31–40 of 215 posts
Very interesting. I thaught my toddler to help dad make his coffee in the morning... Puts the capsule in, pushes the long button, takes the capsule out... Then he smells the coffee and says 'nice' and feels the cup and confirms a job well done by saying 'hot'. It's surprising how quickly he learnt how to do it, and how keen he is to help dad do it, for no gain of his own. On the other hand begging him to eat, trick h…
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 wo…
I know this is a bit petty, but I've stared to resent a little that even though I'm Mexican, I'm not considered Western. What am I, then? Eastern? Central? Southern? I'm not just arguing about the geography, but about the culture. I feel much more like a Canadian or a USian (or a Guatemalan) than I feel like an African, Middle Easter, East Asian, or South Asian. I speak the same languages as Europe, have been mostly…
Most Mexicans I know remind me more of Italy (where I'm from) than USA. Might be my personal experience. Take it as just my 0.02.
I know this is a bit petty, but I've stared to resent a little that even though I'm Mexican, I'm not considered Western. What am I, then? Eastern? Central? Southern? I'm not just arguing about the geography, but about the culture. I feel much more like a Canadian or a USian (or a Guatemalan) than I feel like an African, Middle Easter, East Asian, or South Asian. I speak the same languages as Europe, have been mostly…
Reading this article, I don't really get everything under "What About Western Kids?" subheading. Everything listed there you would have found during the frontier days of America (and still do in some parts), so does that make America not western? I don't know it's very confusing. My parents are from Greece from large families and had this exact same experience growing up -- you had to do your part -- and Greece is kn…
I sincerely think it just means "northern european" to some people.
It's implied but not outright stated in the above quote: We are talking about households that are much, much poorer on average than "middle-class European-American kids." This is backed up by the photos in the article.
So, if you have nothing else to do because your parents don't have the resources to supply you with a TV, a video game system, a tablet, a computer, a cell phone, etc ad nauseum, then you can either sit around twiddling your thumbs and dying of boredom or you can involve yourself in whatever the nearest human is doing as a means to occupy yourself.
The other piece of that is that poorer cultures wind up naturally more people centered than richer cultures, which wind up more thing centered. When my kids were little and we didn't have much, they learned to take turns and share not because of some kind of cultural magic, but because we didn't have a lot of stuff, so they basically had to share. In a family wealthy enough to have one of X for each and every family member (or whatever), then you don't need to learn to share or take turns. You just use your thing and leave their thing alone.
I'm all for promoting more real involvement with kids so they are better socialized, etc. But I think there are very big problems with acting like culture evolves separate from material wealth and details like that.
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 wo…
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 capabi…
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 know this is a bit petty, but I've stared to resent a little that even though I'm Mexican, I'm not considered Western. What am I, then? Eastern? Central? Southern? I'm not just arguing about the geography, but about the culture. I feel much more like a Canadian or a USian (or a Guatemalan) than I feel like an African, Middle Easter, East Asian, or South Asian. I speak the same languages as Europe, have been mostly…
This in no way whatsoever invalidates your complaint, but my suspicion is they were looking for some acceptable means to indicate "well-heeled, two career couples from wealthy developed countries who don't pay enough attention to their own children." They were looking for a polite way to characterize their target audience that doesn't sound racist, classist or -- worse -- judgy of the very people who pay their bills that they would like to gently tell "It's a good idea to make the time to involve your messy toddler. It will pay dividends later."
I know this is a bit petty, but I've stared to resent a little that even though I'm Mexican, I'm not considered Western. What am I, then? Eastern? Central? Southern? I'm not just arguing about the geography, but about the culture. I feel much more like a Canadian or a USian (or a Guatemalan) than I feel like an African, Middle Easter, East Asian, or South Asian. I speak the same languages as Europe, have been mostly…
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 wo…
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 tel…
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.
"The Mexican-American kids, aged 6 to 7, were doing about twice as much around the house as the middle-class European-American kids, on average," It's implied but not outright stated in the above quote: We are talking about households that are much, much poorer on average than "middle-class European-American kids." This is backed up by the photos in the article. So, if you have nothing else to do because your parents…
(1) Extended families live in a small area. There are many nieces and nephews and cousins so kids are playing in a big group of family and other neighbors, and e.g. girls start taking care of younger family members starting when they are 5 or 6 years old.
(2) People work close to home, on work that is more or less comprehensible to a child, and often in groups. A group of people farming, minding sheep, weaving, washing clothes by hand, milling grain, cooking, chopping wood, making furniture, foraging for mushrooms, hunting rabbits, ... can easily get kids involved in small tasks.
(3) People spend much of the day talking to each other, gossiping, cracking jokes, singing together, eating together, ... instead of reading or doing other solitary activities, spending time at remote jobs, driving around in cars, etc.
But yeah we definitely shouldn’t romanticize rural poverty. Having years where nobody has enough food and all the old sick people die, commonly getting hit by disease epidemics, spending a whole life on hard menial labor and ending up with a totally wrecked body by age 50, sitting in small totally smoke-filled rooms over a wood cookfire every day (this is as bad or worse for health than the heaviest cigarette smoking), sleeping on a board or on a dirt floor with a blanket covered in fleas, needing to make your own cloth from scratch for anything, needing to carry water long distances on foot every day for all washing and drinking, .... are all pretty unpleasant.
And let’s not even start on the part where rural peasants are constantly getting beat up and having stuff stolen from them (or worse) by colonial overlords, foreign corporations, local thugs, ...
There’s a reason that when given the choice a large proportion of people flee rural peasant villages and move to (sometimes distant) cities, even when further exploitation awaits there.