Teaching stubborn 11 year old who won't listen and hates guidance

[fluffyleaf]

Hello! My lovely 11 year old refuses to be taught anything or listen to me.

I think it's a form of stubbornness and individuality, so I am very careful to allow freedom and self-guided learning rather than imposing anything on her too much.

However it's come to her wanting to cook meals in the kitchen for us.

But she's refusing to listen to any instruction to the point when I try to provide advice on how to cook (not wanting to eat bananas and mayonnaise tacos, or cinnamon sprinkled on chips, for example) and show basic cooking skills, it leads to her getting very upset.

She believes she is naturally good enough to cook good food without any guidance or support.

However I cannot allow waste of ingredients or unsafe kitchen activity so I am looking for strategies for how to guide children that refuse help.

I'm not domineering BTW in case anyone thinks I am, nor am I a pushover.

I'm just looking for any strategies from parents of similarly minded children for guiding them effectively when they refuse to listen! Thanks for reading.

NB she is primary age at the moment so food tech classes have not begun yet at school.

Don't let her cook unless she listens.

Does she have PDA? My son is intolerable to teach like this.

id advise asking them what she’d like to cook, finding a video on preparing it. Watch it together first, then go into the kitchen and interfere as little as possible. Trick is to be a companion not a teacher - so when she’s struggling say things like
“I always used to struggle with chopping onions finely enough too! Do you want to know a trick I’ve learnt?”
rather than “if you just let me show you how to do it first! I can help!’

good luck, I know it’s infuriating. but the less domineering I am, the more advice my son is willing to take. It’s hard but he needs to do it himself, in a space where he feels no shame if he gets it wrong, and then he will take help.

Teaching kids to cook almost invariably means wasting ingredients as they do make mistakes and sometimes even with close parental attention the result is inedible.

The safety issue is more of a problem. Realistically you can't let her cook unless she is safe so you are going to have to hold the line on that one.

Some places have local cooking schools that do sessions over half term for parents and kids - possibly an idea?

@CatPancake good point about PDA. Not something I had really considered. I honestly wouldn't be surprised. It is something I will look into for sure (we are looking into neurodiversity testing at the moment so it may arise as part of this). She is very capable and intelligent but when it comes to accepting guidance it is almost impossible to guide her.

Same with homework. She gets very frustrated if she can't do leading to emotional upset but won't accept help, if I try to help it gets worse so it's a vicious circle.

Thanks that's a good idea. She accepts guidance better from teachers etc vs myself.

I'm not so bothered about wasting some ingredients, but it's more that I don't want to have to eat endless weird concoctions (last night it was banana, strawberry and mayonnaise with lime wedges in their skins in a taco!).

She refuses to eat much of what she cooks herself so I have to tread a fine line between trying it or offending her when I refuse to eat certain strange things. And when I asked her to eat it she got in an emotional tizzy as well. It is all exhausting.

We agreed at a calmer time that she would have to taste anything she makes, so that is some progress.

lol those tacos do sound pretty inedible!

Don't blame you for that.

Is she interested in cooking or more playing with food if you see what I mean?

You could rename it "inventing new dishes" and have it as a once a week thing? Means she knows she gets to do it and you only have to try weird food once a week.

Set some boundaries

1- Discuss and agree on a meal
2- Find a recipe for said meal
3 - get ingredients ready/shop for what you need.
4- You are allowed in the kitchen while meal is being cooked but will only “help” when asked.
5- clean up is shared.

If she wants to invent something wacky- then say yes that’s fine but it’s a side dish or a desert not the main thing. If you don’t eat it then we don’t eat it and we talk about why.

Record the successes and document them in a photo book to capture her progress and for her to make notes. Treat it like a recipie/scarp book.

*scrap

I think there’s some good advice on here.

I wonder if you could find some instruction videos that are really step by step, Delia style.

If she just wants to play with food, agree that she can make a small quantity.
Show her canapés and tasting menus, so that she can see that’s a real thing.

As for her trying to pressure you into eating unpleasant combos, I would stand firm.
I suspect it is a way to control you. I understand that that’s partly insecurity, and she probably doesn’t even realise what she’s doing, but it could become her expectation, so make it clear.

I would also praise effort as much as possible, but still demonstrate your own right to choose. Eg the chips are delicious, what a treat, everyone likes to choose their own condiments. She can have cinnamon, you can have salt, Parmesan, or nothing at all.
Model the right to choose as much as possible, when you are cooking. So dinner is risotto, would she like to add cheese or pepper or crispy bacon to hers. You don’t all have to have everything.

Could you buy her a decent kids cooking book? Then she has some ideas.

