How much freedom do you give your children to do their own cooking?

[Eulalia]

dd is 4.8 and really wants to do her own thing and doesn't like me helping her. She's a bit fussy about food and one of the few things she eats is scrambled eggs made in the microwave. It would be wouldn't it - one of hte most fiddly things of all. Today she faffs around cracking the egg into a bowl, getting lots of bits of egg into the bowl which I have to fish out, somehow manages to get some on her sleeve. Won't let me put it in the microwave so has to drag a stool across to reach. It cooks and she takes the thing out and drops it all over the floor at which point I lost it, shouted and stormed out of hte room.

I have ds1 (age 7) also to watch over as he has autism and ds2 who is 17 months as well and i feel I just don't have time/patience to help her out but feel bad that I am not giving her more but maybe she is still too young? dh never seems to be around for one reason or the other (currently out buying rods to unblock our drains!)

Do you let your kids cook their own food and if so what and how old are they?

My DD (3.3) does hot chocolate in the microwave - although needs help lifting the jug in and out. She also helps with all cooking I do from rolling out and cutting pastry to adding and stirring veggies in soups etc.

Full of intentions of being a creative mother-type, tried to get DS involved in pastry making at one year.

He threw the flour everywhere and tried to eat the butter.

Decided to leave it a while longer...

Two separate issues - 1) what can she cook to make her feel in charge without driving you to distraction and making too much extra work for you 2) how much can you reasonably expect from a child that age?

1. could you make up refridgerator cookie dough that she can roll and cut out into fun shapes and then you could put them in the oven? You could divide up the tasks with her (your jobs, mummy's jobs)

2)I think it depends on the child and how much time you have to train them up. My 8 year old boy loves to cook and makes scrambled eggs, toast, pasta, but in the process of learning and insisting on independence we have had some wierd food! One of the things he has learned by being left to it (with me hovering!) is the mise en place requirement which is a useful skill for any project.

Interesting. I have a (just) 11 year old who has always loved cooking.She started with cutting out biscuits and making crispycakes and rolling out pastry and beating eggs and she can now make chickpea curry, scrambled eggs, mince pies (she did all ours this year) muffins, biscuits, a Nigella Lawson chocolate cake, pasta carbonara and several other things completely unaided. She also makes a fair stab at the cleaning up. She can follow a recipe and I would let her have a go at most things - unless they involved hot fat or boiling sugar or anything scary like that. She gets a huge buzz out of cooking for us, and has several times done dinner for us all. She was on cloud nine for ages after she did that! Why don't you want your dd to cook, twoplusone?

My 5 year old has absolutely no interest at all! Just likes eating the results!