Yesterday was Mother’s Day and I must confess to being totally spoiled by my children. I KNOW this site is all about teenagers – but I just had to share this story…

The most amazing thing happened when my nine year old declared that he was cooking dinner – that was his project and he wanted no one to help him. We were duly summoned to the table at about 6pm – which was beautifully set with candles, placemats, cutlery, plates and  glasses. William appeared with a menu he had made on the computer and we were instructed to place our orders. It was at that point we realised he had absolutely NO food ready – he stood there with his little notebook, grin from ear to ear, explaining what we were to have. Sensing that he had nothing done we tried to make it easy for him and order the same thing – this was not going to happen, “you don’t do that in a restaurant why would you do that here?’ he was very quick to point out. So two of us chose his ‘wok special’ and two chose ‘oven roasted chips with dips’. After our orders were taken he instructed us to ‘go away’ and he would call us when dinner was ready to be served. When we came back 45 minutes later quite a few things really hit me – William has never ‘learnt’ to cook, I have never consciously said ‘ you need to learn this’  but he certainly has picked up a lot from watching – he very capably stir-fried vegetables, cooked noodles and tossed them all together , and sliced fresh potatoes into  oven chips which he sprayed with oil and sprinkled with a Tuscan seasoning. They were baked until golden and served with slices of apple and a selection of dipping sauces. (Strange combination but it worked!) The other thing that just amazed me was how proud he was and what a great sense of achievement he felt from being able to contribute and do something for the family.  The meal was nothing to with food – it was all about a little boy doing something for his family and the sense of occasion – and being his proud mother I couldn’t have hoped for more!

Tags: family

This entry was posted on Monday, May 10th, 2010 at 5:29 pm and is filed under Parenting tips. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.