Also could you get her some gear - nice apron, her own mixing bowls etc

Cookery lessons might be your solution.

My Dd was like this. Later diagnosed as Audhd. Shes better now at 17. Still won’t take guidance. But sometimes she goes away has a think and then comes back,

This sounds similar to me trying to teach her crochet age 8 which she wanted to do. The horror of it is still there 9 years later.

I am really struggling to imagine the parent - child dynamic where your 11 year old is effectively force feeding you inedible concoctions that she refuses to eat herself. She seems to be seeking to control you to an unhealthy extent. And you are letting her - which is probably making her feel out of control. It is lovely that you want to support her interests but I think you need to hear that the dynamic you describe doesn’t sound normal or healthy. It is ok for you to set and hold the boundaries. That is important for children, neurodiverse or otherwise.

Sounds very familiar and DD15 was diagnosed Audhd last year. At least she can now make a decent cake and cookies after much trial and error, unfortunately often at 4am and leaves the kitchen looking like a tank's driven through it!

This what ND kids do though. Their need for control is due to anxiety.

Yes so as parents we need to set and maintain the boundaries to support their need for control in a healthy way, whilst minimising anxiety because of providing certainty. Force feeding someone disgusting food because otherwise we’ll have a tantrum is not a healthy boundary.

Another PDA, ADHD suspect here. My son was the same around that age. Would only listen for about 10 seconds before getting stressed and angry!

I'm not sure she's "force feeding" me more getting excited because she wants to make us dinner (which of course I want to encourage) and as a creative girl wants to indulge her own creativity and feed us her (admittedly strange) idea of what we might find delicious.

And as she's just a child really loving presenting us with a specially prepared dinner (she's only done it a few times) and like anyone to a certain extent you say "mmm that's lovely" the first few times but when I politely suggest maybe leaving cinnamon off the chips is a good idea she starts to catastrophise that her whole dinner is awful and get really upset. So feeding back is quite hard as it can lead to a meltdown (possibly part of neurodiversity).

She has a limited palette herself (as I did as a child) so anything to make her more familiar with different foodstuffs I think should be encouraged which is why I allow some of it, to an extent.

We've had the conversation about her needing to eat her own concoctions, which to a certain extent worked like she will eat the main course but not the weird side dish. I guess i need to work on that!

I do really love some of these ideas though. I think managing and agreeing boundaries ahead of time is the best and adding in some provisos like people said upthread e.g. agreeing a menu, following said recipe (for the most part) must accept help with certain things, must listen at certain times.

That has NEVER worked for mine. Talking through things and talking her down was the only thing that ever helped. Boundaries would send her into absolute meltdown.

We have a bit of this with DS in different ways. So I try to take a pre-emptive approach. In this situation, for example, I would say to him something like, "tell me what you want to make and find a recipe. If I think it's doable, and we have the ingredients, I will leave you to it."

If she's open to it, I think this is also a useful time to point out that creativity comes once you've learnt the basics. was it ee Cummings who said something about he could leave out the capitals because he understood how they were supposed to work, or something along those lines?

She refuses to eat much of what she cooks herself

Why does she want to cook if not to eat things? I'd really want get to the bottom of that one. I just can't imagine the motivation.

Cooking is fun!

I don't always eat what I cook (have intolerances) but still enjoy learning new recipes and I can often then adapt them for me.

I've been to a lot of cooking classes when I go on holiday, it's often a standard thing in many countries now and I really enjoyed learning Moroccan cooking even if they did use meat.

I remember making something for my parents at that age and they really did try their best but it wasn't very nice!

With the weird concoctions, maybe she might be interested in Heston Blumenthal and his concept of research cooking?

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heston_Blumenthal

He's done some tv shows she might be interested in - kitchen chemistry and fantastical food.

this is good.

I would also say that there are great youtube videos on how to do things, and you can watch and pauseas you do it.

But with potentially hot oil etc she is going to need to accept some boundaries.
Set those in place at a time when she isn't asking to cook. Maybe even have them pinned on the fridge.
they coudl include that you have to be in the room for fying etc, but you will sit and scroll on your phone unless either needed (something dangerous is happening) or asked.

I think it's about being experimental, creativity, wanting to make something "nice" for us her parents, learning.... expressing herself, also familiarising herself with food etc.

She does eat some of it (regular blander dishes) but loves to put on a "restaurant" style setup where she serves us as her mum and dad, makes the table nice and makes an interesting drink for us to have.

I think it's curiosity as well, a bit "george's marvellous medicine" style.

from your last post, this is not about learning to cook, but playing out restaurants.

In that case steer her towards things that she can present to you and be creative with.