Consider allowing your child to create recipes or explore putting different types of foods together. Ask your child what he/she would like to make. Help foster that independence that they will need later on.
With my girls I always encouraged them to help cook, but not only did I help them to cook low protein foods, but I also allowed them to help with the higher protein versions. Now you might ask “why would you allow your child to cook foods that he/she cannot eat?” I have also heard “don’t you feel that is cruel to allow them to cook something they can never have?”
This brings me to the second part of this blog, and that is to discuss why it is important to help them learn to cook even those foods they cannot eat. This is so important because the reality is someday your child might have a spouse that he/she will need or want to cook for, or what if they have children. In the PKU community we often see very few parents with PKU having children with PKU, so this means needing to cook for their non-pku children.
One way to make cooking higher protein foods a bit easier for your child is to consider making a comparable food for them as well as the same time. So for example, if you are baking brownies, consider having your child help you make the regular brownies, but then also make low protein brownies and have them help do that too.
Many young children really love “helping” parents cook, and many times parents don’t really want to allow them to help because it is harder and often takes longer, and is often much messier (especially if you are cooking with little children), but reality is your child needs to learn. You do not want to wait until your child is a teen to start teaching them how to cook and manage their own diet. At this point they might be so dependent on you doing it that they will resist.
In the photo I have attached to this blog, is my daughter, Genavieve. She absolutely LOVES making scrambled eggs even though she has never been able to eat them. She is often so proud of herself, and loves hearing that she makes the best scrambled eggs I have ever eaten (this isn’t even a lie.....she does make the best scrambled eggs I have ever eaten). How did this happen? One day I was making scrambled eggs and she asked if she could do it with me. I showed her how, and then the next batch of scrambled eggs she asked if she could make them herself. She also loves cooking pancakes.....low protein pancakes and high protein pancakes. Genavieve started this interest in cooking meals all by herself when she was 11 yrs old. She knows how to follow a recipe, and can pretty much cook anything.....low and high protein.
I have also been allowing her to cook alongside me and learn how to modify higher protein foods so that they can fit her diet. She is becoming very good at it, and at 12 yrs old she knows the foods she can and cannot have, she knows how to measure out ingredients, and she knows how to calculate how much phe/protein/exchanges is in what she eats (we count grams of protein in our house, and she knows how to do that all by herself).
I know for some parents allowing your child to take some control over their own diet can be scary, but that is where we teach them just like all of the other things in life we have taught them how to do properly. Did you teach your child how to bathe properly? Did you teach your child how to put their shoes on properly? Then you can teach your child how to cook and count their phe/protein/exchanges as well.
As a side note: Along with this, I highly encourage you to teach your child how to make their formula young so that they know how to do that as well. I will be writing another blog about this on a future date.
About the author: Michelle Hardy currently lives in Wisconsin and is the mother to nine children (3 with PKU), and a grandmother. If you would like to contact Michelle directly you can email her at michelle.d.hardy@gmail.com
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