It's funny how developmental advances happen sometimes accidentally.
My daughter has been going to camp this summer at a fantastic place called The Barking Cat. Every day the kids go on adventures that as a parent with access to such a fabulous city, I wish I had the stamina for. The roster of places included The Met, The Museum of Natural History, The Marionette Theater, The Brooklyn Museum, The Guggenheim, Prospect Park playgrounds. The list goes on and on. Sure, we visit museums. But not four in a week. Every week.
Post- adventure the kids spend all afternoon creating art. I have been completely delighted with The Barking Cat and so impressed with how well Karen and Maria have run the program. Most importantly though, my daughter raves about it each day at pickup.
Campers are supposed to bring a packed lunch each day - fine for us because we use LaLa Lunchbox. But the other day I had one of those super tired accidental parental lapses in judgement. I prepared her sandwich in the morning and packed the other lunch foods. My daughter is not a crust fan so I trimmed the crust and, as usual, gave it to my son with his breakfast. Or so I thought.
At pickup, my daughter exclaimed "Mom! I loved taking off my own crust! Thank you for packing that knife!"

Oh.my.god. Did anyone hear that? Jesus. I packed a knife in my six year old's lunchbox? In an instant I tried (unsuccessfully) to think back to the morning... Was I using a butter knife? Or some kind of totally inappropriate Ginsu-type?
Clearly it all worked out fine, but still. I quickly opened the lunchbox and it was, in fact, a butter knife. And a dull one at that. Phew.

The good news is that now my daughter wants to cut off her own crust always. And despite the fact that I won't be sending her off with knives in her lunchbox any time soon, it's an exciting new level of self sufficiency (under the right circumstances of course!)