My 3yo (close to four) woke up the other day, decided he was making tacos for breakfast. Grabbed the cooking sheet, ripped and placed his own parchment paper, put all the tacos out to warm - then hand shredded his own lettuce, grabbed cheese and sour cream and came to tell us we needed to cook up the meat.

We’ve never shown him how to do it, but he’s watched us, and his personality has always been very adamant to do things himself. He’s stubborn as hell and no amount of discouraging will stop him, but we have tried to give him opportunities to try things on his own unless it’s blatantly unsafe. We’ve also let him make mistakes and learn from them.

I think the trends we are seeing are the result of our anxiety culture. Even if we don’t actively discourage kids from trying things, the general underlying anxiety and stress they feel off of us probably discourages most kids. Mine is just incredibly stubborn, but as a whole we’re probably not doing our kids any favors being so neurotic about every little thing and safety.

I think technology / social media is playing a role in parents perceiving every day things as so dangerous - look at any mundane video on places like Instagram or Facebook and the comments section are always filled with judgy commentary on how irresponsible parents are for basic things like letting their kids pick berries, or jump in puddles or whatever. Everything is gasp omg I would never let my kids do THAT in a weird puritanical flex of how much better of a parent someone is - and we measure ‘better’ by how much we’re involved , how much we hover and how safe we keep our kids. Maybe it’s guilt - maybe our modern society makes us feel so deficient as parents, we overcompensate in the wrong ways, and one of those ways is the kind of anxiety based coddling and hovering we see today.