I remember reading somewhere that there was no reason a 5-year-old shouldn’t be able to make their own peanut butter and jelly sandwich. It followed along with Montessori teaching principles and really made me pay attention to what I have Eli do and not do, and whether I make that decision out of safety or make it out of convenience. It is extremely helpful and convenient for a five-year-old to make their own sandwich (and one for me too please!), but teaching them to do so is messy, time-consuming and frustrating. They destroy the kitchen, there is jelly on the floor and peanut butter on the counter. The bread is dry and crusty from being left open and the refrigerator door hangs open. If you’re a perfectionist, they also don’t have the ratio of peanut to jelly quite right and put the lid just slightly askew, but most definitely wrong. Inviting our kids into the kitchen with us is inviting a sticky tornado in. It is also inviting freedom and a competent child into our homes that grows up to be a self sufficient adult. Catch 22.

I don’t know when I started doing things in the kitchen with my mom, but my earliest memories of being the helper were when I was 7 and I got a children’s cookbook for Christmas. By 8, I would make our family’s chocolate chip cookies by hand and without the recipe because I had it memorized. When I got to pick dinner, I also had to help make it and would always choose to have shake and bake chicken, canned green beans and mashed potatoes. I was in charge of shaking the chicken and peeling the potatoes. These tasks led me to be a ridiculous mess in the kitchen using every bowl possible, but I was also always willing to help or make dinner or try out a new recipe and teach my siblings how to make cookies. It led to an adult that cooks for her family and to owning a bakery for 4 years.

Part of the what kept me from having Eli in the kitchen is that I didn’t have the right tools for him. I didn’t have the child-size apron, the kid size whisk, the child safety knife, or one of those super handy kitchen helper/kid corral towers. I had a desire for cookies and no child care. A chair was pulled up the counter, hands were washed, flour was dumped into a bowl and we began. We talked about what was being put in the bowl. How many cups were needed. What shape to form the cookies into. How the dough tasted. We discussed hot ovens and having to be patient to wait for cookies to be done. Sharing our cookies with other people and not eating them all at once. I just invited him to do what I was doing and then talked him through it. Also – it burned an hour of sahm time!

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It has become our routine to be in the kitchen together. One of the hardest parenting struggles I have with staying home is that I’m in charge of his education. I don’t know how to teach anything except by doing and getting him in the kitchen, where I spend a lot of time anyway, is a prime example of that concept. He is the microwave button pusher, the pot stirrer and the counter top wiper. He pushes the wrong button,  spills everything with the velocity at which he stirs and soaks the floor, but he is learning and in doing so I am as well. Having him tag along in the kitchen has had me have him tag along in other household tasks. I’m confident in my kitchen skills and it gave me the confidence to have him help me mop and switch the laundry. Put away toys and wash windows. It’s taught me to look at him as just wanting so badly to help and needy to be taught how to do so.

What area of your “grown up” life are you inviting your little one into? Any under 5-year-old sandwich makers out there?