AIBU to ask if you bake with your children

[Leavingsosoon]

And if so, why?

I've recently joined Facebook. I was on it ages ago, came off and now on again as am trying to meet people and so on.

My friends have nearly all got photos of baking with their children up there.

Explain why this is part of childhood! I don't understand ...

I wouldn't plaster it all over Facebook (but I don't like Facebook anyway) but cooking with your children is fun and is educational for them.

My DSs are 10 and 8 and love joining in. DS1 makes a mean risotto, does cakes and biscuits, roast dinner etc. It's important for them to learn these things so that they can look after themselves properly when they're older.

Baking is a stealth way to do a bit of maths with reluctant children, oh we need to make double quantities of this cake, how many grams of chocolate do we need, goes down a bit better than lets practice times tables!

Yes, I bake with DS(9). We make flapjacks, cakes, pies, bread etc. His Manchester Tart was bloody lovely (though I helped with the custard). He did an after school baking club earlier this year. Now he's starting to show interest in learning to cook other food.

I don't remember baking with my mum, although she always cooked everything from scratch. I remember wanting to help but clearly being under her feet. I am not very good at baking but can't wait until my DS can help me cook the tea :)

Best childhood memories are cooking/baking with my mum. We still do it now when I visit, nieces and nephews all in the kitchen helping too. Cant wait for DD to be old enough to join in.

I bake with mine because they love it & licking out the bowl. They also like to decorate whatever we've made.

Made chocolate chip cookies with the 14 year old yesterday. His favourite bit is scraping out the bowl at the end while mum cleans the kitchen...

YWNBU to ask such a question, who said it would be?

Ds3 (9) is great at baking and his results are a lot better than mine. We have just made and are eating mini Victoria sandwiches and Honey oat cookies.

What don't you understand? That parents can do something fun with their children?

Because supervising them doing a bit of mixing and icing , or rolling pastry out , or choosing which set of cutters they want , is infinitely preferable to refereeing another row over the Xbox.

I bake with my niece, and have since she was 18months old. I plan to bake with my lo once they are old enough. I have many happy memories of baking with my grandmother. I can't remember not being able to bake buns!

Baking is A Good Thing - you end up with a warm kitchen that smells good and a plate of cakes or biscuits for tea.
So, having decided it is a Good Thing, why wouldn't you want to teach your DCs to participate? Plus it is good for their maths skills (measuring, adding, timings, counting, sharing etc.) and makes a change from the usual messy play.

OP, do you often struggle to understand why people do fairly ordinary things?

Every now and again, yes. And cooking tea. They need to learn the skills to look after themselves/where food comes from/measurements. Also I need to learn to let go and allow things to go a bit wrong sometimes. So lessons for all of us!

..and it's fun for them and sort of fun for me.

Baking is a great way to introduce children to cooking, Ds is 5 and loves baking and helping me cook. It's an important life skill so I am happy to gradually introduce it as he gets older.

As pp said it's also great for maths.

Because no kitchen should go through life without having flour flung at the ceiling, eggs cracked down the side of the fridge, sugar sprinkled where the ants were getting in, oats poured in the sink, icing sugar literally everywhere, all the sweets for the top eaten and then chucked up on a hot bun tin, instantly cooking and filling the kitchen with the worst imaginable smell.

Apparently, this is fun and educational and a bonding experience. I think it's another step toward alcoholism but to each their own.

Why don't you understand

Cooking is a basic life skill. Kids like sweet things in the process of making sweet things they learn fundamental cooking skills, learn to follow a set of instructions, do some maths. They will probably be less scared of trying out cooking when they're adults.

There are many activities you can do to entertain and educate your kids. At least with cakes you can eat the results and clear the space. You cant eat paintings and after a while you get too many for the fridge door magnets.

Peppa, sounds horrific. How old were/are your DCs when this happened?

PeppaWelington

Oh and following a recipe is a great way to start learning about algorithms.

I think you are really asking two questions: a) do you bake with your children and if so why; and b) why is baking such a common theme / pic on fb.

The first has been extensively answered.

I suggest the second is a mixture: a symbol of " good" parenting; a time when you gave the dcs together, creativity, perhaps sweet, nostalgia for the 1950s ( see "good" parenting); nostalgia for what your own DM did or you would have wanted her to do.

Yes we do. Gets the DC off staring at a screen, teaches them how to cook, they enjoy it and the end result is (usually) delicious. Don't FB it though, can't imagine who would be interested!

I was told by a primary teacher that cooking is the only activity that you can do with children that covers every part of the curriculum: literacy, maths, science. And here was me thinking it taught a basic life skill and created something we all liked to eat (much better that crafts that you have to lovingly display for a month then carefully make disappear without the children noticing).

Not that I do much baking with the kids except DD2 who is already good at it. I leave it to DH who has much more patience.

Why? because they taste good, especially slow cooked, maybe sprinkled with 100s and 1000s