Cooking: Most important life skill

You may not agree, but I believe one of the most important life skills — maybe THE most important — is cooking.

Why? Because we all have to eat. Sure, you could go out to eat all the time but that's a huge waste of money and is not the healthiest way to survive. The same goes for microwavable frozen foods.

Also, cooking helps you relax and wind down after a long day. (The stress of holiday meals is not due to the cooking itself.) With proper nutrition knowledge, those who cook for themselves eat healthier, tastier meals (or better yet, tastier healthy meals — many of those frozen "healthy meals" are horrible).

Not so obvious benefits
Knowing how to cook — how to work with different foods, flavors, spices and cooking styles — opens up a world of options when it comes time to eat. It is fun to experiment with food AND (my favorite part) kids gain a healthy dose of real-world math and science when they are learning.

This kind of experimentation also helps open up new creative channels for your children (whom I'm assuming are already very creative as it is). It allows them to build on the creativity they already possess and helps them develop and fine tune their problem-solving skills. Many problems arise in the world of cooking, and considering the properties of various foods, flavors and spices helps you and your children to find solutions (i.e., if food is too sweet you add lemon not salt). Finding substitutions for certain ingredients, working with new flavors, or trying new cooking methods to liven up old recipes are all ways to learn and explore with cooking.

And, hey, your children may even find that cooking is a fitting career choice for them.

Let's start cooking!
There's no definitive way to determine when you should let the kids into the kitchen. You know your children better than anyone else so you will know when they are ready for different tasks in the kitchen. I let my son help me decorate pizza when he was three. I sat him at the table with bowls of various toppings. He picked them up and placed them on the pizza. You can let very young children help with tossing a salad or adding ingredients to a mixing bowl (take precautions with moving parts if you are using an electric mixer). When I was young, I used to love snapping beans and shucking corn. I can't imagine I got all the hairs off the corn, but I'm sure my mom took care of that when she took over.

As they get older, children can be trusted with increasingly difficult tasks such as grating cheese, measuring ingredients and hand mixing. Soon they will become a trusted cooking partner in the kitchen with you and you will be having fun together.

What if I can't cook?
That's exactly what I was thinking when I started out. I knew how to scramble an egg real good and knew how to boil water (lots 'o pasta possibilities).

But the truth is, I knew a lot more than I realized. I just needed to get more creative and learn more recipes. The home economics class I took in high school taught me how to follow a recipe. We learned mixing methods and other basics. We weren't really encouraged to experiment. We didn't learn what flavors went really well with each other. We didn't explore various possibilities. We weren't given the opportunity to try something different. In essence, we were playing it safe. But knowing the basics is a very good starting point, at least.

After watching A LOT of Food Network shows, I've learned that it's OK to try something new and different. It may bomb and be horrible, but it also may be spectacular. No matter what, it's a learning experience that you and your children will enjoy (even if it does bomb you can always laugh about it later).

Besides watching Food Network shows, there are plenty of free cooking podcasts, Internet sites with loads of cooking tips and recipes, and even a few of Nintendo DS games that teach cooking to adults and children:
Personal Trainer: Cooking
Happy Cooking
My Healthy Cooking Coach

If you run across cooking terms or techniques you don't know, it's easy enough to look them up and even find videos for them that you and your children can watch together.

As long as your taste buds are willing, there's nothing that can keep you from learning and teaching cooking.

Explore, experiment and have fun
So, what are you waiting for? Get in the kitchen and cook up some magic! One of the biggest benefits to having your kids in the kitchen (that I only hinted at before) is spending some quality time together. Yes, cooking is an important life skill for eating, but it's also wonderful bonding time. What could be better than that?

Looking for online help?
A website called startcooking.com has many tips, videos and beginner help that you and your children will enjoy. You can subscribe to their videos for free and have a steady stream of cooking basics sent to you.

Getting motivated

On the weekends I am so excited and filled with ambition to write. I have lots of story ideas I want to work on. I love doing the research. I love what I learn about each topic I'm writing about. I just have a love of learning anyway. I love to share what I learn, to spread information, to teach and help others. I just love it.

