Child, 5, Cooks for Whole Family (And Becomes World Famous)

Just how capable are kids?

Super capable. Astoundingly capable. Unbelievably capable – when they’re allowed (or required) to rise to the occasion.

So, from time to time, it makes sense to remind ourselves (and our child protective service workers, cops, etc.) of this fact by observing kids in other eras and other places.

To see kids in one of those “other places,” we must recommend the Japanese show, “Old Enough.” That’s a 30-year hit featuring kindergarteners and even pre-kindergarteners running everyday errands. The children are sometimes weepy at first, but eventually, they all succeed. And no one is arresting their parents!

For another era? Gosh – kids did so much more in almost any earlier time. Here’s the Wikipedia entry on one young man whose circumstances forced him to grow up fast. The boy was born in 1890, and his dad died in 1895. Thereafter —

His mother got work in a tomato cannery, and the young [boy] was left to look after and cook for his siblings.^[1] By the age of seven, in 1897, he was reportedly skilled with bread and vegetables and improving with meat; the children foraged for food while their mother was away at work for days at a time.^[5] In 1899, his mother married Edward Park, but according to the 1900 census, his mother was widowed again. When he was 10, in 1900, [he] began to work as a farmhand….

By 12, this kid had dropped out of school. By 13, he’d left home and found a job painting horse carriages. Read the rest here.  It happens to be the bio of Harland Sanders, founder of KFC: Kentucky Fried Chicken.

The Colonel’s does not sound like an enviable childhood. But it reminds us that our culture breathtakingly underestimates the resilience and competency of our kids and seems delighted to blame and shame the families that refuse to do the same.

To help restore some perspective and make childhood independence a virtue again – and legal! Here’s our legislative action page. You can join our crusade to pass Reasonable Childhood Independence laws across America that say neglect is when you put your kid in DANGER, not whenever you take your eyes off them, including due to POVERTY!

Eight states down – 42 to go!