Well.. forks anyway!

We have primarily used plastic silverware for the kiddo ever since he started eating solid food. Our problem came when he started using forks. Plastic forks do not last long. If they’re sharp enough to actually pick up anything (which usually they weren’t), they get bitten to oblivion long before the spoons wear out. In fact, our spoons are fine. The forks though, were a mess.

Our last set was the Ikea plastic children’s cutlery, and the spoons and knives in this set are great (not to mention the price). The forks, though, look like they’re about to be decapitated. We were in need of new forks, but I couldn’t find anything I was happy with. I didn’t want to spend $20 on one set of silver cutlery because that really wouldn’t help. I just needed some kid-friendly forks. That was all.

Then, over Turkey Day at my cousin’s, I discovered that her kids (7 and 9-ish) use the dessert and salad forks from her proper silverware. The Boo followed suit and seemed really happy with the “little forks”.

Well. Isn’t that clever.

So I went in search of dessert forks. After all, we don’t have “proper silverware” (an ongoing discussion in our house as this bugs me). My first stop was Oneida, and we even ordered some that were on sale, but turns out putting sizes on their site would have been helpful. They were the same size as adult forks, and besides that, too heavy. So returned those.

Then I stumbled on the cutlery at Ikea. Well damn if they didn’t have exactly what we needed for $6 for a set of 6! These are the Dragon dessert forks. I was so excited! Actually I’m still excited and I love these little forks, as does the Boo. They also sell “coffee spoons” from the same set that I’m half-inclined to get, even though we don’t really need any. The plastic spoons are still working fine. I just like the metal ones :)

So there’s my parenting a preschooler tip — dessert forks work extremely well, and can be very inexpensive. Yay!

Now as for my own silverware situation…

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 26th, 2008 at 10:37 am and is filed under Parenthood. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.