I wipe my own ass!

December 6, 2009 10:40 AM

What are children of different cultures expected to learn to do independantly at different ages?

For example, in most of Israel, kids by the second-third grade walk themselves to and from school.

This is just out of personal interest.

This is what sparked my interest.

posted by alon to Grab Bag (8 answers total)

This is kind of a big topic and, even though this is just personal interest, you might actually want to look at some of the research out there.
Here is a link to a gathering of course syllabi for anthropology courses related to childhood. These syllabi give reading lists that may point you toward some interesting things. Just one random example from one syllabus finds this book: Benjamin, Gail R. 1997 Japanese Lessons: A Year in a Japanese School through the Eyes of an American Anthropologist and Her Children. New York: New York University Press.
posted by gudrun at 11:06 AM on December 6, 2009 [1 favorite]

I recall when I was in Russia being amazed at how much earlier children there potty train. . . . 18 - 20 months being what my Russian friends all insisted was normal.
posted by zizzle at 2:07 PM on December 6, 2009

In Bosnia, ditto the potty training thing. We walked to school by ourselves in kindergarten. We began reading "serious" literature about three or four years before advanced American kids - in what might be the equivalent of fifth grade, we were reading the 'important' Russian authors. I babysat a variety of small cousins and neighborhood kids after school when I was seven - changing diapers and the whole bit - which wasn't unusual. And nothing bad ever happened either!
posted by Dee Xtrovert at 2:28 PM on December 6, 2009 [1 favorite]

This is less a matter of teaching than learned linguistics, but I was recently reading this book that states Japanese infants learn verbs rather than nouns first. I never realized that American infants almost always learn about 10-50 nouns before they start using verbs.
posted by zoomorphic at 2:53 PM on December 6, 2009 [1 favorite]

Brazilians are surprised/amused/disgusted to see my year-old son feeding himself. Many kids are fed by their caretakers well past the age of two. So the American thing of letting the child learn to feed themselves early on is considered out of place here.

Whenever he sees my kid eating, one acquaintance of mine always says, "That is so wonderful that he can feed himself. Our daughter didn't learn to do that until she was four." I don't know if he's exaggerating or not but I do know that my son gets really mad when people try to feed him!
posted by wallaby at 4:44 PM on December 6, 2009 [1 favorite]

We ate with forks most of the time in my house, but my mother (Asian) made sure I was proficient with chopsticks by age 4. She used to poke my knuckles if I was using them wrong and letting the chopsticks cross.
posted by twistofrhyme at 5:07 PM on December 6, 2009 [1 favorite]

I have a (white American) friend whose family moved to the rural high Andes when she was four years old. . . the village women were absolutely appalled that she'd reached the advanced age of four without being able to spin, knit, weave, or even prepare wool for spinning.
posted by KathrynT at 8:09 PM on December 6, 2009

Response by poster: Thanks all for the anecdotes! This is pretty fascinating.
posted by alon at 10:03 PM on December 6, 2009