I laid awake this morning in bed composing a post about people teaching kids to be incompetent. I was awake because Z was awake. She feels that she needs to be supervised at all times. Therefore, she can’t be awake and entertaining herself. We have to be awake if she is awake. We can’t convince her otherwise.

This isn’t the only area where it seems that she’s being trained to stay baby-ish. She is certain that it is a crime to have a knife at her place setting in a restaurant. She carries on until you remove it even though:
A) it is a butter knife with which you could only hurt yourself if you poke it directly in your eye.
B) the fork is probably sharper
C) she will hand it to you to get it off her side so she would rather handle it than just ignore it.

Makes me nuts. It may be that I read the Free Range Kids blog too much but the idea that letting a six year old use a toaster is crazy risky is just wrong. Don’t even get me started on how hard I had to talk to get her to plug in my sewing machine. The plug is at floor level under a table. What is the point of small children if you can’t get them to crawl on their hands and knees for you?

But I wasn’t going to write the post until the matches. The SO picked up a box of matches. Z ran to another room. When I questioned this she stated authoritarily that if the box touched her she would die. I expressed disbelief. She told me that her mommy told her so. I said that she probably did but that it wasn’t true. (I try not to undercut her mother but this is getting crazy.) I told her that she would have to work hard to be killed by a box of matches. She has no idea how to light matches so I’m sure touching the box is safe.

How is it better to make a kid fearful of everything instead of teaching her how to navigate her world?