Kids are sociopaths. Some of you might have happy sheltered upbringings, but don’t pretend that is even remotely universal. During my time at school, I have been assaulted by: compasses, thrown coins, rocks, sticks, broken off metal strips, pencils, drawing pins, rulers, the edges of plastic folders, improvised rubber band slingshots and the handle of a jumping rope. I have been punched, kicked, and even bitten. Do I think adding knives to the mix is a good idea? Hahaha no.
Huge swathes of children are bullies or bullied. Even if you enormously trust your child to be angelic at all times, that knife will enter the circulation and be accessed by all of his or her friends or enemies.
You want to teach knife skills? The first thing to teach is that knives are serious, adult tools that must only be used when they have a necessary use, and until they have proven themselves to have an adult level of sensible-ness, should only be handled under direct adult supervision. Having a children’s knife that looks a lot like a toy directly works against that.
For some reason, parents are held accountable for such dire and extremely rare circumstances. I wonder if that’s because teaching such skills and boundaries, and only giving such presents to children who are of a responsible mindset, are a parents responsibility, and not yours.
Who says these are not for unsupervised use? For example, several people have already posted opinions to the effect that the only reason the child ought not to be bring the knife to school is to ‘humour adults’ and so not risk punishment. The very comments in this thread affirm that this knife, by virtue of its cuteness, is not considered a serious thing, when knives very much ought to be serious things in all circumstances.
You use the term concern troll a lot. I do not think you know what it means.
Did I just pass you while on my walk in the park? No kidding, I was just talking about how entitled bike riders are in my neighborhood, how dangerous a particular intersection is because they don’t yield to pedestrians, and I referred to them all as spandex perverts.
If this knife is used irresponsibly, it would not be merely the individual child that is liable to get hurt. Even if you believe that parents have an absolute freedom to fuck up their own kids and put them at risk, the threat to other children and people makes it a collective matter. Further, this is a comment thread, the point is that people are offering their opinions. Trying to stifle it with ‘it’s not your responsibility’ is rather silly to say the least.
Cory’s description is a bit misleading. Only the sperm whale version, not the pointy one, was designed for kids. “Blunt” refers to the lack of a point, not to the edge. The (annoyingly precious, boutique-y) site linked to describes the edge as “wickedly sharp”, and is marketing these as desk knives for adults, not as kids’ knives.
I recall reading an article by a famous Japanese woodworker, who said that as a child he and his fellow schoolchildren were required to have a knife in their bag for use in crafts as well as for pencil sharpening. They also had to know how to keep their knives sharp. I don’t know how long ago that was, but it’s probably the cultural context for the knife under discussion here. Judging by the comments, that approach does not translate well to a North American context. Here we don’t seem to think children are capable of anything more challenging than glueing Cheerios to a piece of construction paper (regular paper can cut you).
For the record, I got my first knife at the age of six or seven, and so far have cut no one but myself. I would wager that every commenter here owns and uses knives of some sort without thinking of them as weapons.
Yeah, these are cute and I prefer to sharpen my pencils with a knife if I’m not using something mechanical, but in the States your kid could be sent to jail for having one of these on them on school premises. It’s pretty easy to be put in the criminal system here, especially from public school.
I’d be concerned about that too. But “blunt” usually refers to the a non-pointy tip, in which case only one of these seems to be blunt. Where as “dull” usually refers to the dangerous condition of a not sharp blade. So who knows really. It can always be sharpened.
Do you now? You seem to define it as ‘someone who disagrees with me’. As opposed to the actual definition, that being someone who is arguing in bad faith, does not believe what he says he believes and is merely trying to cause annoyance, and so is not worthy of speaking to. If you genuinely think everyone disagreeing with you is a troll, you mean to say that you cannot conceive that anyone - anyone at all - might think that knives for children are bad, that they must be pretending. Seriously?
Even if you know what a troll is, which I have reason to doubt, please note that concern troll refers to something specific - that being someone who pretends to agree with you but in fact does not, hoping to undermine your position from within. As I profess not to agree with you at all, it is impossible for me to be a concern troll.
Honestly if you want to insult people on the internet, at least use the correct terms.
The fact that they specified ‘US resident’ makes me think they’re more concerned about cultural backlash (being expelled from school, vilified by others’ parents, etc.) than danger directly resulting from the knife itself.
At 7 yrs old I got a “Little Handy-Man” tool set. I proceeded in the following days too, cut a knuckle down too the bone with the “Carpenter’s Saw”. Smacked thumb several times with the Little Man Hammer. Played swords with screw drivers with sisiter, we both received scratches. In all, I learned from the experience.
I only have one thing to say for the “overpriced” crowd:
Unless you’re offering a rough equivalent to save us money, your opinion in this matter is never useful or welcome. When we meet the End of Days and alien nanobots swarm our solar system and convert all living tissue into computation power, your opinion on this matter will not have generated one electron’s-weight of mirth or mercy in furtherance of the human spirit. Absolutely no one in the history of mankind will ever care that you didn’t want something enough to meet its price. Epic novels will never be written of your lack of desire. Ships will not be launched to further your feeling that something is not worth your while. You might think that you are somehow contributing. I am here to disavail you of that notion. These comments only really serve to provide more mundane evidence that not all opinions are worth sharing, and that in fact most have no instrinsic value whatsoever.
Really depends if they’re your own kids or not. Definitely not ok to give to someone else’s child if the parents aren’t in on the plan, but if they’re your own spawn…
I like others here grew up in a household where I was taught proper use (and respect) for potentially dangerous tools. I had a pocketknife that I carried daily from age 8 or 9 on, and learned to shoot a rifle early. I also have never stabbed or shot someone.
I plan on teaching my own daughter proper usage and respect for tools when she’s old enough (she’s only 3, and we’re just starting to learn hammers). I honestly believe that if you don’t expose and instruct children in the use of the “scary” tools as well as the more pedestrian ones, that you grant the knife or gun or bandsaw, or whatever an almost mythical and undeserved status.
A knife is just a knife. Worry more about the person behind it than the tool itself.