Monday mornings I wake up to the sound of the alarm clock knowing I have to go to my real job (to support my writing habit). I really, really don't want to move. The cat doesn't want me to move and nature doesn't want me to move. OK, I don't know about nature, but the cat definitely doesn't want me to move and I'm happy to oblige her.

But, of course, I need to. I need to go to my regular job in order to pay the bills (until this writing thing starts supporting me). My only motivation is that sense of responsibility.

I apologize to the cat for disturbing her and I get out of bed.

Getting kids motivated
We all face this challenge of having to motivate ourselves to do something we don't really want to do, whether it's going to a job that seems to be stealing our free time to taking out the garbage or doing dishes. We somehow convince ourselves it must be done and even if it's unpleasant, we do it.

Our kids face this challenge too. They have to get their schoolwork and chores done. But we, the parents, are the ones stuck with providing the motivational tactics to try to get them to get the work done.

A change of thought
We have a lot of options to motivate our kids to get their work done. We can try to instill them with that sense of responsibility like we do to ourselves. We can motivate them with allowance or other incentives, much like we do for ourselves.

But what if we started thinking differently about how to get motivated? A sense of responsibility or incentive doesn't make the tasks we need to get done seem any better. They are still unpleasant tasks. But what if we changed our attitudes about them? What if we changed the tasks themselves so they are more fun?

On a positive note
To make a task seem less unpleasant, the first thing to do is consider all the positive things about it and stop letting the negatives crowd them out.

If you want your child to take schoolwork more seriously, take the time to brainstorm with your child the good things he or she will be able to take away from it. Let him or her imagine a job at Disneyland, or being able to fly through space, or solving the mysteries of the universe.

Even if the ideas your child comes up with seem unattainable, go with it. You never know what will happen if you let your child imagine the seemingly impossible. Where would we be right now if Albert Einstein's mother told him to get his head out of the clouds? All of the advances in science and technology are due to dreamers and those who dared to imagine the seemingly impossible.

You can use this positivity tactic with the household chores too, but sometimes a little more imagination is needed.

Make chores or other jobs fun
Sometimes, considering the positives or coming up with distant goals isn't enough when it comes right down to completing a task. Household chores can seem downright boring, and knowing that you'll have clean dishes to eat off of later doesn't really help when they are all sticky and sitting in a tub of dirty water now. This is where that great imagination our kids have comes in handy.

There are lots of possibilities when it comes to making chores fun if you really put your mind to it. You can have your child pretend he's SpongeBob (who loves his job) and have him or her sing while working. You can pretend your are assembly-line robots and move in jerky robot-like motions to pick clothes or dishes up and move them into their proper locations. You can play the sport of curling while sweeping or mopping. You can race each other to get windows clean.

The best way to make chores fun is to do them together. Allow your child to come up with the games after discussing a few ideas. When it is your child's ideas, he or she is more likely to cooperate.

Coming up with a playful way to get chores done helps make the time go faster and tasks get done before you know it. However, some tasks do take a long time and may seem overwhelming when you consider all that must be done in order to complete it. That's when you need to mix things up a bit.

Break big jobs up into smaller, easier to reach goals
Sometimes all you need to get motivated to do something is to know there's not much to do. So, when a task seems overwhelming or like it will take a long time to accomplish, we tend to procrastinate.

In order to get out of this rut and get a big job done, we need to break it up into smaller jobs. As you and your kids accomplish each smaller task, you'll be more motivated to move on to the next. You don't always have to do them in a specific order and you can always take snack breaks or take a stroll or whatever to keep from getting burned out on work.

Before you know it, the whole big job will be done and you and your kids can celebrate. Maybe that celebration will be an incentive to motivate your family to get to work.

A financial education: An important life skill

I haven't been writing as often as I normally do because we've been spring cleaning for the past couple of weeks. (Despite the snowstorm we had last week, it is still officially spring).

This is one of many life skills I think parents don't often think about as a necessary part of their children's education. However, when we release our children out into the wild, they need to know how to cook and clean and take care of themselves at home as well as in college or the workplace.

