In the kitchen he can peel garlic, fill ice trays, make bread dough into rolls ... and again, he's just turned three. He's much slower with all of those things than I am, but if I time things right, he's actually a (small) net positive. For example, he'll make one roll, and I'll make the other 7, or I'll give him 4 cloves of garlic 10 minutes before I need them.
Much like making our own pizzas (putting the toppings on) - you had entertained children whilst also being productive. I wouldn't have described this as "chores" though. (they came later)
My son's first cooking task was washing the vegetables.
Side benefit is he'd eat anything he had helped cook. He didn't like mushrooms. But he ate them without me asking.
The problem with that is that teaching kids how to do human tasks is basically the definition of parenting. You're correct that many parents don't parent — but that's a problem which needs to be solved.
Phones and technology also get in our way and we as a society have become passive in parenting. The pay back when they are pre-teens is going to be painful. http://www.apa.org/monitor/2016/02/smartphone.aspx
And when they’re teens, and young adults, and older adults too. I think that misparenting & malparenting (and miseducation & maleducation) are to blame for a lot of our modern problems, e.g. school shootings (something which, so far as I can tell, essentially didn’t exist until the 90s, despite weapons being a huge part of American culture for over 200 years).
I don’t believe we should ignore technology, and indeed it offers a lot for parenting (e.g. phones could enable parents to allow their children more freedom, rather than being used to grant them less). But as a society we’ve not figured out how to use it wisely yet.
I also think that we’ve deliberately ignored the lessons of the past and of other cultures, but that quickly becomes an entirely different discussion …
Columbine?
The Urban legend is not that it is a modern thing but it is the frequency. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_school_shootings_in_th...
We had school lynchings, though.
https://www.haaretz.com/us-news/.premium.MAGAZINE-how-racial...
Is it? N=1, but almost since my toddler could walk we always cleaned up after breakfast together. She vacuums any food crumbs off the floor and table while I do the dishes. Sometimes she also helps out drying the dishes. I am happy that I and her mother taught her that because it is really also easier for me. She really feels useful when participating, and takes constructive criticism of necessary.
This opposed to the kids of a colleague of mine which won't lift a finger and rather couch potato with a iPad or iPhone.
It believe it also helps that we don’t have TV or any electronic devices for her to use. We dabbled in Daniel Tiger and the like, and her behavior immediately became worse, and the TV was the only way to mollify her.
I think the ruined meals were more a case of me biting off more than I could chew and attempting something beyond my skill level. I've always loved experimenting in the kitchen, but when I was starting out it didn't always go so well.
My experimenting has paid dividends though, as people are constantly impressed at everything I cook.
When your children are young it's easier to just to tasks yourself than to try and get your children to do it, they'll break things and make mistakes in the course of learning.
But that's how you learn. I had to cook dinner once a week from the age of around 12. Sure my parents had a few shit dinners when I started out and sometimes I made a massive mess (or set things on fire!), but I learned how to cook and bake. Same goes for any other household tasks.
Of course, the other secret to the Maya Method is La Chancla: https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2014/11/04/361205792...