Before she was old enough to deftly feed herself—let alone prepare food—my daughter received a toy kitchen set from some dear friends for Christmas. The set was a self-contained, brightly colored, faux sink-cabinet that unfolded into a four-burner cooktop, equipped with utensils, pots and pans, place settings for six, and a haul of plastic food that could feed a plastic army. The set was like a Bridezilla registry: redundant, extravagant, and largely unnecessary. My husband and I should have put it away for a couple years until our daughter actually knew what gourmet vegetables were, but no, we didn’t want to seem ungrateful. We were too afraid of offending our well-meaning and kid-free friends to use good parental judgment, not to mention our own covet-by-proximity of a fully-furnished kitchen. Instead, we rationalized, The Kitchen would be good sensory motor stimulation and would occupy her while I got some things done. Right.

What typically happened with a Kitchen encounter was my daughter would dump every last plastic avocado, eggplant, whisk, ladle, wok, and sauté pan in the middle of the living room. Then she would sort flatware for three minutes, flinging each into piles with waning accuracy. Atop the piles, she would bulldoze fake plantains, plasticized heads of romaine, and lemon halves, becoming more agitated all the while. The affair ended with my house a wreck and my sweet child, now frantic and kinetic, in a sweaty tantrum.

Dully mindful of how expensive the gift must have been, while denying its hex on my daughter, it took dozens of Kitchen episodes for me to finally admit the truth. Kitchen created a monster, and my little monster was telling me with her behavior what she couldn’t articulate with words: she did not like Kitchen. It simply overwhelmed her with its excess.

Theoretically, a gift with so many parts and pieces should have been a hit. If one accessory is good, then shouldn’t two, three or four be better? Yet it’s not and it wasn’t. Fun accrues through focus, not distraction; even in play, children seek limits. When I got over the guilt of thwarting our friends’ good intentions, I boxed up Kitchen and sent it on its way. Maybe a future Gordon Ramsey would give it a good home, for it deserved a fate far less punishing than our living room floor.   

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About the Author

Michelle Riddell

Michelle Riddell lives with her husband, daughter, and poodles in rural mid-Michigan where traffic stops for turtles, tractors, and threshers. She is a free-lance writer and an editor at Mothers Always Write. She substitute teaches at the local elementary school and is continually surprised by how much she loves it.