We have a problem.
The child does not like to use a fork. I dunno if it’s hard to handle the food with a fork, or it’s just muscle memory from time gone by, but boy oh boy does this get under BW’s skin1
It’s not like this is a recent thing too. We’ve been yelling FORK! at our little charge for what seems like forever.
Every. Night.
At 2-years-old, you can see that using a fork would be hard to manage. And even at 3-years-old most days one might not expect fork usage , but at four and five it would should be an improvement over time and one would expect that by the time she’s school age that she would be fully trained in fork usage.
Yeah…… NO. Not here.
It’s not like we haven’t tried, but her impulse is to use her hands to eat and she’s getting much too old for that. I told her if you’re going to be a Taylor Swift fan, you have to eat with a fork - it’s right there in the swiftie manual. Page 42.
It’s the left hand that seems to be the problem. She can be holding her fork in her right hand and yet use her left hand to bring the food to her mouth.
She CAN do this, but she forgets or just takes the easy way out and says F*** IT, I’M using my hands to eat. Whatever it is, we’re working on it. She will correct herself if she is reminded but it’s not a habit yet and I’m not sure where we’ve failed as parents.
We’ve tried sitting beside her and holding her left hand while she eats, We’ve had her sit on her left hand, we’ve had her put her left hand on her head and nothing really works.
All is not lost and some improvement has been seen lately so the dinnertime chorus of “fork fork fork!”2 has been getting less and less but just in case you have to sit with us at dinner anytime soon, you have been warned.
If we go out for dinner you’ll want to seat us in the back by the kitchen until this for thing gets sorted out.
I’m sure this will all work out over time and if it doesn’t I don’t want to be at the wedding table3 when BW gets up and yells FORK! one last time at the bride.
And if not - we’ll just serve finger foods.
Use your fork.
TH and Co.
mine too. good table manners are essential.
this would be a great name for a Swedish punk band.
By the time this happens it will probably be myself that’s having trouble with fork usage.
have her hold a fork in both hands :-)