Keeping it Real with Kids & Their Toys

I know I’ve been complaining a lot about Isaiah helping me in the kitchen.  This morning he tried to help me make my latte and I had to draw the line.  I just couldn’t bear the thought of him tamping and pulling my beloved morning espresso.  But we have been trying to encourage the boys lately to use real tools and real utensils rather than all the fake ones – in the kitchen and elsewhere.  Kids are mostly expected to use plastic renditions of real items.  You don’t want them to, say, use a real chef’s knife or an actual KitchenAid mixer, so you get them a kid version.  A plastic replica.

For Christmas this year, we Santa got Isaiah this Melissa & Doug bake set.   Brilliant, right?  We thought we’d be able to encourage his interest in baking and cooking and latte-making with this oh-so-exciting bake set of his very own.   I imagined him happily slicing the little cookies and arranging them on the baking sheet while I whipped up dinner ALONE every night.  A win-win.

But it was not to be.  The boys both enjoy the Cookie Set, to be sure, and my little chefs have served me cookies on several occasions but it still seems to pale in comparison to actually helping me in the kitchen.  They would much rather spread (and taste!) some real frosting than serve up a tray of wooden cookies.

Kim John Payne, in one of my favorite parenting book, argues that,

…whenever possible, what a child touches [should] be real.  A plastic hammer has no solidity, no weight or heft in the hands of a five-year-old.  Even small versions of real tools are preferable to such blatantly false imitations.

He goes on to say, “Even toddlers can have their own “real” kitchen tools, such as a workboard or mat, apron, wooden spoons, vegetable brushes, rolling pin, pots and pans, whisks and spatulas, with cloths for polishing apples and tidying up.  Garden tools also should be real: a wheelbarrow or garden cart, garden gloves, with a small, but real shovel, rake, and trowels.” 

Along the same lines, in a thought-provoking article out last May, Christine Gross-Lo posits that perhaps American parents have got it all wrong when it comes to playing and toys.  Author of Parenting Without Borders: Surprising Lessons Parents Around the World Can Teach Us, Gross-Loh has studied parents in a multitude of countries and cultures and recounts tales of 5 year-old German kids whittling with penknives and unsupervised 3-year-old Swedish children scaling tall trees.   Americans tend to think that our job is to keep our kids safe at all costs by child-proofing and constant hovering.  But as Gross-Loh points out, research actually suggests that you will keep your kids safest if you let them take risks.  Sweden, for example, with all it’s wild and zany unsupervised play, actually has the lowest rates of child injury in the world.

Taking this all to heart, Jason had a few extra days off at the end of December and he decided to build some robots with the boys and let them have a go at some real tools.  We went to Home Depot for some supplies, pulled out the drill and the hot glue gun and they set to work.

It ended up being a two-day project but the boys had a blast and their robots are now on proud display in their bedroom.   If you want to give the ‘real’ tool thing a try, here are a few helpful tips…

1. Don’t rush it.  Your kids aren’t going to be wowing the world with their woodworking tour de force or their clever culinary delights anytime soon but you will be teaching them lifelong skills. Give it a try when you actually have some time to devote to your project.  Teaching a 5 year-old how to use a screwdriver takes a lot longer than you might think.
2. Your kids will need close supervision at first.   3 isn’t the age for unsupervised playing with the power drill, even if the German kids are whittling away in the Black Forest as we speak.  Take the time to teach them how to use the tools properly though and you’ll be surprised how quickly they learn.
3. Your kids might will get hurt.  Despite our best efforts, Gryffin still managed to burn himself with the hot glue gun.  It will happen but if you are keeping a close eye, major calamity can be avoided.
4. Be patient.    Teaching your kids to use a power saw is best left to those times when you aren’t already at the end of a rapidly fraying rope.  I’m most patient with my kids in the morning so that’s when I try to tackle projects like these.  Figure out what time works best for you and start there.

I’m hoping to come up with a system that will allow Isaiah to help out with meal times, with real kitchen tools, without me losing my mind.  I’ll let you know if it works.  In the meantime, maybe I’ll try to find some trees he can climb or some wood he can chisel. Anything to keep him away from my espresso machine.

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If you’re interested in starting with robots like ours, here are the links Jason used for inspiration…

• This picture
• And this etsy shop