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Cooking by children: As all parents will have noticed, from toddler ages upwards, children can be great demolishers of almost mountains of food!

Involving children in cooking

However, in the 21st century, many children are far removed from the processes involved in actually preparing food in the sense of making it. That’s why our Tuart Hill Childcare Centre may run exercises and games in food-related activities.

Food – the old days

Most families today do not lead lives even remotely resembling those of families in the earlier to middle part of the 20th century or before. Few areas though will have changed so much, on average, as that of cooking and eating food.

In many families in the past, cooking and food preparation was mainly the responsibility of the women of the family. As they tended to also be associated with younger child rearing, women and children were often in the kitchen together for much of the time preparing food. Only the wealthy could afford the early forms of convenience foods, so almost everything had to be prepared and cooked by hand.

This meant that of necessity, children at an early age were often much closer to the means of food preparation than may be the case in many present-day Australian families. They very possibly were also exposed to more ‘tasters’ in the process and would have been grateful for such, given that at the time, food was not always the available-to-excess commodity it is today.

Some child development experts believe that today’s situation is very different and not beneficial. They suggest that the perceived increases in ‘food faddiness’ found in children today, may have its origin in both the distance that exists now for children between their food and how it is produced coupled with the ever-present availability of food types they feel comfortable with. In other words, they don’t have hunger or in-depth social participation in the kitchen to encourage them to experiment and compromise.

While a childcare centre in Tuart Hill can’t become involved in cooking food at home, we can help children understand more about where their food comes from and how it’s prepared.

Play restaurant
Some children love to play ‘pretend kitchen’ and following on from that, ‘pretend restaurant’. They can have play utensils and practice serving food to their friends.

We’ll often talk about crops and the processes behind, for example, making bread. Most kids find it absolutely fascinating.

We believe it’s essential that children understand food to be part of the natural world around them that they need to respect rather than take for granted.

Food values
Of course, as with so many subjects today, food values can lead to differences of opinion. We recognise and respect that some cultures or religions may have different beliefs around certain types of foods. Where this came up in class, we will never suggest that such values are right or wrong, simply that they are something to be respected.

Animal-based foodstuffs can also be an issue, notably for children coming from vegetarian or vegan (etc.) families. Once again, we will explain and show respect for such choices.

Fun
Our view is that the eating experiences of children should, within any constraints of their family’s belief systems, be as diversified and informed as possible but also with an emphasis on health. So, we’ll sometimes talk about the possible risks of eating too many sweeties etc.

Our aim overall is to help children think of eating as fun and an area of life to explore as they grow up.

If you’d like to know more about how we discuss food and its preparation in our Childcare Centre, please don’t hesitate to call us for an appointment to come down for a discussion on this or any other subject. We look forward to seeing you!