Robertson Tribe Updates

Allen came to our home for breakfast Saturday morning. We were having pancakes with REAL maple syrup (brought over in our shipment, ). Allen had never had pancakes and was ready to try them. He’s a great sport about trying anything. We fed him all sorts of new things when he came to see us in the US. Anyway, we served it to him, and he picked it up in his hands and started eating. The kids sort of looked at him funny, as they waited for their butter, syrup and a fork. He liked it just fine plain and wonders why everything we eat is so sweet.

He finished his pancakes and was staring intently at L, who is 3. I had cut her pancake up into pieces and she was carefully stabbing a piece, dipping it in her syrup and happily munching away. He said, “How old is she? She uses a fork?!” I told him how old she was and yes, she used a fork. She’d been using a fork for a while. Was that strange to him? He was shocked! He said children in China are only given spoons to use until they are older. He was 6 before he was allowed to use a fork! (He never mentioned chopsticks, so I don’t know, to answer the question you are all asking in your head).
Allen kept worrying that she would hurt herself and was concerned that we would let her have a fork. He said to hubby, “Aren’t you worried she will poke herself in the mouth?” Hubby said, “Nope. If she sticks herself in the cheek, she’ll pull.the.fork.out. She’s very self-regulating that way.” (How’s that for engineer speak. See what I deal with? )

This whole thing shed a little light on why we are always stared at as we eat in restaurants. They must think we are horrible parents for giving our children utensils! It also explains why the children’s utensils get whisked away as soon as we sit down and toddler utensils (which are dull and useless as far as our kids are concerned) are brought back to us. We are western, we have four children, they all have blue eyes like Daddy, and we use forks. Yup, we’re pretty strange all right.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 28th, 2008 at 12:06 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.