Project Sekong 2013: Lao Children Learn By Doing And Are Assigned Work At An Early Age.

It must be difficult for Lao parents who migrate to the west, to establish reasonable boundaries for their children. In Laos, there is little observance (or even understanding) of the concept of “childhood” as we know it in America. People here are young or old, big or small, but youth are not assumed to be living in a division of time called “childhood” — a time of life in which an individual is spared from work and sheltered from challenging life experiences.

Here, as soon as children have the physical strength to perform a task, its likely that they will be assigned a new chore, regardless of certain inherent dangers. I regularly see children using tools that, in the US, would be kept well out of their reach. Children here, cut, saw, and pound using adult tools. They build fires, fry food, and tend boiling kettles.

When I show American students the photo pictured above, they commonly ask me, “Does that little girl’s mother know that she has that knife?” I tell them, “Her mother GAVE her that knife. So she can chop vegetables and help prepare dinner.”

“But what will happen”, they ask, “if she cuts herself?”

Her mother will tell her: “Next time, be more careful.”