Lenona wrote:
> (Offhand, I didn't see this article in this group.)
>
> http://www.slate.com/articles/life/f....single.htm l
>
> First 2/5 or so:
>
> By Nicholas Day - Posted Thursday, March 1, 2012, at 8:30 AM ET
>
> If this article ends abruptly, it is because the child welfare
> authorities are at the door: A preschooler in our house is chopping
> carrots.
>
> A few weeks ago in the New York Times, a mother wrote about how her
> sons, ages 10 and 14, each cook dinner one night a week. It was a
> lovely story, but instead of reading it and thinking, OK—only seven
> more years, I thought, I can do better than that.
>
> My son may be only 3, and barely 3, but he already wants to cook
> dinner. There’s a surprising amount he can accomplish in the kitchen:
> wash vegetables, destem mushrooms, crack eggs, knead dough, consume
> enormous quantities of said dough. But he wants to do more. This is
> logical: The kitchen is where we spend the most time, and like any
> child, he can sense what his parents are excited about. He wants to
> cook because we care about cooking. I want him to cook for the same
> reason. I’m not pushing him; he’s pushing himself.
>
> I’m not talking about the saffron-foaming, Iron Chef sort of kids’
> cooking. When I need help in the kitchen, it is rarely because the
> saffron needs foaming. I’m talking about the actual work of getting
> dinner on the table.
>
> You are cringing. I can see you cringing from here. You are thinking:
> This is a very, very bad idea.
>
> But wait: I can cite a famous dead academic! The great, tubercular
> Soviet psychologist Lev Vygotsky proposed the concept of “a zone of
> proximal development,” for the work a child is not quite able to do on
> his own. With the guidance of someone more skilled, though, he soon
> can. With the exception of the oven, and a lot of the stove, much of
> cooking amounts to a zone of proximal development, even for a
> preschooler.
>
> What’s surprising, or at least surprising to some of us, is how few
> people have treated it this way. Advice about what children can do in
> the kitchen usually devolves into advice about what they can’t do. It
> answers only questions that no parent would ask: “According to the
> University of Illinois, deep fryers are highly dangerous and children
> should not be in the kitchen when deep fryers are in use.”
>
> Almost no one has a good answer to the question of when children can
> make a real contribution in the kitchen—the actual work of getting
> dinner on the table. Instead, cookbooks for children seem to treat the
> eighth birthday as endowing some sort of mystical kitchen
> capabilities. But.......
>
> (snip)
>
>
> Lenona.

My daughter started helping out ni the kitchen at about 18 months. She
could wash things, stir things, sprinkle grated cheese, help assemble
lasagna, etc.

She quickly lost interest in cooking though. Just wasn't her thing.

We moved back to WA when she was 6. We had apple and pear trees and things
that needed canning. She wanted to help with the canning. It took her a
long time to peel a pear and it was tough for her to operated the apple
peeler at that age. But by age 8 she insisted on doing not only all of the
peeling but the cutting as well. I did have to recut a few of the pears
because they weren't quite right but she did most all of it.

Then again she quickly lost interest in cooking.

She will be 14 in July. She can cook some things now. I believe it is
important for her to know how to cook. She doesn't want to know. She can
make a lot of things in the microwave which in this day and age is I guess
about all one needs to know. I know plenty of people who never venture into
cooking beyond that. She can cook a steak. She can read directions which
is really the most important part of cooking I suppose. So she could cook
if she had to.