When I was raising two teenage boys, I called the tween and teen years the “Let me show you how stupid I can be time.” I learned that frontal lobes are the last part of the human child’s brain to fully develop, which finally happens sometime in their 20’s. The frontal lobes directly impact insight, judgment and impulse control.
Many parents wonder if they need to send their tweens and teen to summer camp while they’re at work. As an experienced parent, I can tell you that a teenager left unsupervised by an adult, can and will often make risky choices. For that very reason, Fit2cook4Kids summer camps hours coincide with work hours, 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM, Monday through Friday.
From an early age, children pretend to be adults. Fit2cook4Kids camps offer a unique opportunity to do that in a safe, fun and real setting with a skilled chef in charge. For 10 to 15 year-old campers, learning to prepare family meals is a perfect way to occupy summer time and a preventative for many ills including idle time, childhood obesity and parental post-work exhaustion. The kids love it and say so in a video we made entitled, “What Kids Are Saying About Fit2cook4Kids.”
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Perhaps it’s time for parents to acknowledge and encourage their child’s work in the kitchen in the form of an allowance. Would your child prepare your meals for financial compensation? I noticed that the more confident my boys became in the kitchen, the more popular they were with their friends, who gravitated to where they knew they could count on good food. Having my sons and their friends in my kitchen was a joy and something I sorely miss now that they have grown into men who have kitchens of their own.
