Teaching Children to use Chopsticks
Posted: May 13, 2011 | Author: Doug 陀愚 | Filed under: Family, Japan | 8 Comments »
Parenting is a fun topic, but even more interesting when you consider multi-cultural parenting. I learned to use chopsticks in high-school at a local sushi/teriyaki restaurant (I ended up working there later), but until then I had never encountered them in my life. My first efforts were difficult, but with the determination of a 17-year-old, nerdy Japanophile I was able to learn. Over the years my skills with chopsticks have improved and even my wife comments I use them better than her. 
In fairness, she learned it as a child, and I learned it as an adult.
Anyhow, the issue then is how to raise our daughter to use chopsticks since she is as Japanese as she is American. I want to ensure she is “fluent” in both cultures and languages as possible, so things like chopsticks are essential, but unlike a fork which lets you “shovel” food, chopsticks require a lot of coordination for toddlers.
Fortunately, Asian people figured this out a long time ago, and you can easily get “training” chopsticks. My in-laws sent a pair of chopsticks (same brand as shown here), which makes it easier to grasp them, and keep the two “sticks” together. She uses these daily just as easily as she uses forks and spoons to eat her food, but it wasn’t always this way.
At first, she started using the training chopsticks around 3 years old, and she could only manage to pick up a few foods before she’d get frustrated. Sometimes we gave her fun foods to pick up like edamame (boiled, salted soybeans…delicious) which are firm and round, or chicken nuggets or other such things. She wanted to try them out, and over time she got much better at it.
The picture above shows her in a nearby Vietnamese Phở restaurant trying the chopsticks there. Chinese and Vietnamese chopsticks tend to be much longer and thicker than Japanese or Korean ones, so she struggles with it, but she likes to eat the noodles, so she tries anyway. Interesting trivia: metal chopsticks are popular in Korean culture, while in Japan they’re usually wooden. I learned this while eating at a friends’ home in Ireland a couple years ago, and they were Korean immigrants.
Anyhow, at the age of 4 and a half, Baby is now pretty good with chopsticks, and usually doesn’t want to use a fork or spoon anymore (unless she eats ice-cream ). She still prefers the training chopsticks, but can use them easily now, and sometimes she’ll brave regular chopsticks both when eating out and at home.
Of course, part of using chopsticks is to teach her proper etiquette. I mentioned some of these before, but to reiterate:
- A major cultural taboo is to stick your chopsticks straight up in a bowl of rice. It looks like incense sticks used in a funeral.
- Another major cultural taboo is to hand food to someone with chopsticks using your own (chopstick to chopstick, in other words). This use of two pairs of chopsticks looks like certain funeral rituals involving cremation as mentioned above.
- Using chopsticks to point at something isn’t very polite (just like any culture…pointing is bad).
- Don’t use chopsticks to sift through a bowl of food. Just pick something and put it in your own little plate.
- No elbows on the table, of course. Our daughter forgets this one constantly.
There’s no real “trick” to teaching children proper eating habits, American or Japanese, but it’s good to start young and let them ease into it. Asian parents have plenty of ways to teach children proper usage of chopsticks, and I can say that these do work. 
Hello, this blog is about my life as a father, Buddhist and Japanophile. Any useful information I can pass along will hopefully make the 
箸の使い上手です、ね。日本人より。This is a favorite thing Japanese people like to say to foreigners, so I suspect your wife is not giving you a genuine compliment
It’s like 日本語上手ですね、日本人より。
Another factoid: chopsticks used to be just one piece, a long flexible stick, maybe a willow branch or something, bent into an elongated U. So those beginner chopsticks are recapitulating their development.
Hi John,
Yeah I’ve heard that one before and, yes, it’s probably flattery. :-p My wife though told me in English, not Japanese (I think) and after 13 years of being together she’s pretty straight with me.
The 「日本語上手ですね」comments are kind of annoying at times (it sounds a bit condescending even if they don’t intend it), but I try to remind myself that’s it just a matter of protocol and to just move on. I’ve been told that if one’s Japanese gets good enough, people will stop saying that and talk to you normally, but clearly I have a long way to go (and I am not getting any younger).
Yes; being complimented on one’s skill with o-hashi (and probably also one’s speaking of Japanese) is just a compliment, not an accurate statement. It’s like the famous Japanese praise of the maker of a home-cooked meal: “My — it’s just like [whatever] in a restaurant!”, which is just the opposite of what Americans would say.
My experience when I offer my terrible Japanese to Japanese people, however, is that they don’t express any such praise at all; they just struggle to figure out what I’m trying to say, I guess. I think the tendency among many Japanese people these days is to simply expect that even gaijin will address them in Japanese, and if they can’t, or do it badly, that’s the gaijins’ problem. This is more like Americans’ attitude: of course everyone speaks English, and if they can’t, too bad.
Hi Jon,
I think you hit upon good point. Living in the US it’s easy to forget what it’s like to be a foreigner. But through my wife I learned that Westerners have ways of being condescending too. It’s just that we don’t notice until we live somewhere else.
Condescending is a very mild term for the attitude many Westerners have for Japanese and other Asians! By the way, I’ve been struck lately by how condescending many Westerners, both religious and atheist, are towards Buddhists. It seems that many people can’t understand how Buddhist teachings can be seriously practiced. So many people assume that any Westerner who shows an interest in Buddhism must be a silly “New Ager” who is just following the latest fad. (Not that there aren’t quite a few of such folks around, of course.)
No argument here. The way Buddhism gets portrayed in the media is kind of frustrating but so are the (usually well-meaning) questions I get in person. Oh well. Everyone has to start somewhere.
Learning to eat with chopsticks is quite frustrating at times, I had tried it with instant noodles it just did not work. Guess I should try picking up small objects with the chopsticks.
Hi Superscube, I know how you feel. It takes a lot of practice to laern the right amount of “grip”. Definitely try smaller, firmer objects first.