Kids these days

Visiting friends with children this weekend, I was astonished as always at how messily kids seem to eat these days. I've seen some who were already at school, but at meal times would be wrapped up in a plastic gown to keep the spillage from their clothes. My earliest recollections of eating properly (i.e. with knife, fork and spoon) were at about age 3, when I know I was scraping dishes clean to get every last scrap. Perhaps kids are being fed too much simply accidentally, so they have no incentive to worry about waste.

Though the particular messy eater in question has other naughty habits. On a previous visit, he started pawing at the pie put out for dessert while dishes were being fetched, and was told off. This time he was doing it again, reaching out with the fork he'd kept from main course (he being the last to finish eating), claiming, when told off that it was because he was still hungry that he was wanting to help himself. I pointed out that if that were true, there was a lot of his dinner still on the table around him for him to eat, and was told "I can't eat that. It might be rotten."

Someone, it seems, is overdoing the food hygiene message, methinks, if a six-year-old is parroting such.