Treating kids as incompetent makes them so. This idea gets “baked into” kiddie cookbooks and beyond. Tell us if you’ve encountered this. CLICK HERE!
Remember, I am blogging at Let Grow, but it is STILL ME and still a conversation that NEEDS YOU! Thanks! — L
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4 Comments
Hi Lenore,
In the screenshot example, I can only discern that the instructions say “Ask your mother to teach you how to use the range and light the oven.” And it appears to indicate that the kids can do everything else themselves.
To me, it doesn’t seem unreasonable for kids to be taught how to use the range and light the oven the very first time they are using them. I didn’t take away that kids need to ask their mother *each* time they cook.
Am I interpreting that correctly?
Cheers …
Michael,
The screenshot examples shows an older cookbook where the child is instructed to ask an adult to teach him how to use the stove properly.
The contrast is with modern children’s cookbooks, that instruct the child to ask an adult to do everything for them every time, if it has anything whatsoever to do with heat or blades.
So the old way was to teach the child how to handle the potentially dangerous aspects of cooking safely. The new way is just to tell them they aren’t capable of doing that.
That reminds me of something my son has experienced in a community garden. A knife was lying around with a funny tip on the back, which he hadn’t seen before. He picked it up and asked what kind of a knife this was.
Someone immidiately seized the knife from him and said: “You can’t touch it, it is very sharp, look:” and she poked herself several times in the finger, saying:
“ouch, ouch, very sharp!”
My son: “Why do you touch it like this, if it is so sharp”
“because I’m an adult, you are a child. Adults yes, children no.”
Probably the result of our over litigious society. If it wasn’t there, they get sued.