Season 3, Episode 7:
Kitchen Tasks By Age

Conner: (00:01)
Welcome to Kiddos in the Kitchen, a podcast hosted by my mom.

Laura Fuentes: (00:12)
I don't want to make food just for my kids. I want to make food that my husband and I will enjoy, and give my kids the opportunity to try it or not. It's unlike many households, I see my house and my responsibility is to provide the opportunity to raise independent people because soon they're leaving the nest, and I just want to make sure that they don't rely on drive-thru when they're in college, or they can do basic things. That's important to me.

Stephanie Conner: (00:48)
Laura Fuentes is the founder of momables.com, where since 2010, she's been sharing recipes and growing a community of parents who want to feed their families fresh, healthy meals. She's also written five cookbooks, and is mom to three kids, ages 15, 14, and 10. Born and raised in Spain, Laura learned some kitchen basics from her grandmother, but she learned how to really cook as an adult after she became a parent, so she can empathize with parents who want to learn to cook, feed their families, and teach their kids.

Laura Fuentes: (01:25)
I teach parents how to make the meals, and then teach these parents that they can delegate certain tasks to their kids, so they, too, can pass on the skill set of cooking meals and fending for themselves in the kitchen as they get older and become more independent.

Stephanie Conner: (01:42)
Welcome to Kiddos in the Kitchen, a podcast about helping busy adults find the inspiration and information they need, to teach the kids in their lives how to cook. I'm your host, Stephanie Conner, and today, we're talking about delegating kitchen tasks to our kids and what tasks we can feel comfortable delegating to them and when.

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Stephanie Conner: (02:40)
As we begin this conversation, I have an important disclaimer. As a parent or grandparent, you know your child best. You know their motor skills and other physical abilities, their temperament, their interests, their level of compliance with safety rules. As Laura points out, every child is different, and you're the expert. So today we're going to speak in generalities, but listen to your own heart and your child, as you decide how to incorporate these ideas into your own routines. In general, for kids under 3, Laura says, focus on exposing them to different foods and letting them try new things. Then sometime between ages 3 and 5, kids develop some opinions about food, and they've developed better motor skills.

Laura Fuentes: (03:34)
The earlier years, like 3 to 5, is perfect for washing and putting away produce. I have a rule at my house, it goes in the fridge clean so that it comes out clean and it's ready to use. So everything that comes home from the grocery, all my fruit and veggies, they get washed in the sink, so that when it goes in the fridge clean, that's one less step I have to do at mealtimes. So they can help by washing and putting away produce. The younger kids love bath time. This is bath time for the produce.

Laura Fuentes: (04:07)
They can prep lettuce. There are kid’s plastic knives. These are not sharp, but they're great for prepping and shredding lettuce. This is a good age to learn how to stir, to mix and fold. Think about making pancake batter, you're using a whisk, the stirring and the mixing, and then there's the spatula when you want to do the folding in. There's also the scooping. Say you're making muffins, that's the scooping of the batter, and that is a skill.

Laura Fuentes: (04:40)
They can grease pan or baking dishes. They can learn to crack eggs at this age. Really spoon any ingredient. They can add toppings to food. They can cut soft ingredients with one of these plastic knives. If you're cooking asparagus for dinner, you can teach them how to prep asparagus. After they wash it, break off the stem. These are all very basic, great to teach them how to do prep work.

Stephanie Conner: (05:09)
These basics, Laura says, are key to raising confident cooks from a young age. So now, let's talk about ages 5 to 8.

Laura Fuentes: (05:20)
At this age, they should already know what I just named, and then we can add on things like basic cutting skills using smaller knives like a paring knife, not a 10-inch chef's knife. If you're making pizza, think about all the toppings that they could help chop up and cut, and really basic skills with these. By 5 to 7, our kids have been doing so many things in school, so many crafts, and they're scissor experts by then. They can be using kitchen scissors instead of a knife to cut things. They can grate. They can set the table.

Laura Fuentes: (05:59)
At this age, they've already been looking at numbers in school for a long time, so this is a great age to measure dry and wet ingredients. Our kids can learn really quickly what one-third looks like in a measuring cup, or they can look at the recipe and look at the one over the three and match that to the one over the three in the cup.

Laura Fuentes: (06:23)
A lot of times, the reason we don't delegate these things is they don't know fractions yet. Okay, they don't, but they do know how to match things. At this age, they've had a lot of matchy, matchy in kindergarten and first grade. I think it's a lot about speaking their language in how we teach them. We often don't delegate kitchen tasks because we're like, "Well, they can't do it start to finish, so why am I going to do that?" Well, you help them get started, and then they take it from there. For example, vegetable peelers. Imagine how much they could help just if they knew how to peel things like potato, zucchini, carrots, cabbage.

Laura Fuentes: (07:01)
Why do we buy store-bought meatballs? Because it saves us time. But what if we could just dump all the ingredients in the bowl, and get our child to mix them and form them for us? They're cheaper, and they are healthier for us. We can control the ingredients. We just take for granted, it's not really about the time. It's the time that it would take us, start to finish, but all of a sudden that time is freed up if somebody else does it.

