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LOL! Is your husband one of those men who didn't know how to use a can opener when you met him?
No luckily by the time I met him he had already lived away from his mom for two years. He actually loves cooking but he was not allowed to do it at his parents' home. As soon as he left he bought a bunch of cookbooks and started experimenting. Lucky for me because I hate cooking.
Today we did a soup cooking project in the classroom. One of the spoon-fed trio (the other two were fine, wanted several helpings, fed themselves independently) followed me around the room for 10 minutes describing every possible reason she couldn't eat the soup - doesn't eat hot things, "allergic to rice", etc. She just couldn't seem to believe my pleasant, but broken-record reply: "If you choose to have some, that's fine with me. If you choose not to have some, that's fine with me too!" so she had to keep trying to elicit the beg-me-to-eat game from me too.
Anyway... I'm still planning on keeping my mouth shut but it makes me sure glad I'm not in either her or mom's shoes. A cultural thing or not, in her case at least it's pretty clearly also some kind of obsession interfering with the simple enjoyment (or abstention) of a meal.`
I am wondering if we work near each other... I too teach kindergarten and our kinder team of teachers has fought hard to discourage parents from running to the school to spoon feed. Most of us have developed pretty good relationships with the parents and have really had some heart to hearts about independence and socialization. You really need the "evidence" to get your point accross. I've been able to show parents that some of our most famous spoon fed students are repeating kindergarten and first grade because the parental spoon feeding is stunting growth in other areas. We have a student who is repeating kinder and she ignores the teacher's request to allow the child to eat with friends. I have let my parents know that (anonymous of course) these same students have difficulty making friends and expect the teacher to solve all of their problems. One little girl even stuck her chin out for the teacher to wipe it when something got on it. My parents get it after that. They bring the lunch but allow the kids to make it on their own. If that fails convince the kids that eating with friends is the "big kid" thing to do.
Would I do it? Nope. Do I care if someone else does? Not particularly. There are legions of Latino/a teens and adults who are independent, not particularly picky, and who can feed themselves with reasonable manners despite "excessive coddling" as little ones, so I figure this is really a non-issue.
And I'm always amused by people who raise issues like "are the parents going to do this when their kids (now kindergarteners) are adults?" Uh...golly, do you not think expectations change gradually over the years? Or shall we start expecting 5yos to drive, apply for mortgages, and get prostate exams-- because, well, they'll have to do it as adults, after all.
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spoon feeding madness
