Food Kids
This is definitely a FoodGeek Rant.
Growing Trend of Child Foodies Faces Backlash
http://www.yumsugar.com/2890647
I have to agree with this article and it’s referenced articles as well.
Learning to Cook
I learned to cook at around 5, and I don’t see the big deal. Was I a good cook at 5? Hell no! But I ate what I cooked, no matter (almost!) how bad it turned-out. So what if your child has learned how to follow a recipe; do you put your 5 year old on a recurring show because they learned how to tie different shoes? Each episode a different shoe, Wow!
Learning to cook is simple. You have ingredients and you apply heat (or take heat away). Learning how to be a great cook, that’s a lifetime. You need points of reference for what is good and what is bad. The younger you are, the fewer points of reference, so at best, you are following recipes by rote, whether they are written or memorized. Would you expect a 5 year old to be able to improvise a Jazz number? Why not? 5 year olds can be taught to play an instrument. That’s my point. Cooking and making music are skills that can be learned. Cooking or Playing well and improvising and creating, those are Talents that come from the product of Skill x Experience.
Self-Reliance
Don’t get me wrong. I think it is a wonderful thing to teach self-reliance to kids. Look around, too many kids (even kids up around 30-something) think self-reliance is having enough money to go to Taco Bell or Mickey-D’s. To be able to take ingredients and make a meal, that’s a great start. To learn where food comes from, and to respect your food, that’s even better. Best yet would be to learn how to provide your own food, respect it, and prepare it safely. You build a foundation to build life skills on.
To have a child working as a chef, get outta town. How about Endangerment and Child-Labor laws, just to start with. Seriously, these kids are just victims of their parents desire for Celebrity. Let the kids play. Let the kids make their brownies with corn flakes, juju-bees, cinnamon imperials with whipped-cream and bananas. Let the kid experiment and play with their food. But teach them about responsibility and good choices too, and even more importantly, teach them about an 80-20 or 90-10 rule . . . You don’t have to be good all the time.
Celebrity.
Why would you want your kid to be a celebrity? Look at how well that worked-out for child-stars over the years. What is it about Celebrity that you want? Do you want the media obsessing over your child when they reach those awkward Tween and Teen years? Do you want some tabloid slime going through your garbage trying to find if your child wrote a love-letter or some bad teen-angst poetry? Do you want to be put under a microscope, and have it known that you drink a beer or three with your dinner, which would make you a bad father or mother, since now you would be the town-lush? Celebrity is the dumbest thing anyone could wish for, this side of a Political Career or incurable comunicable disease.
Sudden End of Rant. (For now.)