Kids who can't/won't clean

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Not a personal insult. You have been following me around the last few days criticizing every post I make because dared to disagree with you.

In any case, further discussion in this thread is futile, I’m out!
 
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I didn’t say your kids couldn’t do those other things. I said that “cutting one’s own food” fell into the same category as those other things.
 
Rozellelily said:
Yeah he’s with a machete but how much he knows how to use it properly…
I’m sure he knows how to chop it up and down but I doubt he knows how to direct the “energy” crisply and properly and how to be safe with it.
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As someone who grew up in a place where we used machetes from a very young age married to a man who did as well, I assure you this is boy knows much better than many American adults how to use it safely and properly. Machetes are left by the door of the house and used for everything, including “mowing” the grass.
 
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I mean, I don’t really have a need for a machete-wielding 3yo, but I know many Suzuki teachers who begin instructing 3yos on the violin on a regular basis and that requires a great deal more dexterity and hand control than cutting a cube steak or chicken breast!

If a 3yo can use scissors, gardening tools, or a embroidery needle safely, why not cut their food?
 
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Yes it does. Kids are very capable of learning many things and have a natural tendency to copy the adults they are living with. If kids see parents on the computer, they learn to use a mouse and “type”. If they see parents chopping wood or weeds, they learn to do that.

I don’t think anyone should have to have their kids doing those things, but I don’t like the implication that parents are somehow neglecting safety because the kids are using tools common in their homes. I think it is the opposite of neglect to teach them to safely navigate their environments.
 
Yeah, my husband’s family raise their kids around a mess of farm equipment and firearms and insist they have all been taught to be safe when they are crawling around on machinery and playing on a sofa directly under a loaded rifle.
 
Silicone knives are safe. My grandsons and granddaughters love to cook and the five year old can make a family dinner for 6 with help from mom. H is 11 year old cousin has been cooking “whole dead chicken” for year. They can all make salad and cupcakes.
They alzo start to swim at 5.
 
I have seven kids a n d my goal with the last few was to keep one room clean. My kids were messy and now some of them are messy and some neat. Now i know who was telling the truth when they said they were not the one making the mess.
 
Funny. My daughter went through a phase where whenever I presented he meat we were going to prepare she would ask, “Is this dead?” “Thoroughly.”
 
Things have been going a lot better this week. I like to think it is due to my impeccable disciplinary method, but I think it was also influenced by fear of arachnids and the fact that baby sister has rolled off the mat and taken a few preliminary drags across the floor, so choking hazard awareness season has officially begun.
 
Allegra, why do you have “duck soap?”

Is it a decoration? Or some kind of moisturizing product for adult women?

I used to keep decorative soap in my bathroom, but no one ever used them, and they would get all gross from the humidity in the bathroom and the dust and the cat hair–so I stopped putting it out.

Plus I’m allergic to all soaps except–you won’t believe this–Zest Aqua. No kidding, everything else makes my skin break out and get raw and red. Had an awful time at work (hospital), and now I have my own special super hypo-allergenic soap–which apparently lots of other people in the lab are now using.
 
Allegra It is great to hear things are getting better. You sound like a typical mother with three young children adjusting to the new dynamic in the house.

I read a fb post this week of a mother who was watching her 6yo son go into school for the first time unaccompanied.
This led to lots of ‘what! he is too young to go to school alone’ type comments , and comments where “well when I was born I came home on the back of a horse in a sugar bag and then rode that horse everywhere on my own before I could walk”

The issue with that thread was the mother had not been 100% clear about the child going into the school alone, as she was watching from the drop off zone. There were teachers on duty and lots of other parents and children going into school.
And people had not read the thread clearly either, assuming the child was walking alone to school at that young age.
 
Thanks! Statistically, the 6yo is probably significantly safer walking to school alone than he is on a school bus. You don’t even want to know what goes on on those school buses! And I’m not phased by the sancti-mommies. It’s their problem, not mine.
 
Hey, look what popped up on my facebook feed! This is sort of relevant. THe only thing I’d be most concerned about is the tree climbing, because I’m too fat to get up there in an emergency. Maybe a little tree? When I was a kid, we were in the end unit of a townhouse, and there was a pine tree next to the building that was tall enough that I could climb up the trunk and onto the roof! We would sit there to watch fireworks.

Dangerous Things You Should Let Your Kids Do This Summer |

modernalternativemama.com modernalternativemama.com
 
Ah that’s makes a lot more sense.
I didn’t even know there was such a thing as silicone knifes.
I thought you meant more things like chopping carrots for dinner preparation etc.

Have you considered making the “chores” into fun games for the kids?
 
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I was an adventurous child too and there’s still photos of me crying hysterically at 3 because I wanted to ride the “horses” on my own on the merry go round and my mother would only let me ride on the “seat section” sitting next to her fearing I would fall off🤗.

I don’t think either extreme -too much for a child’s age or being overprotective- is good for the child.

Floaters off at 3-4 is pretty impressive.I guess in US culture there is a lot of swimming?
I was raised in Australia where there is a big swimming culture but us Euro,Asian kids and middle eastern often didn’t learn till later or some even can’t even swim well even now as adults.
 
Imho yes and no.
It’s not about a certain culture representation a universal norm or about American culture being more right etc. I am not from USA culture myself but from a poorer country background.
Realistically,in every culture there are good/right things and wrong/“ignorance” things.
For example in my culture,there’s often no real knowledge about that eating a lot of fatty foods is not good for your heart.
Another example would be gypsies who often smoke when they are pregnant.
Even when something’s done/accepted culturally it doesn’t always mean it’s good.
The Namibian boys tribe believe it’s fine to give a 3 year old a machete but without seeing child accident statistics (which are often hard or impossible to know due to underreporting in rural areas) it’s imposs to know whether its a wise decision or not.
Children from every culture generally cognitively develop roughly the same per ages (providing no intellectual disabilities etc) so a 3 year olds brain,muscle strength,muscular coordination,precision,understanding of cant really be thought of like an 8 or 10 year old even when taking cultural norm factors into consideration.

While injuries are generally unreported in these regions I did come across the below report (page 53) that indicated that approx 16 % of Namibian adult rural workers who were interviewed experienced receiving an injury (probably from a variety of tools and machinery) so I can’t imagine an (unsupervised) 3 or 5 year old child would somehow be more immune.

http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.640.1328&rep=rep1&type=pdf
 
There are plenty of childrearing practices I think wrong and barbaric–such as female circumcision–but we aren’t talking about that, but about potentialities and expectations for children in different environments. I am sure Namibian kids get hurt more often than, say, European kids; their parents tolerate greater risk because it is STILL safer to have the child knowing how to use sharp things than not. The kids, in turn, are capable of things that mine are not, because I don’t have mine out cutting bush.

You’ll notice, by the way, that I haven’t stated at all whether I let my kids cut things or use the stove. This is because I am not saying that you are doing it wrong by not permitting your preschool-aged children to cut their meat, but that your way isn’t the only way. I am sure that your kids and Allegra’s kids are going to grow up just fine, and neither you nor Allega is a bad parent for making different decisions and having different expectations.
 
I should just clarify that I don’t have kids yet so I’m just going off my upbringing and those around me.
I definitely don’t suggest that Allegra is a bad parent(!),just that some of American ways are surprising to me because it’s different then what I’ve grown up with.
 
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