Do/Would you allow your 10 year old to use knives?

Js_Other_Half

My 8 year old uses very sharp knives. I have shown him how to use them safely.
I am in the kitchen when he does it, but not right beside him.

This website looks interesting - cooking videos for children.
http://www.spatulatta.com

supermassive

Your friend is a bit thick. Sorry.

It's like saying "You should never get in a car, you might crash and die" "You can't eat solids, you might choke and die" "You can't have a bath, you might drown".

If you learn to drive, eat solids & not inhale under water from a young age, then it's a life skill that's going to be helpful forever.

Alternatively, you can get your kid to cut using a spatula, and see how that works out. Only a spatula made of hypo-allergenic feather-like materials, though, in case there's a risk of owwies to their gripping hand. :rotfl:

RuthnJasper

I think it's great that the OP's son enjoys cooking and is learning how to use knives safely and creatively. My nephew and niece (9 and 4) both love cooking; part of their Christmas present is usually a box of truffles or little fairy cakes they've made (decorating skills are a bit random, but they taste nice!)

The only thing I'd be concerned about is a child using a mandolin slicer - but I don't 100% trust myself with them!

Wantobeasaver

Sounds like you're teaching your child a valuable life skill. Well done you :T

Jojo_the_Tightfisted

Mine sliced up strawberries and bananas from about three years old. By five, they were peeling carrots, making chunks of cucumber and slicing up halved apples. At about the same age, I was getting them to help me slice up crusty bread (my hands over theirs, the 'sawing wood' method). By ten, they were using the sharpest kitchen knives and had been introduced to a Chinese cleaver.

They still have all their digits.

The only things I'm a bit unsure about would be swedes and beetroot. But that because I still find they can be difficult, so I cut big pieces and then peel them if they're the cannonball like offerings you get sometimes.

(I pierce and steam squashes for a similar reason).


I can remember using knives for whittling sticks at about ten, the obvious Brownie Hostess Badge tea making - and being very unimpressed by my mother's knives after getting to use some halfway decent ones at camp.

Buying and taking a cheap mandolin slicer and a paring knife into school for home economics aged 11, however, wouldn't be allowed now - although DD1 definitely used to pack the same sort of things into a Tupperware box, wrapped in a tea towel - school knives have always been rubbish, and she was determined not to lose a finger due to having something blunter than a butter knife.