Laura Fuentes: (07:26)
It's about delegating. This is a great age to get them started on packing simple lunches, like making sandwiches. This is really a great age to really get them started in the meal-making and preparation process. Five to eight is basic, plus getting started with cooking. It does not include heat elements.

Stephanie Conner: (07:49)
By ages 8 to 11, Laura encourages letting kids work with small kitchen appliances and following simple recipes.

Laura Fuentes: (07:59)
Towards 8 to 11, this is where we start using heat. Our stove, the toaster oven, maybe a griddle supervised. And this is where they start feeling more confident around these tasks, the actual cooking part, right? And by all means, by this age, you should be able to tell them to load and unload the dishwasher. They can even skewer foods. Grilling skewers, or maybe snacktime to make fruit skewers, for example. They should be able to make lunch wraps, pasta salads, and things that are utilizing leftovers that are already cooked in assembling. They should be able to chop most foods at a medium skill level, basic things that you would use to chop for a lunch. Make and flip pancakes. Checking for internal temperature of cooked meats. The 8 to 11 or 8 to 12 is where they transition from supervised skills to unsupervised, meaning now I know I can go to the laundry room and delegate something and step away.

Stephanie Conner: (09:07)
Now our kids are 11 or 12, and they're getting pretty darn comfortable in the kitchen, so what's left?

Laura Fuentes: (09:16)
At 12, our kids are stronger. They can hold a muffin pan, or they can hold a casserole dish. You cannot have these expectations from a 6 year old to hold a casserole dish. It's heavy. This is where we talk about how far do you reach in to grab something and mittens, before they do that independently. Twelve and up, I would say that they can do oven cooking. They can use temperatures and timers. So they can really do baking, roasting, broiling. They can follow just about any recipe.

Stephanie Conner: (09:51)
For Laura, teaching kids who are independent in the kitchen, and can help her with mealtime, has been time well spent. To help set everyone up for success, Laura recommends using only tested recipes for kids and demonstrating this one essential skill in the kitchen... Googling.

Laura Fuentes: (10:12)
Oftentimes I've had to Google these things myself because I had to teach myself how to cook at a later age. There is nothing wrong with not knowing and having to look for an answer.

Stephanie Conner: (10:24)
As important as anything, she says, give yourself some grace. No one's perfect... not even Laura.

Laura Fuentes: (10:34)
We went through this, how to cook by age, and if you're like, "Oh, my child isn't there. I failed at this whole kitchen skill thing or teaching my kids," I just want to let you know that my kids still don't know all the things by age, and they're still working on it. And you're not a parenting failure because you are just starting and your teenagers don't know how to do anything.

Laura Fuentes: (10:58)
Any day, like today, is a good day to just get started. You've spent your time doing other parenting things, but you can also just start today, teaching them one little thing at a time. I don't want anyone listening to go, "Man, she's been teaching her kids, and mine are so behind in the whole cooking thing." No, no, no, no. I just want everyone listening to understand that today is just as good a day as any to get started, and move on and move forward and make it an exciting thing. And as a matter of fact, you may learn and discover new favorite recipes for yourself.

Stephanie Conner: (11:35)
Thank you to Laura Fuentes for joining me today. You can get her great recipes and helpful videos at momables.com. On social media, she's MOMables. And on the show notes for this episode on kiddosinthekitchen.com, you'll find a link to Laura's guide on kitchen skills to teach by age, as well as links to all of her social media pages.

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Stephanie Conner: (12:32)
Now it's time to meet a cooking kiddo.

Kids: (12:35)
I'm a cooking kiddo. I'm a chef. I love making memories in the kitchen. I like to eat what I cook. Kitchen time is the best time.

Rhea: (12:53)
My name is Rhea, and my favorite thing to cook is a cake.

Stephanie Conner: (12:59)
Specifically, she likes to bake chocolate cakes with vanilla frosting and sprinkles. Rhea Dhingra was born in India and lives in Toronto, Canada. She's seven and in the second grade, and she started cooking when she was 3. She says her mom took cooking classes and then taught her how to cook.

Rhea: (13:21)
The first thing I made was a cake pop, a chocolate cake pop.

Stephanie Conner: (13:26)
How do you make a cake pop? I've never made them.

Rhea: (13:29)
We just make the dough of chocolate and then we put it in a stick. And if you want to, you can decorate it, and then we put it in the fridge.

Stephanie Conner: (13:40)
In the kitchen, Rhea is skilled at various tasks. You can watch her at work on her YouTube channel, Fun Food and Kids.

Rhea: (13:49)
I flip pancakes, and I cook on gas, and I cut vegetables.

Stephanie Conner: (13:54)
Do you have a special knife when you cut vegetables?

Rhea: (13:57)
Yeah, a chef knife.

Stephanie Conner: (13:57)
Or do you use a real one?

Rhea: (13:58)
A real chef knife.

Stephanie Conner: (13:59)
A grown-up knife?

Rhea: (14:00)
Yeah.

