When did you cook together with your family last time? Do you think cooking together can make your family bonding better? Spending a great time with your family is a blessing in this busy world. For some people, cooking at home is nothing but a big mess. Also, they think why to spend a few hours in the kitchen when they can order a meal from outside in their tiring routine.
We understand you’re spending a lot of time in your office, traffic, school, and college; you barely have time to sit with your family, let alone do cooking together.
There are more than 7000 languages in the world, and the only language that brings you, your family, and friends together is food. Now you might be thinking, how and why cooking can be a great family bonding experience and what benefits one should expect. Let’s get to that.
7 Benefits of Cooking Together With Your Family
Cooking can improve your relationship with your family because it’s not just a house chore; it’s a fun activity that can bring you all together, and you can create great memories. Also, it is the best way to teach your children about family bonding.
1. Opportunity to Create Positive Memories
We are always busy with our phones and prefer playing games and watching Netflix over participating in healthy activities. Needless to say, set a cooking schedule with your family and spend some quality weekly time with them. This way, you can also learn and enjoy some essential cooking skills.
Sitting and eating together with your friends and family can create lifetime remembering memories. It is not just about food; sometimes, the smell of the food can also create a good memory. Who would not love to have memories of laughter, teamwork, feelings, and stories? Of course! We all love it.
Cooking can help you learn more about your family and know how to spend quality time together while waiting for something delicious. This way, you don’t have to waste your time doing unnecessary activities that lead to nothing.
2. Nurturing For Your Children
Your kids can learn many skills through cooking, and for sure, cooking can be a great family bonding experience for you and your kids. As Guy Fieri said, “Cooking with kids is not just about ingredients, recipes, and cooking. It’s about harnessing imagination, empowerment, and creativity.”
Kids learn more when they see what their parents and other people around them are doing. Try to involve your children in cooking; it will enhance creativity, curiosity, cultural awareness, teamwork, acceptance, and strong relationship bonding. Apart from these basic lifesaving skills, they will also learn to develop measuring and mathematical skills. You can learn more ways to improve your relationship with your children other than cooking.
3. Excellent Activity for Small Children
Cooking is a great developmental activity for small children – thanks to all the communicating, sharing, planning, problem-solving, etc., that are important parts of cooking. The kids will enjoy not only the cooking part but also the cleaning one; therefore, make sure to teach those kitchen nook nibblers to clean up with you.
“I think togetherness is a very important ingredient to family life.” – Barbara Bush
4. Cooking Builds Teamwork
Cooking with your family can teach you teamwork. Many of us don’t want to share work with anyone and lose the opportunity to build a fundamental skill of networking and teambuilding. It does not only help you create a relationship at your home but also in the office.
Therefore cooking is an excellent way to make your relationship strong and help you learn acceptance, sharing, caring, and trust.
5. Your Kids Can Easily Eat Healthy Foods
Do you wish that your kids eat healthy foods without making faces? Cooking with family can provide an excellent opportunity. According to several studies, children who learn to eat healthy as kids continue to eat healthy as adults.
When cooking with your kids, you can snack on raw, sliced carrots, capsicums, or other veggies and fruits – your kids will also follow you and do what you do.
Cooking (from scratch) is the single most important thing we could do as a family to improve our health and general well-being. – Michael Pollan
6. Cooking Encourages Curiosity
Cooking together encourages curiosity because it will naturally make you curious when trying a new recipe. There are a lot of recipes from different regions of the world, and when you decide to do an adventure, you choose a recipe that you have never tried before.
You definitely need help to make your new dish delicious. Your siblings, parents, and friends can make it a memorable and fun-loving activity. And the best part is that you won’t even know whether this is going to be a successful experiment or an absolute disaster.
7. Leads to Better Communication
Many of us are just spending our lives, not living it with joy. Wake up early, go to work, spend all day out of home, and then come back to sleep – we are living our life in a loop. But, one thing that can make it better is sitting and having good communication with your family. Cook them something, and they will love this gesture.
If you’re cooking for the first time, you need someone to guide you about the ingredients, measuring, baking time, heat, or even cooking utensils. So, you have to communicate with your family to help you with the recipe.
8. Unifies the Family
With the kitchen as the setting, it gets easier for everyone to be together and help each other. So, the next time you are planning on making a meal, try to involve your kids and spouse. This way, instead of everyone doing their own thing while one person prepares a meal, everyone can enjoy some quality time together.
Cooking is not about being the best or most perfect cook, but rather it is about sharing the table with family and friends. – Skye Gyngell
9. Cooking Together Bridges Culture
We live in a diverse world; when people come from another corner of the world, they come with their culture, traditions, and values. You might have people in your neighborhood from different countries. Sharing and exchanging foods with each other is an excellent social activity; you can invite them to your place and make a good bonding with them while enjoying food.
Share your traditional recipes with them and ask them for their best recipe. Try it at home and send your first diverse cultural meal with them. Inviting people from different cultures will reduce your anxiety; you will have an opportunity to know people from different cultures, which is the beauty of diversity.
Conclusion
Cooking food doesn’t just fill our bellies but also teaches us important things, such as better organization, time management, sharing, creating memories, creating a solid relationship, bonding with family, and socializing.
If you are planning on a family get-together or a party, we highly recommend that you also arrange some family cooking activities so that your loved ones can participate and bond with each other. Also, throw in a slush machine at your party and see how excited everyone will be.