Teaching Kids Responsiblity: Joel Makes Dinner

 joel and jordan

our dining room, where we have dinner AND homeschool sometimes

Lately Sam has been running All. Day. Long. Since I hold him when he naps, I have to be creative when I plan for dinner. Sometimes it’s something I can make in the morning or at lunchtime and get out of the way. But sometimes it’s something that has to be made later.

So the other night Sam decided to crash around 5 p.m. I had laid out all the dinner stuff on the counter and had even put some brats on a cookie sheet with BBQ sauce on them in the oven. No, I didn’t put the kids in the oven; this isn’t Hansel and Gretel (they were bratwursts, as I’m sure you can figure out). As it got closer to time for Aron to get home I decided instead of throwing Sam over my shoulder to make dinner I would give Joel a little challenge.

I wrote up instructions for the 3 parts of dinner and let him go to town. He had to turn on the oven and set it to a certain temperature. He had to boil some water and cook frozen peas. He had to boil water and margarine and make stuffing. There was measuring involved and checking things.

He did so great! Everything was awesome, and he was proud of himself for doing it. The other kids asked who made dinner since Mommy was on the couch holding the baby, and Joel was able to say that HE DID IT!

Sometimes it’s hard for us parents to give up control over things like cooking or cleaning, but our kids WANT to help out. Besides, how else will they learn how to be on their own if we do everything for them? I’m hoping to raise my kids like my husband was raised … the guy could take care of himself quite well when I met him. In fact, he can cook better than I can and can even sew some.

Now. I gotta go because Eva has decided to wake up at 6:15 for some reason.