes on my own before but had observed and contributed to their preparation numerous times over the years, and that was all the confidence I needed to take the plunge on my own.

If you are one of those parents who feel that the kitchen is solely the domain of the maid or hired cook, and have banished your children from entering, you may be doing them a disservice. Some of the best lessons you could ever teach your kids happen in the kitchen. Even if you actually do the cooking yourself but would rather the kids stay out of your way — for whatever reason — letting your kids help out in the kitchen will arm them for life.

While some kids have a real affinity for the kitchen, others may have absolutely no interest. You can level the playing field by encouraging them from very early to spend more time in there with you. While teaching kids in the kitchen, stay away from meats and fish until they are very seasoned. Raw meats will turn any child off cooking forever. Instead, give them small fun tasks like measuring things and mixing batter or squirting chocolate sauce over strawberries and they will become more and more interested. Progress to pancakes and in no time they will be flipping those griddle cakes like short order cooks.

As they develop their kitchen confidence, they will get more and more adventurous perhaps even to the point of making themselves snacks and meals. Every mother will relish the child who can make is/her own healthy sandwiches every once in a while. And that leads me to yet another advantage of teaching kids to cook — they are more likely to consume healthy foods because they are familiar with them and are less likely to be very picky eaters. Let them artfully decorate salads to get them interested in vegetables and erase all notions that vegetables are monsters out to get them. Soon you will have them chomping baby carrots like Bugs Bunny and spinach like Popeye.

Take your kids to the market with you while you are shopping for produce so that they will learn how to select them. You can even allow them to buy a little of one or two vegetable for themselves that they can carry in their own bags and pay for with money you hand over to them. This also adds another layer of fun because you can go home and figure out dishes to make together with the things you have bought.

To be fair, both boys and girls should be encouraged to learn and hone kitchen skills. The kitchen is no longer an area for gender profiling. They all have to eat and so must all learn to cook, boys and girls alike. A man who can hold his own in a kitchen is not any less manly than a man who doesn’t know how to make a cup of coffee. He can go out and play football with the boys and invite them back to his home and cook them juicy steaks all in the same afternoon.

The day will come when you as a parent will gladly reap the rewards of tasting delicious food prepared by the hands of your children and no one will be prouder than you.