Thanksgiving and children without knives

It's Thanksgiving. I love the holiday and have had two full days enjoying my children already. We went Christmas shopping yesterday and picked up some last minute dinner items for today. Then we came home, baked pies and wrapped Christmas presents. Yesterday it was enjoyable watching each child attempt more complex cooking preparations than they had the year before.

This morning my three youngest were back in the kitchen again, voluntarily helping me make a banana cream pie and a cheese cake pie. What happened next had me laughing out loud. First the banana wouldn't peel.

I reached for a knife.

My son turned the banana upside down, pinched the black nub on the end and the peel split right open.

Then the cream cheese wouldn't open.

I reached for a knife.

My youngest daughter snatched up the cheese, separated the foil, found a tiny red arrow and pulled. The package opened right up.

Then we needed to open the whipped cream...the kind with the plastic seal around the lid.

I reached for a knife.

And my other daughter...yup, you guessed it...knew how to open the container with just her fingers.

I got the biggest laugh out of that...you could tell I've restricted their knife usage and so they've learned to open up things the way they were designed to be opened.

I was also amazed the packages COULD be opened without a knife! So many years I've been dependent on forged steel and my children could handle it with their bare fingers. I wonder how many other things I've overdone in my life when all I needed to do was step back and watch a child handle it.