What Cooking Together Taught Me About My Son

My son, Sam, was four when I started working on my cookbook, Sundays. And as anyone with a young child will explain between yawns, they’re a lot of work. And a lot more each day. Sam especially.

Because he’s a lot of work, I’ve become very good at making breakfast. Fast breakfasts pulled in a few seconds from the fridge, slow breakfasts that require night-before mixing and planning and every kind of breakfast in between. Most kids love breakfast, but Sam brings a special intensity to his love for breakfast. He’d eat breakfast all day long, if we let him. And now, come to think of it, so would I.

When Sam was nearing his second birthday, we worried that he was avoiding looking at us when we spoke. We’d say his name, then say it a bit louder, and then louder again, and he wouldn’t react. His hearing was fine—our family doctor assured us he was physically perfect. But he did allow that even though Sam was meeting all the usual milestones, we should be prepared for anything. We didn’t know much about his birth parents beyond that they were young. But there was other stuff that worried me too. When Sam couldn’t explain what he wanted, he’d run and hurl himself at doors. He didn’t seem to have many fears or a natural sense of danger—he’d climb and jump off of everything and run with zero caution down the street. By bedtime my back ached from lunging after him and trying—and often failing—to keep him safe. He didn’t follow instructions very well, or really at all. He was unusually tall for his age, and very adept at opening doors and unlocking child-proof gates. The director of his daycare wasn’t successful at hiding her exasperation when she told us he was always sneaking out to explore other classrooms or to “help” the cook in the school’s kitchen.

Those first years were tense. My jaw clenched tighter and tighter as Sam got more and more wild and unpredictable. I was ashamed at how much I looked forward to the moment when he would finally fall asleep at night. That’s when the world was quiet and calm and so much easier.

Every day when I dropped Sam off at school or took him to the playground, I felt queasy watching him try to play with other kids. He was like an unpredictable dog let loose in the playground. Other kids instantly recognized that he was different. They paused and sometimes visibly recoiled. Then edged away or just ignored him. My Sam would look momentarily crushed, then move on.

Before he turned three, we took Sam to be assessed by a developmental pediatrician. The diagnosis: Sam was on the autism spectrum, a mild to moderate case. Although he was too young to assess for ADHD, that condition often goes hand in hand with autism, and he was showing all the signs.

It was like we’d become anthropologists tasked with trying to decode a person who was both familiar and alien. Sam was “verbal,” meaning he’d made progress learning to express himself, unlike some autistic kids who never speak more than a few phrases. He “stimmed,” meaning he’d make repetitive motor movements (mostly chewing on toys and rubbing our elbows and ears) when he needed some relief from sensory overload. Sometimes he “flapped” his hands in front of himself when he was stressed. He couldn’t manage “transitions,” meaning he’d go full nuclear meltdown if we tried to make him leave the park or do anything that wasn’t on his living-in-the-moment itinerary.

I’ve lost track of how many occupational therapists, educational consultants, child psychologists and behavioural analysts we’ve consulted. We took turns going to a night class for families with autistic kids. There were a dozen parents in the class, and we sat in a circle like we were in group therapy, which in a real sense we were. We wore name tags and sipped takeout coffees. The classes were supposed to supply us parents with strategies and make us feel less alone, but I’d leave every session feeling more anxious. One mom would try to hide her quiet sobbing from us each week. Near the end of the course, when it was her turn to share an update about how she was doing with her child, she broke down, trying to explain through tears that she spent every night worrying about what her daughter would never experience. Would she ever be able to have a career, fall in love, or have kids of her own? Another mom hugged her and reassured her that everything would be fine, that all of our kids would find some happiness. But all of us knew that wasn’t always true.

One of the mysteries of autism is how some of the senses are in overdrive while others are more dulled than in the average person, and this mix-up of sensations profoundly impacts how the autistic person experiences the world around them. Some autistic kids are drawn to bright lights and shiny things, like moths to a flame, while others refuse to leave the house on a sunny day. Sam was especially sensitive to sound yet seemed to have little to no sense of how his body occupied space (which explained why he was always banging into fences and other kids). The sensations of eating were another challenge. I’ve met restaurant critics who pretentiously talk about the “mouthfeel” of a dish. But when it comes to a kid with autism, mouthfeel can be a make-or-break factor. Some autistic kids find comfort in one specific type of mouthfeel, perhaps the slithery-salty mouthfeel of SpaghettiOs, and refuse to eat anything else. Sam’s hang-ups were less predictable. Some days he would decide that everything on the breakfast table was too spicy (even if the only spice involved was a little cracked pepper) and would eat only plain oatmeal. Other days, like Goldilocks, he would refuse to eat his oatmeal if it was too hot and then, five minutes later, decide it wasn’t hot enough.

Then moments after he turned three, a breakthrough. Sam was running circles around our kitchen table, yipping and jumping, while I was pulling eggs out of the fridge. I hollered at him to be careful, and he kept running and yipping and jumping. I was about to yell again, but then saw how much fun he was having. I didn’t want to stop his fun. I remembered the lessons from the autism parenting classes: I had to present him with something even more fun. So I pulled a stool up to the counter, pointed to it, and, in between his yips, asked Sam if he wanted to cook breakfast. He froze. He gave me a look that went, in a matter of seconds, from surprise to skepticism to pure glee. Yes, Dad!

I wasn’t really going to let him cook breakfast—at least not by himself. We’d cook it together. Making breakfast together was weirdly easy. It turned out he loved to crack eggs. And he was really good—surprisingly better than me—at keeping bits of shell from breaking off into the bowl. Next I showed him how to mix those eggs with a whisk, pour out exact amounts of milk into measuring cups, and scoop out brown sugar (while taking a few spoonfuls for himself). All of a sudden he wasn’t running in circles or hurling those same eggs across the room. He was proud to be helping and doing what Dad asked him to. See? he’d say with a huge smile and great pride. I did it!

We moved onto oatmeal and cream of wheat. Then omelettes with three cheeses, frittatas, shakshuka and a fried egg sandwich. Not to mention crispy hash browns, piles of bacon and farmer’s sausage. And lots and lots of French toast. Start with a fun breakfast, and the rest of the day would be fun too. A bonus was how making breakfast together encouraged Sam to talk. Instead of ignoring me, or demanding to watch videos on an iPad, he’d quiz me on why syrup is sticky. And why do we need to toast the Eggo instead of just eating it frozen? And why do we keep them in the freezer anyway? And what makes the freezer stay cold? So many questions! I was proud of figuring out how to use our breakfast bonding time to get him to try stuff he’d otherwise refuse as too spicy or simply too weird. This was a way to sneak more vegetables into his diet. A few mushrooms in a cheese omelette. Shredded zucchini in a potato pancake. More shredded zucchini in a breakfast loaf.

Cooking together was also the golden ticket to building up his confidence, to working on his problem solving and his hand-eye coordination, and to keeping him focused on a series of tasks instead of flying off in a thousand distracted directions. Measuring amounts was a fun way to learn more about counting and simple math. Using a timer to tell us when something was ready helped him work on his patience and manage his emotions. The more we cooked together, the more I spotted how he approached each recipe like a science experiment, waiting to see what happened when one ingredient mixed with another, and what happened when it was heated or cooled.

Sundays is a record of that first year of making every Sunday breakfast together with Sam. I had to keep our Sunday cooking time engaging for him and keep pushing beyond my usual breakfast repertoire. We were having fun cooking together, experimenting with new recipes and eating every last bite—even when breakfast was a flop. Sometimes we’d just make eggs plus toast with butter, and even though it was very similar to the buttered toast I used to make just for myself, it tasted so much better having made it together.

Related: Start a new Sunday morning routine of your own with this recipe for Coconut-Mango French Toast from Sundays by Mark Pupo

Excerpted from Sundays: A Celebration of Breakfast and Family in 52 Essential Recipes by Mark Pupo. Copyright © 2023 Mark Pupo. Illustration copyright © 2023 Christopher Rouleau. Published by Appetite by Random House®, a division of Penguin Random House Canada Limited. Reproduced by arrangement with the Publisher. All rights reserved.