Cooking can be a lot of fun – and a lot of work.
Kitty Storey in Wauwatosa is finding that out through her cooking show on YouTube.
Kitty and her dad, Dan, spend a lot of time at their kitchen counter making the show. She recently learned one of the harder truths of cooking.
“What do onions make you do?” Dan asks.
Kitty’s response? “Cry!”
But she’s not letting that stop her from her new found passion.
“Delicious food!” says Kitty.
Her YouTube channel – Cooking with Kitty – was inspired by her independent living skills class. Her mom, Kim, says Kitty has a dual diagnosis, Down’s Syndrome and autism. Kitty’s teachers sent home recipes for her to try and Kim would send back videos of Kitty preparing them.
“And they really started turning out cute!” Kim says. “So I started sharing them with my friends on social media and a lot of them urged us, they said, ‘you need to do something with this, you need to turn it into a YouTube page!’”
Kim says Kitty has learned a lot of useful skills and the weekly videos became great occupational therapy exercises.
“You can see her growth from the first video to now,” Kim says. “And see how much more independent she is with her chopping skills and what she can do.”
Now Kitty has hundreds of followers – and a lot of confidence!
“I’m famous!”
She’s selling merchandise now. And she’s gotten so famous, people want to collaborate with her. She’s done an episode with Shake Shack and she’s getting ready to make pasta with Egg & Flour.
“Food tastes so good!” Kitty says.
But Kim says it’s not just Kitty gaining confidence, other kids are too, just from watching. Kim says she got a message from a mother of a non-verbal son.
“And through watching the videos, he started muttering words, like pot and pan!” Kim recalls. “And it was the most touching thing ever and it was like, ‘oh yeah, that’s why we’re doing this.’ And as long as we’re making a difference for people… we’ll keep doing that.”
Kim hopes the videos don’t just help kids with disabilities. She hopes neuro-typical people can see we’re all a lot more alike than we are different.
If you want to help Kitty along, she only asks that you do one thing:
“Please like [and] subscribe!”
Find Kitty on Facebook by following this link.
