Yesterday Hubby took me out to a lovely dinner at a fairly upscale restuarant, 13 Coins. We sat at the dinner bar. It is a bar with high-backed comfy stools, styled after wingbacks. They afford privacy, but you can see the people along the bar. The whole thing faces the grill. You watch the 5 or 6 chefs preparing your food.
So, right after we were seated, a father and his about 16 yo daughter were seated next to us. Their food came before ours.
I couldn’t help but see the girl had no idea how to hold a knife and fork. She held the fork in her left fist and stabbed at her prime rib with it. Then, she tried doing the same with the knife. After a few futile attempts, she started eating her mashed potatoes by dipping her fork straight down into them. she would get just what stuck to the tines. After not getting enough that way she began using her fingers. Finally, her dad pulled her plate over and cut up her meat. She finished off the meat and potatoes with a combination of fork and fingers. Then she went after the broccoli. She just couldn’t figure out how to get a bite. Dad cut that up for her too.
I thought maybe she was brain-injured or blind, but once she was finished, she pulled out her iPhone and started texting. When she spoke to her dad, she sounded like a typical spoiled teen.
After we left I asked hubby if he had noticed her. He had. His take was, she only knew how to far fast food.
How sad is that!?
Maybe she was developmentally or otherwise disabled? My son is 14 and needs help doing a lot of things involving his hands, such as tying his shoes or cutting his meat, because of a medical condition. But I’m sure there’s no shortage of strangers out there judging my parenting skills when they see me helping him.
I have a friend whose 20-year-old son - upscale, hockey player, college student, dad’s an engineer - called her when the oil light came on in his car (that his parents paid for.)
I was with her at the time he called. Her advice: drive it to the dealership honey, have them look at it. Call me if you need me to pay for it.
I flapped my hands at her during the call and when she hung up, I suggested that she call him right back and have him check the oil level and go nowhere, because even a short drive with no oil can fry an engine.
<trilling laugh> “Oh, he doesn’t know how to check that stuff! He’s close to the dealership, he’ll be fine!”
What developmental (or other) disability would explain the girl being dumbfounded by a piece of broccoli yet nimble with an IPhone? Wouldn’t any dexterity issues that prevented one from successfully using utensils also affect using a smartphone?
She might have had cerebral palsy or another issue that affected her ability to grasp, making it difficult for her to use utensils but not difficult to type.
I went out with a girl in college who couldn’t cut her own steak (or wouldn’t try). She asked me to do it, which I did. I asked her how she was able to grow up without learning to cut a piece of meat. She said her mother always did it for her. :rolleyes:
Not necessarily. IIRC, any neruomuscular disability that disproportionately affects strength could cause this. That is, it takes significantly more strength to grasp a utensil and cut meat than it does to tap a screen. So, while all the neural feedback loops that allow for dexterity are intact (allowing her to use the phone), it’s possible she wasn’t physically strong enough to use utensils with sufficient coordination. This was also why she was holding the fork and knife in a fist and not all dainty and lady like.
My son’s disability affects his grasp, yet not his thumbs’ ability to text rapidly. If you saw him out in public doing any number of things, you’d think he was perfectly normal. Then when you saw me cutting his meat or his broccoli for him, you might go onto a messageboard to make fun of us.
First of all, I am not making fun of anyone, so why the hell are you saying this to me? Secondly, how does your son hold (grasp) his phone when he texts?