On Cooking with a Toddler

quotidian ease

I love to cook with my daughter. Tonight we made linguini with a loose adaptation of a Provencale spaghetti sauce – onions, pesto (I had no fresh herbs), capers, anchovies, tuna, tomatoes, and sunflower seeds topping (excellent stand-in for pine nuts, which I have never once had in my kitchen).

I’m writing this out because toddlers are some of the most delightful, joyful people to share a meal or a kitchen with, which I’ve done with dozens of toddlers through the years. For reference, I was a parentified older sister in a rural, fundamentalist context, ran church nurseries, babysat, worked as an au pair in France, was a nanny in NYC; I’ve spent loads of time with small curious people.

Outside of serious sensory processing and other medical issues (not at all qualified to comment on, and won’t), I believe most children are primed to have wonderful, exploratory relationships with food through preparing it (and growing it, if possible). But how does that work?

Here’s a description of this evening, because the stories I find often provide small permissions and possibilities.

We don’t have a hard dinner time, but have been usually eating around 6. At 5, we needed to come in from the park for a good clean up, and instead of going back out to play, I asked Fancy if she wanted to help me make dinner, thus offering us plenty of buffer time to go as slow as we liked. She’s at the darling age of decisive nods, so off we went.

I try to keep basic pantry items around reliably: never do I run out for a single ingredient or ingredients for a single meal. So I adapt very freely.

My kitchen is a cramped galley-style, with about two square feet of counter space and not a lot of floor space either (I live in NYC).

I narrated everything I was about to do slowly: “Mama is filling this pot with water so we can cook the noodles in it.” Every time I did something on the stove, I picked Fancy up and showed her. After putting on salted water to heat, I put the garlic and onion on a cutting board on the ground. When we are cooking together, she gets a task, and I try to show her as much of the process as possible, and let her taste every safe stage. So I peeled the garlic, and her job was to put the peels in the compost. I put my hand on hers, and we put the first one in the compost bin, and I asked her to do the rest. She’s a bit under a year and a half, so that’s a lot of concentration and pincer grip skills! She nodded yes, and lit up to be having her own job.

I minced the garlic next to her, and we practiced her watching me use a knife, but not reaching for it.

Then I scraped the garlic into a bowl, added a couple spoons of pesto, and asked her to stir it. Risk: she might use the spoon to catapult. Has happened before. But, it’s been a while, and stirring is great practice. Besides, we’re here on the floor together: spills are relatively easily cleaned up, and dishes don’t break from this height. Preparing food from a squat is amazing for your flexibility, to boot.

Hand over hand, I show her how to stir carefully, and emphasize not to touch the food (the oil in the pesto is too messy). Again, the moment she realizes this task is for her to do by herself, she’s ecstatic, and so serious about it. I turn on the skillet, show Fancy that it is going to get hot, so we can’t touch it, and drain the olive oil from the tin of anchovies into the pan to heat. Dump the anchovies into her bowl to stir, and help her break them into smaller pieces.

Then we do the onion together, exactly the same as the garlic: I peel it, and then while I dice, she puts each peel in the compost. Yes, she tasted both the onion paper and the onion.

I put the onion in the skillet to soften, put Fancy on a hip, and I stir and explain what will come next – time to cook the noodles. We sit on the floor and open the bag. I hand her one to examine and explain that we’re going to make them soft by cooking. Into the water the noodles go (you don’t have to wait till boiling – saves energy and time not to).

Next, we dump the last bit of a jar of capers into Fancy’s bowl for her to stir in. I get a can of tomatoes, can of tuna, can opener, and small spoon. I show her how the can opener works (she’s all eyes), and when I get the tomato lid off, hand her a spoon to taste them. She’s delighted, and went for a second bite. I dump the tomatoes into the pan of onions, which are now soft, and get a stool for Fancy, setting it an arm’s length off so she can’t touch anything hot. I drain the can of tuna, add that, stir. Everything’s done, waiting for the noodles to cook, so I wash a few dishes and then fish out two noodles with tongs. Rinse with cold water and hand Fancy one. Not done yet, but she devours hers. Two minutes later, we repeat the process. Ready. The bowl of pesto-garlic-anchovies goes into the tomato sauce and I stir and turn the burners off.

I drain the noodles, get two bowls, and assemble them right in front of her: pasta, sauce, and a sprinkle of sunflower seeds on top. Quick diaper change, and we snap into the high chair.

Fancy loves to see that we are eating the same thing, and we often share bites back and forth. While we ate, we noticed the different parts of what we were eating: “Oh, that’s a tomato there. Do you remember how we opened the can of tomatoes?” She’s eager to pull out distinct ingredients and offer them to me, or point to mine as I eat. I hand her a noodle, she offers me an onion on her fork.

In all, cooking together took us 35 minutes. Dinner was early, and we lingered at the table talking about it and passing pieces of it and silly sounds back and forth.

It’s critical for children to understand themselves as sharing in the serious work of a shared life – lots of research on children and self-concept and confidence emphasizes this link. Children need to know their contributions are real and important, so train them in making real contributions.

If you spend time with toddlers, I hope you give it a try: get on the floor and make some food together. You don’t need special equipment, kid knives, plastic bowls, anything. Use what you have, just don’t rush, prepare to clean more, and I pray you’re blessed with a child showing you an onion paper open-mouthed.

Our two bowls, hers after, the damage underneath: