STOCKING: It’s time for my kids to pull their own weight in the kitchen
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About a year ago, I finally figured out that I didn’t have to keep doing everything myself and assigned each of my kids a night to cook dinner. I know: I’m a little slow at the whole parent thing. I know some amazing parents who figured it out long before I did and they had their five-year-olds making three course dinners. I kid, of course, but some parents don’t take as long as I do to make their kids start helping in the kitchen more. Either I’m a little slow or protective of my kitchen (probably a little of both).
This year, with my oldest out of the house, and my youngest able to read recipes (fractions are hard!), I decided it was time for that nine-year-old son to start taking a night to cook. It’s not always easy training a new cook. I have to encourage them to pick meals they can easily learn to fix on their own. That means dinner could be anything from pancakes to canned soup. That might not sit well with some folks, but we don’t complain in this house. Our mottos is “You get what you get and you don’t throw a fit.” My kids have to plan and write their menu the weekend before in order to make sure I have a list when I hit the grocery store on Saturday.
McKay’s first menu was
Tuesday night arrived and McKay wanted to start that soup at 5:00. That’s a little early for dinner at our house, but he was excited and I didn’t want to discourage him. However, I was in the middle of saving my 16-year-old’s jeans so I wasn’t available to help. “Don’t worry, Mom,” he said. “I’ll get Kilee to help me.”
I heard McKay fetch Ramen from the pantry and then use his sweetest voice: “Kilee, would you please help me while I make dinner?” While I methodically used seam rippers on an old pair of jeans, I heard her say, “Read the directions to me.” McKay carefully read the directions on the Ramen package. (Confession: I have never read the directions on a package of Ramen so that was new to me.) McKay set about fixing dinner, following those directions exactly. When the soup was ready (does Ramen count as a soup?), he insisted on ladling each bowl. He hadn’t broken up the noodles so they stretched out from the spoon to the pan while he kept lifting the spoon higher and higher.
Finally, dinner was served: boring Ramen noodles, but you get what you get and you don’t throw a fit, so my 42-year-old self ate Ramen noodles. I might be 82 years old before I do that again. While I used my spoon to carefully cut my noodles against the edge of my bowl, my three kids set about slurping up their noodles. When my 16-year-old had an especially long and loud slurp, the chef of the night proclaimed, “Atta boy, Tanner!”
In the next few months, I think we’ll start adding etiquette lessons to the dinner plans.