Putting the fun in functional

The world needs all kinds of people

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I’m not often the classic Fun Mom—instead, I view myself as Fun Facilitating or Fun Adjacent. As my former therapist used to say, the world needs all kinds of people.

For example, I’m not going to be the mom who packs all the neighborhood kids into their car to take everyone for a day at the beach, but I will help coordinate the details by text and make sure there are snacks and/or cash. I also have never been fun in terms of conjuring imaginary games or engaging in pretend play on the floor. Early on as a parent, I tried, but I got so freaking bored. I admire parents and caregivers who are great at this because I am terrible at it!

And so, one thing I have worked on leaning into as a parent is the idea that fun can take different forms. And that one of my superpowers is putting the fun in functional.

One of those forms of fun happens in the kitchen, which is my functional playground. I like to cook, and I love to bake so having an activity with my kids that is fun (creativity!) and functional (life skills development, food on the table, relationship building! ) is a mega win. 

As soon as my kids began to develop verbal skills, instead of playing on the floor with toys we played in the kitchen. When they were toddlers, I measured out dry ingredients and they delighted in dumping things into a bowl. As their motor control improved they handled wet ingredients in glass measuring cups, stirred dry and wet ingredients together, and shaped cookie balls. When they learned to read, I taught them how to decipher a recipe and look up items in the index. Along the way we talk about various essentials and nuances in cooking and baking; about heat and fire safety, not overmixing batter, how to check for doneness in baked goods, the differences between baking soda and baking powder, knife safety skills, how kitchen scales—and recipes that convey measurements in weight—can save you on dirty dish volume, liquid versus dry good measurements, how to hack buttermilk.

We’re in the last couple of weeks of summer and these weeks are rather unscheduled. Early last week Violet (12 years old) decided to make molasses ginger cookies and handled the entire process start to finish, including cleaning up all the dishes. It doesn’t matter how many hundreds (thousands?) of cookies have been baked in this house; there’s still such delight when someone walks in and says, “I SMELL COOKIES!”

A couple of days later my desire to do something fun with Violet intersected perfectly with a birthday cake I wanted to make for my father-in-law. My sister Jenn gifted Violet a Bake from Scratch magazine subscription for her birthday this year and we had already flagged the carrot cake recipe given that it was a nut-free version. The kitchen was a disaster to begin with, so while I did the preliminary work of cleaning out the sink, clearing the counters, and prepping the cake pans with butter, parchment, and flour—my least favorite job, but an essential step in cake baking—Violet and I chatted while she measured out all of the cake ingredients, mixed the batter, poured the batter into the two prepped pans, put the pans in the oven, put away the ingredients, and cleaned up the workspace.

Like a freaking baking boss.

Here’s the finished product. Though I do love the exacting nature of piping work, I also love finishing a cake with a rustic icing style. The cake was so well received that I made another mini 6-inch one at home since we had extra frosting! Also notable, the recipe is so good that I am tossing all of my other carrot cake recipes in my binder since this will be my new go-to.

A lot of people ask me how I have gotten my kids functional in the kitchen. Here is my key advice:

1. Just start. As I mentioned above, as soon as your kids are verbal, you can get rolling, but don’t fret if your kids are older and aren’t savvy in the kitchen. I didn’t learn to cook until I graduated from college because my mom could not deal with other cooks in her small kitchen. Any time is a great time to learn!

2. Be mindful of skill level. Nothing sucks the fun out of a food project like techniques and steps that are way too difficult and make things miserable. Start with some easy wins and make choices based on what looks fun and doable and yummy. Level up if/when you want to and when there is no pressure! Even with all of the experience my kids and I have, there have been so many times when we have seen something on the Great British Baking Show and looked it up and been like, “yeah, hard no…too hard to be fun!”

3. Remember that learning to cook/bake isn’t just a domestic skill. There are so many benefits to getting in the kitchen with your kids; among them, the development of life skills, opportunities to slide in science and math lessons, and togetherness time. It’s the best!

4. Let go of perfection. I don’t think I am overstating things when I say that cooking and baking with my kids has helped me be a better parent in general. I used to be an annoying perfectionist about kitchen shit and when I am on my own, I still want to make things to look perfect and beautiful. But with my kids, I want them to explore and be creative while learning the basics. Think about the actual vs. perfectionist lessons you want to teach. For example, back when they were first learning how to shape cookie dough balls, we talked about how different sized cookies are totally fine—because yay, creative expression—but that if you are making cookie balls (vs. something like cut out sugar cookies) different sized dough balls mean that small cookies will be done before big cookies and might burn. Meaning, the message was not that a set of imperfectly shaped cookies is a bad set of cookies.

5. Accept the mess. A lot of parents tell me they don’t want their kids in the kitchen because it will be messy. It will be messy. On the other hand, in order to teach kids to clean up their messes, they need a mess to begin with. You may need to educate about things like how greasy pans need more attention but just stay with it. Also, see my next point.

6. Create a cleanup rule. In order to contend with a potential relentless stream of baked goods, early on we established a rule that if the kids made treats just for fun they needed to clean up all the dishes, and if they made a family meal I would do all the dishes. It means that now they only tackle a baking project if they feel ready to do the whole thing start to finish.

7. Have fun sharing! We have always oriented towards a spirit of giving, whether that is sharing baked treats with friends and neighbors or making things for a school bake sale. I love it when people ask us to bring certain baked goods to an event!

I hope these tips are helpful. And if you’re not a traditional Fun Mom, don’t sweat it. Being a Functional Mom is great too. The world needs all kinds of people.