If your child has chores that allow him or her to help around the house, then you are off to a great start. Most kids have to help with the laundry and dishes. These tedious tasks are ones we must all face and are essential to living an independent life outside of the protection of our parents' homes.

Getting paid for work

Usually the discussion of chores with my son leads to a discussion of getting paid for them. Every time my son comes to me asking for a raise in allowance, I remind him that I had to work for my money when I was a child and I still have to work for the amount I get now. He has often brought up that I make more than him and I have always responded with a list of the work I do (at work and at home) and a list of the work he does. I tell him what minimum wage is and that if we were to calculate the time he actually spends on working, he'd be making less than he is now. That usually ends the conversation and work continues (despite some grumpiness). Sometimes we tack on more chores for more money and work continues (despite some grumpiness).

I thought I was doing a pretty good job explaining how finances work in the real world, but I was enlightened yesterday when I decided to educate him rather than clean. Most of the cleaning and donating has been done anyway and we are back on our regular cleaning schedule.

Beginning a financial education

So, I had decided to teach him about money, budgeting and credit cards (and the way they can ruin your life if not handled properly). It is part of what I consider an education of life skills. He is almost 12 and I believe I need to start teaching him finances now. I figure the earlier you start, the more it will sink in.

I think it is essential for kids to know how to manage their money. I never really learned finances in school (see my previous posts Faith in home-schooling reassured and Tax time a taxing time for more on my thoughts about the lack of financial education in public schools). They taught me how to write checks and we moved on.

My goal: Teach savings

My goal was to instill the idea of saving extra money you have left over at the end of each month rather than thinking it is extra and just spending it. I wanted to remind him that emergencies come up (like having to take the dog to the vet) and saving that extra money will help in the long run.

So, I started with an explanation of income, fixed expenses and variable expenses. I used my own budget as an example. (I teach him using multi-sensory methods because he's dyslexic. It helps him to have visuals along with the verbal lecture I give. I also had him view some BrainPOP videos on finances the day before to help explain certain topics before I started with my own discussion on it.)

I explained my logic of figuring how much I spend each month (because some months have 4 weeks and some have 5, I was also teaching averages). I also told him about extra expenses that may come up from time to time but not every month (like the dentist and doctor appointments) and how I plan for those (by putting money into a savings account). I also explained some of the emergencies I have had (usually the car or pets) and how the extra money I have at the end of the month has helped because I put it into a savings account. Notice, I emphasized the savings account a lot. Repetition is a good way to teach.

Don't be afraid to discuss credit cards

The hardest part for me was showing him how much I pay to credit card companies each month for overspending and not sticking with my budget in the past. I told him how many years it has been since I've used these credit cards and that I'll be paying them for many more years to come. At this point we discussed needs and wants (with emphasis on how saving his allowance can help him buy bigger and better Lego items or video games).

By the time we were done, he got to see how much I earn as well as how I spend the money. I had hoped that he got a pretty good understanding of proper management of money (and what happens when you don't manage it properly) and, of course, of the importance of saving money.

What did you learn?

Then I asked the all-important question: "What did you learn?" His answer just blew me away (and not only because it showed he was actually listening).

He said, "I didn't realize how much responsibility it is to have money."

I think my mouth actually hung open for a bit. I had never really thought of money and finances in such a way, but it's so very true and I'm so glad he voiced it.

A huge responsibility

Money really is a lot of responsibility. We spend most of our lives trying to deal with it, manage it, hang onto it, and not let others steal it away from us. It's not just about greed because we all need money to have a place to live, have food to eat, clothes to wear and more.

While it wasn't my goal for him to come away with this revelation for his first major financial lesson, I'm so glad that is what he learned. It is definitely more important for him to realize that money is a huge responsibility.

I still have one lingering fear from this lesson, however. Now that he's seen how much I earn, I only have to wonder how our next conversation about a raise in his allowance will go. I guess if he's willing to work more, I'll be willing to pay more. Although, I may wait awhile to discuss the "cost of living" raise many of us get. He's so smart, he'll find a logical reason for me to pay him that.