Stephanie Conner: (14:01)
That's awesome. That means your mom taught you really good safety skills.

Rhea: (14:04)
Yeah. And I went to a summer camp, and they also taught me how to use a professional chef knife.

Stephanie Conner: (14:12)
That's super cool. What's your favorite thing that you do in the kitchen?

Rhea: (14:16)
Cut vegetables, of course.

Stephanie Conner: (14:19)
Of course, like all young budding chefs, Rhea has more she wants to learn.

Rhea: (14:26)
Yeah, I want to learn how to handle hot things in the kitchen and how to flip a pizza dough.

Stephanie Conner: (14:33)
Do you make pizza now?

Rhea: (14:35)
Yeah, I make pizza, but I don't know how to toss a dough so well.

Stephanie Conner: (14:39)
Have you tried?

Rhea: (14:40)
I have tried. It worked out and it didn't work out.

Stephanie Conner: (14:43)
Tell me what happens when you toss it.

Rhea: (14:45)
It just comes back and then it drops. I went to a restaurant once, and the chef let me in his own kitchen and taught me how to make a professional pizza in a professional oven, and it was so much fun to make and so tasty.

Stephanie Conner: (15:02)
Wow, that's really cool.

Rhea: (15:04)
And he also taught me how to flip the pizza dough.

Stephanie Conner: (15:07)
So you have some instruction?

Rhea: (15:10)
Yeah. And he was also my teacher in the summer camp, last summer.

Stephanie Conner: (15:14)
So what's the secret to a professional pizza?

Rhea: (15:18)
It's a lot of techniques. You don't need a rolling pin to roll the dough. You press it with your fingertips. Your left hand on the pizza dough and then you rotate it with the right hand. And then you take the pizza dough on the right hand and flip it on the left hand, and keep on doing that, and then you put it on your knuckles and flip it up and then down.

Stephanie Conner: (15:41)
It sounds so easy when you just say the words.

Rhea: (15:43)
Yeah.

Stephanie Conner: (15:44)
It's not as easy when you actually go to do it, huh?

Rhea: (15:48)
Yeah.

Stephanie Conner: (15:48)
And then what kind of pizza oven did they use?

Rhea: (15:50)
A professional pizza. It was like a 10 pizza oven and a rectangle one and a big one.

Stephanie Conner: (15:58)
Rhea, who loves science in school, says she also wants to learn how to make Indian food and how to frost a cake.

Rhea: (16:05)
Fancy cake decorating. And I also watch baking shows. I watched a show called Baking Impossible, and they made huge structures of cake that move.

Stephanie Conner: (16:18)
She aspires to compete on the show Master Chef Junior, someday, and wants to be a chef when she grows up. She loves baking cakes and other dishes for special occasions.

Rhea: (16:29)
When it was Father's Day, my dad had gone outside, and I made his favorite Indian sweet called ladoos. They are round and they have nuts in it. And when he came back, he was surprised to see his favorite dish, and he loved it.

Stephanie Conner: (16:47)
Oh, that's so great. Does your mom help you with that one too?

Rhea: (16:51)
Yeah. My mom help me a little bit.

Stephanie Conner: (16:55)
While her eyes are set on a culinary career, Rhea believes it's important for all kids to learn how to cook.

Rhea: (17:02)
Cooking is a lifestyle. We always need food. And because we learn fractions, science, measurements, reading, math from cooking.

Stephanie Conner: (17:17)
Thank you to Rhea for joining the show. You can check out her YouTube channel, Fun Food and Kids, or check her out on Instagram, she's funwithfood99.

Stephanie Conner: (17:51)
One thing Laura Fuentes said to me was that we often don't give kids enough credit. They can do more in the kitchen than we might expect, but as with anything with our children, it can be hard sometimes to see them as big kids, difficult to let go and let them tackle that next challenge. We worry they might get hurt, or think they just aren't ready for certain tasks... in the kitchen or elsewhere. Sometimes we, as parents, without even realizing it, are holding them back. I know I'm guilty of this myself. But what if they really can do kid-pitch baseball or enter a tournament or audition for the dance company? What if they really are ready to bake muffins entirely on their own? Cook dinner on the stove, or use a real chef's knife?

Stephanie Conner: (18:55)
But the good news is that we can accomplish two objectives at once, simultaneously instilling confidence in them and giving ourselves the comfort of knowing they are indeed ready. It starts with us setting aside a little time whenever we can, to cook with them and build their skills and maybe even our own. Over time, our kiddos develop their independence in the kitchen, and that's something they'll value their whole lives. Thanks for joining me for Kiddos in the Kitchen. I'm your host, Stephanie Conner, with a reminder from my son.

Conner: (19:41)
If you like my mom's podcast as much as I do, you can subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Stephanie Conner: (20:00)
That's right, Conner. You can also view the show notes, subscribe to our newsletter, and check out all of our other content at kiddosinthekitchen.com, we’re kiddos cook on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. And I'll be back next month with another fresh episode. Until then, I encourage you to get your kiddos in the kitchen.