Sure, toddlers may want to help, but let's face reality here. At first, they really can't do much. They can be clumsy, destructive and even enraging. Their involvement in chores often slows things down or makes a mess.
For this reason, many parents in Western culture rebuff a toddler's offer to help, Mejia-Arauz says.
"We have mothers tell us things like, 'I need to do a chore very quickly, and if my toddler tries to help, he makes a mess. So I'd rather do it myself than having them helping,' " she says.
People think it saves time and trouble to push their kids around in strollers instead of letting them walk (very slowly at first), set them in walled cribs for 12 hours per day instead of letting them move about, sit them in high chairs to eat, get them to play in small fenced places with no sharp corners, let them stay in little rolling walker chairs, pre-process all their food into mush, not let them climb up or down stairs, not let them climb up the slide, not let them throw things, rush over and smother them at every tiny trip, ....
By the time the kids are 3 or 4 they are still insisting on being carted everywhere, are weak and uncoordinated compared to their less sheltered peers, are timid and less willing to follow their curiosity, and don’t know how to do anything. In the long run the parents are forced to babysit them much more closely for much longer, can’t rely on the kids to help with anything, deal with worse tantrums, etc.
Long-legged "high" chairs raise the child to a comfortable table height. How else do you expect then to sit at the same table as much taller people?
Giving soft food, to people with no teeth, also just seems entirely sensible. We pretty much all just ate the same food at family meals, but even then we'd mush vegetables and pre-chew meat (from about 5-6 months). Otherwise the child is just going to be swallowing under-chewed food and have digestive problems.
People marvel at how our 2yo walks but a few hundred meters (it's bizarre!), if they're not doing a couple of K a day how do you even tire them out! When they're too big for a sling they need to walk.
The problem is not with sitting in high chairs ever, at any age. The problem is with being carted from one stationary place to another and never getting to move about, even up through age 3 or 4.
My kid eats at least half his meals standing on his feet, starting when he was 14 or 15 months old, either on the kitchen floor with a low table, or on chairs at restaurants. Another quarter of meals he is sitting in a high chair. The last quarter he is sitting on someone’s lap or a booster seat or some other arrangement.
But someone could certainly sit in a constrained chair for every meal up through age 2 and still manage to get plenty of time to move independently. From age 2.5 or 3 kids could be sitting on a Tripp Trapp chair or the like, something that lets them sit at the table without being stuck.
Eating soft and pre-processed food is similar: kids who don’t have any molars yet can’t chew much, but I see 3-year-olds eating nothing but mushed up food. Biting and chewing hard foods is what the jaws and teeth were evolved to do, and if they don’t get a chance they don’t develop properly. I had friends whose parents cut the crust off their bread, shelled nuts for them, peeled shrimps, only ever gave them boneless pieces of meat, etc. even as teenagers; we shouldn’t be infantilizing people who aren’t infants.
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Sure, toddlers may want to help, but let's face reality here. At first, they really can't do much. They can be clumsy, destructive and even enraging. Their involvement in chores often slows things down or makes a mess.
For this reason, many parents in Western culture rebuff a toddler's offer to help, Mejia-Arauz says.
"We have mothers tell us things like, 'I need to do a chore very quickly, and if my toddler tries to help, he makes a mess. So I'd rather do it myself than having them helping,' " she says.