• Making dinner with two young children
• How to cook while keeping ambitious 14 month old out of harms way?
• related page: The Dinner Blues
• See also: Dinner-time Tantrums

Making dinner with two young children

I'm looking for suggestion on ways to make dinner with two young children. I have a 1.5 y.o and a 4 y.o. My 4 y.o. will very easily stay focused on a project for 30 minutes while I prepare dinner but the 1.5 y.o. of course doesn't have that concentration ability yet. I've tried many things (art projects, eating while I'm preparing, tupperware stacking, crockpot cooking, involving her in the cooking, preparing in stages throughout the day, changing the time we eat, etc. I should probably go back and reevaluate what I have tried but thought I'd see if there were other ideas out there. Thanks dinner help

How to cook while keeping ambitious 14 month old out of harms way?

To all those folk who shared helpful hints on quick cooking -- any tips on how to keep an ambitious, 14 month old toddler who both climbs and walks well, happy, occupied, and out of harms way while one is cooking? I live alone -- dinner time is one of those times when I feel like "forget having someone to do half the work, I'd settle for someone to just PLAY with the baby and keep her occupied while I work." As it is, we end up eating a lot of take-out and canned chicken soup. At 14 months, her ability to play alone is limited to about 15 minutes, which allows me to a) put a pre-made (take-out) dinner on the table and b) later, in a separate 15 minutes, clean up (maybe). When she hasn't seen me all day long, and wants nothing more than to cuddle and play, trying to wrest THREE 15 minute chunks out of our first hour home is pretty impossible. Advice?

If the kid needs to run around, there's not much you can do, but if she is willing to sit still, you can put her in a highchair with some finger food, or some dough to play with, perhaps some of the food you are preparing. That way you can interact with her, talk to her, etc. while you are cooking. This only works with things you are pretty experienced in making, trying to follow a complicated recipe from a cookbook would probably drive you nuts at a time like this.

Another idea is to have both of you eat some finger snacks (little carrots, etc) on the way home so that you are not ravenous. Then take some time (15 minutes?) to play with your daughter, hold her and snuggle, then maybe she will last a bit longer while you try to get dinner started.

Good luck

I find that my toddler often wants to be in the kitchen with me, but will sometimes play on the floor while I cook or clean up. If you can possibly arrange your kitchen this way, put your tupperware and your pots in lower kitchen cabinets without locks, or on open shelves. Carefully lock up every thing else (even the refrigerator, if necessary) so that you won't constantly have to pull the toddler away from trouble. The tupperware will end up all over the floor and your toddler will make a terrible racket banging the pots together, but if you're lucky you'll get just long enough time free to chop your vegetables. Most other things (stirring, etc.) can be done with the toddler on your hip (as far away from the stove as possible). One other option, which I hesitate to suggest, is to see if your toddler likes videos. Many kids this age will watch Barney or Sesame Street videos, so if you can put the TV near the kitchen, I think it's not to bad to let him or her watch for 1/2 hour. Desperate times call for desperate measures.

One final option: if you ever have any time and energy left after your child goes to bed, try cooking then. Cook a triple recipe, freeze it in individual portions, then you can just put it in the microwave some evening when you're too tired to do anything else. I never try to cook anything more complicated than pasta or burritos on a weeknight before dinner -- everything else we eat is pre-cooked and frozen.

Good luck!