Madeleine has gotten on a cooking kick. She is no longer amused by stirring empty bowls while I make dinner--she wants to help. I am all for letting kids help cook. I let her dump ingredients in the bowl (despite a disaster with oatmeal it is usually a safe way for her to help). But I really can't tolerate her help beyond the dumping of ingredients.
To help you understand my point of view, I will break it down for you. I will state the obvious first, I can't let her do anything having to do with the stove--I am not that bad of a mother. I really try to keep her away from the microwave too--she might be a little traumatized by a melted doll (she tried cooking the doll once). Anything having to do with knives is obviously out of the question too. So that basically leaves stirring, and I just can't handle her stirring things. This is a girl who regularly picks her nose. If she can't keep her fingers out of her nose, then I don't have much faith in her keeping them out of my dinner. And I don't even want to thinking about her picking her nose while she is mixing my dinner!
So I came up with a solution tonight. I gave her fake food to stir. I made homemade playdough. Cooking dinner tonight was great. It took her forever to get the dough mixed (I finally stepped in and finished mixing it). And then she was entertained the rest of the evening by making food. We were treated to huge piles of pink cookies, pink pizza, pink hamburgers, etc. Right now there is a huge bag of pink dough "cooking" in her pretend microwave. Ahhh, the joys of playdough.
1 comment:
With a 3 year old and a one year old you probably believe that all drinks are served with some type of crumbs floating in them, children are born with their finger in their nose, and they only have 2 volumes - at the top of their voice and barely audible - nothing in between.
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