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Comment by gumby | Hacker News Reader

Resonating with a point in the article about telling kids "you're not involved in this task", I've noticed that my American neighbors are quite reluctant to allow their kids to use knives, light candles, fill glasses, and some cooking tasks that could result in a lot of mess. As what looks like a consequence those kids are rarely able to help get dinner on the table when they come over.

An uncharitable explanation would be overprotectiveness, but I wonder if it's also simply a lack of time: if the kid is mixing a cake and the batter spills on the floor it is additional work; if they cut their finger it will delay everything. Whereas if you can help your kid become competent you can trust them to look after themselves in more and more situations.

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There is also a responsible way to teach them these skills. My wife bought my 3 year old a nylon knife which is sharp enough to cut strawberries and potatoes but arguably safer than a butter knife. I was amazed how quickly he took to using it and is SO EXCITED when he gets to help prep dinner.

I think an overarching child-rearing strategy we have used is to treat our children as people who have valid needs and capabilities. Crazy, I know. But you constantly see parents doing things like going out to dinner and drinking wine for 3 hours while their bored 4 year old makes a scene, and they get surprised and blame the kid. Our boy rarely flips out, partly because we anticipate normal reactions and avoid putting him in bad situations. And the long-term benefit of that is when we are forced into tough situations, like a 7 hour plane ride, he generally weathers it better because he isn't used to suffering crappy situations all the time.

This is working with nature, which results in highly efficient parenting — vs fighting nature in the name of convenience, ending up facing the consequences and wasting magnitudes more time in the process.

I think you may resonate with Raising Our Children, Raising Ourselves — a book focusing on natural parenting.

People have different ideas of “responsible”, and different levels of risk they are comfortable with.

I read an article a year ago about an anthropologist doing field work somewhere in a hunter-gatherer village in Africa marveling that a 9-month-old baby was playing with a machete. The anthropologist asked the mother if she was afraid the kid would get hurt. The mother said “he’ll figure out soon that the machete is sharp, and then be careful after that.”

Personally handing a baby a machete is a bit much for me, but my not-quite-2 year old and I walk around barefoot all the time in the city, and people are constantly asking me if I’m worried about broken glass or whatever.

I love Teacher Tom's mindset. He views risky activities as essential for kids to learn how to be safe. While supervision is important, meddling is unhelpful. They can do a lot when we step back and let them explore their own physical capabilities. I've adopted his phrase: "I won't help you, but I won't let you get hurt."

http://teachertomsblog.blogspot.com/2015/03/the-process-of-r...

I love how he makes ridiculous suggestions so that his students use critical thinking instead of blindly following authority:

'While plugging in a glue gun, I once said to a group of older kids, "Have you ever tried sticking your finger into an electrical outlet?" They came down on me like a house of bricks, "If we did that Teacher Tom, we would die!"'

http://teachertomsblog.blogspot.com/2010/10/if-we-did-that-t...

My mindset with my son as he started walking and climbing was to allow him to experience natural consequences as much as possible (within reasonable safety limits, of course). I've been very impressed by how careful he is when climbing.

http://teachertomsblog.blogspot.com/2009/07/law-of-natural-c...

I don't understand. Obviously the kids learned that by their parental authoritu drilling a false myth into their heads, not by direct experience and critical thinking.

Not sure I would call this a “false myth”. Obviously most of the time these shocks don’t cause serious injury, but from what I can tell from a quick web search thousands of kids every year end up in the emergency room after sticking stuff in wall sockets or grabbing cords with missing insulation.

Sure though, it would probably be better to let them play with circuits plugged into a non-lethal battery and get a few minor zaps, then explain that connecting a circuit with your body between the two sides of a wall socket could cause severe burns, other serious health problems, or even a fatal cardiac arrest if you are unlucky.

A wavy chopper makes a great first blade. My 17-month-old had a blast cutting strawberries the other day. Next I'll let him try something firmer like carrots.

https://bancosparenting.wordpress.com/2018/06/11/cutting-str...

Letting your toddler fill glasses, etc. is like refactoring. It costs way more time now than filling them yourselves but if you don't ever let them do anything, you'll find yourself in a mountain of technical debt with a child who is incapable of assisting with any tasks.

More than that, you might find yourself with child who lacks a sense of self-esteem and self-agency and struggles with these things even into adulthood.

My mum told me something important once: Your kids want to help. Let them. Kids are something you should live with and involve in your life, not something you designate to an hour of “kids time” once a day.

