I remember cutting chart paper (thin card stock), then corrugated cardboard which was easy unless you were cutting perpendicular to the grooves and finally heavy card which, I agree was finger bruising. There's also some amount of fun in improvising tools from what you have around you. I'm wandering dangerously close to the "back in my day" territory but nevertheless. I think there's a place for childrens tools that are close enough to the real deal but still safe. However, going too far away from the real deal makes it just a toy.
I got my son some balsa, sandpaper and a sharp knife. I also got him a pair of gloves which were resistant to the blade. Showed him how to use all of those and he's quite good with his hands. Carved a few trinkets for his friends.
I remember an article about, I think the Inuit, exposing their kids to cutting tools early on in their lives. Can't find the link. Perhaps there's some kind of optimal point in between that balances between "real" and safe.
With proper education, children (obviously) are safe around tools... Louis Braille notwithstanding. We've had sharps for 40,000 years. Use this one. Don't touch that one until you're bigger. Same as crossing the road: small ones OK; big ones DO NOT GO THERE.
The problem lies in the words "proper education". Dropped off at school is not sufficient, so kids get blunt scissors that will barely cut.
Your mind will play tricks on you, the last thing you'll think before the accident is 'this is safe'. In machining a technique to fight that thought is - don't touch anything with your finger that you wouldn't touch with your 'pecker'. With falling asleep while driving you'll often think a little nap wont hurt - an absolutely ridiculous thought in hindsight but you're not working with 100% of your faculties 100% of the time.
There are many activities where accidents are rare but severe resulting in overconfidence. In activities like motorbike riding or gliding aircraft people will convince themselves that they're skilled enough when all that has happened is that they've been lucky, and given enough instances their luck will eventually run out. Knowing the stats can help avoid confusing luck with skill.
I generally study the stats and even I get caught out, usually when working while fatigued so I simply have to refuse to work when that happens - the accidents are not worth it.
My woodworking teacher in highschool was missing two fingers on his right hand. I don't think anyone is 100% safe around tools, child or adult, educated or otherwise. Life's about risks and how you manage them.
Which is not to say that kids can't be trusted to use tools! It's just that they're probably more vulnerable to overconfidence and complacency than adults, who are by no means safe from these things themselves, so it's probably better to let them cut themselves once or twice on a sharp knife before you let them use something with more permanent consequences, like a bandsaw.
In my observations the most overconfident and complacent tool users are the ones with the most experience, not the least. But perhaps it depends on the kid.
I probably stated that the wrong way. I think kids are more prone to overconfidence at any given skill level than adults, and checking in on them helps reduce the risk. It also helps for adults, but we're mostly not responsible for what adults do.
I was working on wood 3d model and one piece broke, and I was trying to cut a replacement out of the extra wood available, and couldn't get a cutter to work.
I thought left-handed scissors are some bullshit sales tactic to eke out some extra cash out of clueless people, until I saw someone on HN explain why "handedness" of scissors is a thing - and then I finally connected the dots and realized why my (then) 4yo daughter is struggling with scissor crafts so much. Got her a pair of left-handed scissors and, lo and behold, her cutting improved on the spot.
(We then bought some more and gifted them to her kindergarten, to make sure she and other left-handed kids have a pair when needed, because the idea was new even to some of the personnel there.)
The thing about being left-handed, is that as you get older, you generally become reasonably proficient at doing things right handed, because the world is built for right-handed people, but from my experience, never quite get the same level of control.
I do quite a few things right handed, some I only do right-handed; and interestingly, I have more strength/power in my right arm/hand but have more control with my left.
Left-handed scissors are something I've known about ever since I can remember, but given how infrequently I use them, I've never bothered to buy a left-handed pair, and continue to just struggle along the couple of times I do need to use them.
My kids seem to switch back and forth between left and right, but they're still young, so I'm keeping an eye out for either of them being left-handed so I can help make things easier for them (an excuse to get some left-handed scissors perhaps?) if it does turn out to be the case.
My house has a number of left-hand scissors for me and my wife, but only since half a decade or so. For most of our lives right-handed scissors dominated, and no one ever seemed to care in schools etc., whereas we did get left-handed fountain pens at some point.
My son, fortunately for him, is right-handed. I have no doubt that this saves him a lot of frustration.
If you are left-handed and reading this, get yourself some nice left-handed scissors. Trust me.
> no one ever seemed to care in schools etc., whereas we did get left-handed fountain pens at some point.
Older generations were actively trained to 'become' right-handed. My father at school used to get slapped on the hand with a ruler by the teacher, whenever he took his pen in the left hand.
> whereas we did get left-handed fountain pens at some point
Writing was the bane of my life in high-school, where they insisted we use fountain pens; I had no idea left-handed fountain pens existed. Even with a more suited pen, I imagine it wouldn't resolve the issue of running your hand through the wet-ink you've just laid down.
That was some decades ago now, and I intend never to write with one again, so there's that.
EDIT: I just realised I still have my the last fountain pen I used at school (25+ years ago?) in my pen-holder and grabbed it, it's a Parker Frontier, steel with "gold" accent/clip. I still have a strange fondness for that pen despite not ever wanting to write with it again.
I think it was one of those phases education went through. My writing isn't bad even, but that is despite some of the pedagogical approaches in vogue at the time. I remember getting a left-handed work book for practising the loops and waves in the first grade as a step before actual writing, and the approach used went so far as to demand left-handed children write with a backwards slant! Pure lunacy for kids learning to write. I never accepted that idea and just went on smudging my paper until ballpoints took over.
Now I write using a Japanese Kurutoga mechanical pencil. No pens for me if I can help it.
