How and when do I teach my son to use chopsticks?

Question

Even though I live in the U.S., I find using a fork inefficient and clumsy. I'd like to teach my son how to use chopsticks as an alternative.

What is the best way to do this without interfering with his learning how to use a fork? Being proficient with a fork is still the higher priority, as chopsticks aren't very common around here (although we keep some at home).

He's 2 and a half now. When should I start?

How do families from cultures where chopsticks are the norm teach their children to use them? I've seen a variety of "children's chopsticks", where the two sticks are connected, but are they effective at teaching?

Answer 1

Our nearly-two-years old (23,5 months) son has been "using" chopsticks for about three months. We had an Asian stir-fry for supper one night and he wanted to use the chop sticks just like Mama and Papa so we gave him a pair. He managed to eat most of his plate (the noodles were easy, the tofu was crumbly and difficult!). He mostly used just one stick and shoveled it up and then switched back to his fork when it became too difficult.

Children are never too young to learn something new. My advice is to just give him a set whenever you're using them (in addition to his normal utensil) and he'll learn by watching you; no pressure. If it's not working for him, he can switch back (or use his hands!). Of course it's not a survival tool to use chop sticks as GdD points out, but who cares?! It was a lot of fun for him to do (and us to watch)!

Answer 2

My wife, who is from Taiwan, and I use chopsticks for most dinners. Our kids know how to use them, and what I did was take my cue from her: when they are old enough to hold a fork, they are old enough for chopsticks. When she was teaching them she stuck them together somehow, depending on where we were and what we had:

• The quick and easy method was put some folded paper at the end of the chopstick and tie it up with a rubber band, this gives a good space between the sticks and makes it easy for the kids to learn to pick them up.
• In some Chinese markets you can get kids lunchboxes. Some come with kid friendly chopstcks which are smaller, and you can combine them with the paper and rubber band to make them easy to use
• Some Asian markets either have a plastic clip you can put sticks in, and it holds them together, or you can find a rubber piece that holds the sticks in the same fashion but usually has a kid friendly shape - these are similar to the Children's Chopsticks you link to, and yes they worked for us

They watched us and tried on their own, and it worked well. Only problem was the type of food they used; rice and small things are hard, so we gave them spoons for that.

I wouldn't worry so much about forks, unless you are eating some type of Asian food for every meal there are still plenty of fork-centric meals available.

Answer 3

Kids enjoy chopsticks. You can start with beginner chopsticks, which are joined and sprung, well before they can use a fork. Noodles are especially fun, and make dinner an excellent game.

Our kids started using real chopsticks at about 4 years old, mostly to copy us as we really enjoy Thai and Chinese food.

Just do it. It gives them an extra thing they can do, and may help them feel more comfortable if they are out at a Chinese restaurant.

Answer 4

I wouldn't worry about interfering with learning to use a fork or spoon; young children can learn and master all kinds of different things all at once without getting confused. Kids can easily learn to speak multiple languages. Besides, you don't teach kids to use a fork before moving on to the spoon, right? What's important is to expose kids to things at an early age and give them opportunities for regular practice.

Using chopsticks properly requires a certain grip and technique; it's not just a matter of squeezing two sticks together to pick something up. When using chopsticks, the proper technique is to hold the bottom stick stationary while the top stick is the one that actually moves to pick things up.

The training chopsticks like the ones from Edison (pictured above) have finger rings to teach proper finger placement and grip (similar to kids pencil grips) and should help to develop this technique and reduce the initial frustration. They also have fun characters to make it interesting for the kids. It's still not exactly like real chopsticks, but it will help build confidence to make the transition to the real thing. They even have a stage 2 version that has the pivot point at the fingers instead of at the end.