Both me and my sister started learning to cook when we were 5 or so, we helped with dishes, we set the table, we learned about cleaning up after pets. Of course we both tried to purposefully forget it when we were teenagers, but the skills and confidence to be okay without help were there when we needed them.

If I ever have kids, I hope I’ll have the patience to take the same approach.

Nothing worse than a person suffering from learned helplessnes and that stuff starts early.

My 5yo daughter has taken to using a perfectly child-sized book on Cupcakes (Peggy Porschen Cupcakes). She can pick exactly the one she wants from the pictures and then helps to make them. The latest batch of chocolate cupcakes produced by her and my partner (who's a professionally qualified baker) were some of the best I've ever tasted. Above any that my partner has made on her own.

They've done this fairly regularly (a batch every couple of months) for the past couple of years.

The article seems to think it's lack of time:

=================================

Sure, toddlers may want to help, but let's face reality here. At first, they really can't do much. They can be clumsy, destructive and even enraging. Their involvement in chores often slows things down or makes a mess.

For this reason, many parents in Western culture rebuff a toddler's offer to help, Mejia-Arauz says.

"We have mothers tell us things like, 'I need to do a chore very quickly, and if my toddler tries to help, he makes a mess. So I'd rather do it myself than having them helping,' " she says.

People think it saves time and trouble to push their kids around in strollers instead of letting them walk (very slowly at first), set them in walled cribs for 12 hours per day instead of letting them move about, sit them in high chairs to eat, get them to play in small fenced places with no sharp corners, let them stay in little rolling walker chairs, pre-process all their food into mush, not let them climb up or down stairs, not let them climb up the slide, not let them throw things, rush over and smother them at every tiny trip, ....

By the time the kids are 3 or 4 they are still insisting on being carted everywhere, are weak and uncoordinated compared to their less sheltered peers, are timid and less willing to follow their curiosity, and don’t know how to do anything. In the long run the parents are forced to babysit them much more closely for much longer, can’t rely on the kids to help with anything, deal with worse tantrums, etc.

There's a couple of outliers in your list IMO.

Long-legged "high" chairs raise the child to a comfortable table height. How else do you expect then to sit at the same table as much taller people?

Giving soft food, to people with no teeth, also just seems entirely sensible. We pretty much all just ate the same food at family meals, but even then we'd mush vegetables and pre-chew meat (from about 5-6 months). Otherwise the child is just going to be swallowing under-chewed food and have digestive problems.

People marvel at how our 2yo walks but a few hundred meters (it's bizarre!), if they're not doing a couple of K a day how do you even tire them out! When they're too big for a sling they need to walk.

The problem is not with sitting in high chairs ever, at any age. The problem is with being carted from one stationary place to another and never getting to move about, even up through age 3 or 4.

My kid eats at least half his meals standing on his feet, starting when he was 14 or 15 months old, either on the kitchen floor with a low table, or on chairs at restaurants. Another quarter of meals he is sitting in a high chair. The last quarter he is sitting on someone’s lap or a booster seat or some other arrangement.

But someone could certainly sit in a constrained chair for every meal up through age 2 and still manage to get plenty of time to move independently. From age 2.5 or 3 kids could be sitting on a Tripp Trapp chair or the like, something that lets them sit at the table without being stuck.

Eating soft and pre-processed food is similar: kids who don’t have any molars yet can’t chew much, but I see 3-year-olds eating nothing but mushed up food. Biting and chewing hard foods is what the jaws and teeth were evolved to do, and if they don’t get a chance they don’t develop properly. I had friends whose parents cut the crust off their bread, shelled nuts for them, peeled shrimps, only ever gave them boneless pieces of meat, etc. even as teenagers; we shouldn’t be infantilizing people who aren’t infants.

Lack of time is a huge factor. If you need to catch a bus to work at a specific time then you simply can't let the toddler drag out breakfast cleanup for an extra half hour.

Alternatively one can look at it as an investment that'll save time later.

> An uncharitable explanation would be overprotectiveness, but I wonder if it's also simply a lack of time

“Lack of time” meaning prioritizing other uses of time, sure. To some extent this is the result of strong economic pressure, but I think part of it is not understanding child rearing.

There is a work bench in my daughters class - kids aged 4-6. I has metal saws, hammers, nails.

I don't have a toddler yet, but I do anticipate prohibiting knives for a while. I keep them very sharp; any of my chefs knives could easily remove small digits.

Another commentor mentioned nylon knives though, maybe this is an interesting possibility.

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