While I was busy making my chapatis for the day, my 3 year old son was constantly nagging me to give him some wheat dough to play with. I tried to distract him by giving him spoons and ladles to play with, but nothing really helped. Then came my neighbor’s son into the picture and seeing my son nag me for some dough, mockingly remarked,

” Ha! Ha! Only girls play with dough, it’s a girl’s thing!”

Everything paused for a moment. I stood stunned in front of the gas stove and this incident left me pondering.

Why would a 3 year old call it, ‘a girl’s thing’? Who would have told him in the first place, that it’s a girl thing? Why is it a girl’s thing at all?

Exactly! Cooking is just not a ‘girl’s thing’! It is a skill that is required for survival and has nothing to do with gender.

That brings us to the idea that we should train our kids to cook from a very tender age, even if it is cooking instant noodles or oats (in the microwave), preparing tea or their own milk shake and so on.

Since many moms are working these days and don’t themselves find time for cooking, it becomes very important to enrol our children in a cooking class where they learn the basics of cooking at least.

Here’s how a cooking class can help your child grow in life:

• Help for Survival: Cooking is a basic skill that is very much needed for our survival. If your kid ends up becoming hungry in a summer camp away from home or  has to forcibly stay at home without you for a few hours or even a couple of days, then knowing some form of cooking will surely help him to deal with his hunger. Also, when your child grows up and steps out of home for education or work, he’ll be able to cook on his own and take care of himself without being helplessly dependent on outside help.
• Multi-tasking: Teaching cooking to your child is a good way of teaching her how to multi-task. With four burners on the gas stove, she’ll have to stir one pot, lower the flame for another, deep fry in the third one and chop onions for the fourth one perhaps. Whatever dish she attempts to cook, she will learn how to be prepared to handle ten things happening around her at the same time.
• Systematic Behavior: In any given recipe, you can never skip a step or change the order of the steps of preparation. Your child, while cooking, will learn how to behave systematically by following one step after the other without rushing or forgetting any step.
• Respect for the mother /cook: Most of the kids are absolutely unaware about the effort and planning that it takes to prepare any dish. After learning how to cook, kids would definitely start respecting you more for all the efforts that you put in preparing that dum biryani or malai koftay!
• Profession: With so many cookery competitions and great chef shows doing the rounds, you never know if you are raising a budding chef in your house and are unknowingly honing her cooking skills by enrolling her into a cooking class.

Besides, there is no doubt about this fact that Attending a cooking class is much better for your child than spending hours watching TV or playing games on the iPad.