Benefits of Cooking Together as a Family

In a world dominated by distractions and responsibilities, it's challenging to create space for “family time.” Shared family experiences are proven to increase family bonds and promote positive behavior in children. By cooking with your kids, you have the opportunity to teach them safety, problem-solving skills, and the value of collaboration.

Justin Gibson of delecTable // vomFass and Sterling Lawyers’ own Toby Kinsler discuss the importance of family time. delecTable in Madison, Wisconsin, has cooking classes for kids. The lessons learned in these classes can be replicated at home. Cook together with your children, “sharing and making it fun,” Justin advises as a way to get kids involved. “Not making it, you need to do this.” But make it positive, “Let's share in this together. Let's create something together. That shared connection of creating something together is important.”

You will never look back on life and think, “I spent too much time with my kids.” Author Unknown

The Benefits of Cooking with Children

In her article, 5 Great Reasons to Cook with Your Kids, Dr. Nimali Fernando suggests that you should make cooking a part of your family culture (5 Great Reasons to Cook with Your Kids). She says that cooking helps you engage your children's senses and grow smart children through the lessons taught while cooking.

It's essential to take time every day to push out the distractions and engage in a family activity. In addressing the importance of shared family experiences, in an article for the Child Development Institute, Dr. Gail Fernandez suggests that family time isn't ferrying your children from event to event, school to homework, to bed (Importance of Family Time…). She defines “interactive time” as time “spent with both child and parent fully engaged in an activity together.”

Dr. Fernandez lists the benefits of this type of quality interactive time:

The child will feel valued and loved.
The child will have a chance to mold good behavior from the parent.
The parents will learn about their child. What are their strengths and weaknesses?
The child has a chance for input. What do they think? How do they feel?
The parent and child develop a stronger bond.

The Study about a Safe and Supportive Family

A study in Australia, defined families into three groups as they determined that a safe and supportive family environment held critical components to the outcome of children (Key Components and Links to Child Outcomes). One group was cohesive, and this group had above-average levels of parent-child shared activities. The disengaged group exhibiting lower than average shared activities also had higher than average levels of hostile parenting and parental relationship conflict. The final group, enmeshed, only showed average levels of parental warmth, but higher levels of disagreement between the parents.

This study found that “Family environments were very strongly associated with children's social and emotional wellbeing. That is: children in families indicating disengagement had significantly lower levels of prosocial behavior and higher levels of problem behavior; children in families indicating enmeshment had significantly lower levels of prosocial behavior and higher levels of problem behavior.”

What Is vomFass and delecTable

vomFass is German for “from the barrel.” Families can share in the tastings of these small-batch creations handcrafted from worldwide ingredients. Justin and his father, David, brought vomFass to the U.S. and then added delecTable, a kitchen-bar and event space within their Madison vomFass location. Check out their website for events and cooking classes:

DelecTable
Located in: VOM FASS University Ave.
3248 University Ave
Madison, WI 53705
(608) 204-0300
https://delectablexp.com/

At Sterling, we believe the final foundational piece to a strong family is time together. When we speak of time, this is not just time around each other, but more importantly, time free from external distractions. We believe spending time together engaging in conversation in settings such as family dinners at home, playing old fashioned board/card games or settings such as “around the campfire” digitally free and disconnected from the outside world are critical to building a solid foundation.

Flourishing Families is a Sterling Series aimed at highlighting organizations in our community that support and build up strong families.