Connecting With Our Children in the Kitchen

Our kitchen was two steps down from the rest of the house. You took two steps down into the kitchen when you walked through the living and dining rooms. My favorite place to sit was on those steps.

When I was a little girl, I sat on those steps and watched my mother working in the kitchen. She always had flour on the front of her dress and around her beautiful auburn hairline, where she wiped her forehead with the back of her hands.

Some mornings I sat on the stool beside the butter churn with a wood plunger in both hands. I pushed the rotating paddle up and down frantically until my arms felt like they would fall off my shoulders.

She would tell me to stop churning so fast. “You must get a steady rhythm going,” she’d say. Then she would stop what she was doing and take the wood stick that went through the round hole of the lid from my hands and move it up and down with a little twist in a methodical motion for a few minutes. Then, she handed it back to me after a while, covered my hands with hers, and helped me get a rhythm going.

I don’t think I ever churned long enough to make butter by myself, but I marveled at the creamy substance floating on top of the cream when she took the lid off.

She dipped the butter out of the churn with a wood spoon, washed it with cold water, added a  dash of salt, filled the butter molds, and placed it in the refrigerator to become firm.

I can still feel the warmth of that moment when she spread the butter on a hot piece of bread and handed it to me. I can’t tell you how good it was.

Our best memories and most significant lessons are learned in the kitchen.

My children hung out in the kitchen when they were little too. Their favorite activity was standing on a chair at the kitchen sink filled with suds while cooking.

Later, when they got big enough to wash the dishes, set the table, and butter the rolls, they would talk to me about their day and their friends while we worked together in the evenings after school. I am sure they shared more with me during those moments than any other time when I asked them questions.

Kitchens are warm and inviting, where good memories, good food, and important decisions are often made. The usual distractions, such as television, cell phones, and computers, do not come between parents and their children, couples, or friends spending time with each other.

One of the girls where I work told me that time in the kitchen is how she and her husband bond with each other. “He is a policeman,” she said. “He works different shifts, and we like to cook together in the kitchen when he is home. We talk, and it keeps us close.”

If something happened in the living room and my husband or I said, “Could I see you in the kitchen,” our children always knew something important needed to be discussed.

I have seen the family’s best snapshots and most creative artwork displayed proudly on their refrigerator in almost every home I have visited. The kitchen is the heart of the house for most families. It is also a place where examples can be set for our children.

Our middle son didn’t like helping with the dishes in high school and balked at having to take his turn. Finally, one day when I insisted, he said doing dishes was a woman’s work. “You never see dad doing the dishes,” he complained so his dad could hear him.

My husband was quick on his feet as he placed a towel around his waist and said, “Well, maybe it’s time I start helping with the dishes, too.” I didn’t hear that many complaints about doing the dishes after that.

Our kitchen was where our children and our grandchildren learned to be thankful when we taught them to say the blessing and the place they had fun when we played board games around the table.

It’s nice to see our granddaughter sitting on a stool when my daughter works in the kitchen. Even when she was just a toddler, her mom gave her something to do, and they talked, laughed, and sang together while she worked.

I am sure it would be easier to send her out of the kitchen sometimes, so she could get the work done quicker, but I believe my mother was right when she said we need to slow down and develop a little rhythm. Memories are made that way.