Also it helps if the adults are all using chopsticks, since kids will naturally want to do whatever the "grown-ups" are doing and it will seem normal to them. Finally, you want to serve food that is easy to pick up with chopsticks; there should be small pieces with flat sides and not too oily or slippery. You don't want anything too small or round like peas. Noodles are easy too. Rice is good if it is properly sticky. (This is part of the reason why Asian food doesn't have big slabs of meat like steak or pork chops.)

Answer 5

My wife is Asian and we live in her home country. Our daughter is four and she just starting to use chopsticks about a year ago. It takes time to develop the fine-motorskills and she sees everyone around the table using chopsticks three meals per day. That said, I also teach her to use a fork and spoon.

I think four is a good age to start to learn but I also let her play with them. With time, she just figured it out. By now, she can eat with chopsticks. Not perfectly but well enough that she won't go hungry.

My advice is to start now by having 'asian' night once or twice per week and let her start to get comfortable. Young kids can sort out problems much more quickly that we adults can.

Good luck!

Answer 6

2.5 years is plenty good an age to start using chopsticks. Our children both used them well before 2. We never taught them though.

Beside all the creative answers here, I would suggest a more psychological approach.

We all love to cook in the family, and the little ones would hang around to help in the kitchen when we prepared the food. Often times, some part of it involved using chopsticks to stir, and the kids jumped in to help because they were curious and just being kids. It's all play and learn to them. They naturally picked up the chopsticks and naturally appreciated their intrinsic effective value through use/play.

They also love to eat. We pay a lot of attention to the food we cook, and luckily they loved practically everything we made. We also had special treats nearly twice a week if not more. Somehow, teaching them to use chopsticks never crossed our minds. We never used any training chopsticks, nor spent any teaching time. I particularly think the training sticks are like bicycle training wheels, the longer you keep them on, the more you prolong the dependency and lessen real use.

Make the food so enticing not only in taste and texture but in how fun it is to savor, and the use of chopsticks essential to its enjoyment and your son will get it done in 5 minutes.

You can even create a game, or a ritual, on something really good that he absolutely enjoys. Suppose you encase a delicious and attractive treat inside a jello pudding, and use chopsticks to pick it out as a game. With some simple rule about using the chopsticks to get to the candy -- he'll get it done!

Have fun!

Answer 7

How many adults or teenagers do you know who are eating with their fingers because using tools is too hard? Right, not that many.

I wouldn't worry too much about him "learning to use a fork". Just use chopsticks some meals (the little plastic holder that holds them together is great) and fork and spoon other meals.

Our 4 and 2 year olds each with chopsticks very occasionally (when we are having sushi or otherwise think of it) and they're more or less figuring it out.

If he doesn't think it's fun with the chopsticks (or with the fork for that matter) just put it away and try again a few weeks or months later.

Answer 8

At 2 and a half I'd concentrate on his learning good fork and spoon skills as that's what he needs in the US. Chopsticks are great to learn, but in the US it's more a skill to impress your friends and look cool than a survival skill. Once he's got the utensils that he's going to use in nursery school and kindergarten down pat go ahead and move on to chopsticks.

As for how to teach him I'd just hand him regular chopsticks and let him soldier on. Training chopsticks don't really translate into real chopstick skills, they just let someone think they're using chopsticks.

Answer 9

In the U.S., no matter what, kids will learn how to use Western utensils well eventually since they are everywhere (schools, restaurants, friends' houses). They will not learn to use chopsticks as well unless taught at home, so I would suggest doing that. My mom says I learned at age 2 to actually pick up food with chopsticks, so it should be doable. It's possible that it was the only utensil I had, so I had to learn it quickly. Chopsticks are great for motor skills though. Asian people also tend to have pretty good drawing skills, which may be in part due to these motor skills.

My cousins' kids weren't taught to use chopsticks at home (all 4 of them from 3 sets of parents, ages 3-8), and I can see them struggling to try using them whenever we eat at Asian restaurants. They want to use them, but give up shortly since they don't know how and never had practice. So giving them chances to practice at home really would only benefit them.