Do your children use cutlery correctly?

[bravoyankee]

My children are 9 and 7 and still use their cutlery in the wrong hands. They are rubbish at cutting food and my dd stabs food with her fork facing the wrong way.
I've told them a thousand times and they still don't do it right.
We were at a family meal with my 2 and 2 x 10 year olds at the weekend and all 4 of them held their cutlery in the wrong hands.
They both have school dinners every day so they use cutlery at least twice a day and still haven't got the hang of it.
Any suggestions?
I'm sure I was reminded daily at school to swap my hands over when eating school dinners. Do they not do that these days?

I eat left handed. There is no right or wrong way. Just a useless and outdated load of bollocks. We don’t tell kids not to write with their left hand anymore so I would hope this will also fade as an unnecessary point of manners.

Mine are at secondary.
One would still eat everything with her fingers given half the chance! She is not given half a chance!
She has dyspraxia.
The other uses her cutlery in the wrong hands (left handed).

I am also a primary school dinner lady. There are sometimes only three of us on duty to usually 90 children, but that's not the same as one adult directly supervising 30 children as we have different jobs to do in the hall.

All of us help each other out where possible (one ticks children off the register, one supervisors puddings and seats, one floats- chopping, opening, helping children etc), but it is noisy and hectic and not at all comparable to a parent teaching their child in a calm environment, and of course modelling good table manners or eating together.

Cutlery is standard canteen cutlery - not blunt children's knives, but not as effective as the stuff most people have in their homes.

None of us have time to teach children how to hold their cutlery correctly. Most kids year 1 and up can manage to chop up ok though. A few I have had to show how to spear food onto a fork, but they learn quickly.

Sometimes they have co ordination issues, or are not naturally with a dominant hand. Does it really matter?

You know that by making remarks like this you are giving yourself away as a nasty little Hyacinth Bucket, right?

I am left handed and cannot physically eat with my knife in my right hand. Not one person in real life has ever passed comment on this. It’s only on mumsnet where it’s seen as an issue (by massive weirdos who think an obsession with ‘etiquette’ is a sign of class, when in fact the opposite is true).