A Little Backwards

Little Sojourner demonstrating how it's done.

For my first eight plus years of parenting I taught my little sojourners how to sit at the table, eat over their plate, use a napkin, politely decline when they didn't like something, etc.  You know...all the normal manners stuff!

Then, for the last year I have been teaching them (and me!) to squat around a communal bowl, eat with your right hand, eat out of "your section," not reach across or step across the bowl, eat even when you don't want to know what it is, be gracious when those who have very little share what they have, etc. etc.

You only eat with your right hand because your left hand is your potty/nose picking hand.  Literally in the local language "right" is "rice side" (the hand they eat rice with) and "left" is "nose side" (the hand they pick their nose with).  Awesome.

Now if I could only convince my kids not to pick their noses at all.  We don't have to be that cultural!

Learning as I go,


*Linking up with Tuesdays Unwrapped at Chatting at the Sky!  Also linking up with Try A New Adveture Thursday at Alicia's Homemaking.