Would you let your 6yo mow the grass with an electric lawn mower?

[OhMowGod]

Supervised by their dad?

I say a big fat pissed off no.

His dad says Im wrapping him up in cotton wool and carried on regardless.

AIBU or is he?

Give him a lesson in how to do it and talk about the safety aspects. Make sure you have a circuit breaker just in case he goes over the flex.

Otherwise, let him get on with it!

I was cutting the hedge the other day with a bit of difficulty, and DS insisted on doing the top.
I had a sudden reality check because he's a foot taller than me.

DS (7) regularly cuts both ours and the neighbour's grass with DH. They take it in turns and have 'who can mow in the straightest line' competitions. He has been doing it since last year so he would have been 6. Hadn't given it a second thought until now.

Adds mowing to list of slack parenting :)

God yes.

DD 8 mows the lawn with a big old petrol mower. DS 6 cuts kindling with an axe.

With close supervision I think its fine :)

Of course a 6 yr old can. If properly supervised. If the child themselves is nature, interested and careful. Dh loves showing the boys saws, drills, hammers, lawn mowers, checking the oil in the car etc.
Some of you are just Molly- coddles, it's frightening.

No power tools , post 12. Oh purlease. God save me. This is MN at its worst.
The cubs , aged 9 are asked to cook a basic 3 course meal, with minimal supervision.
I find the cotton wool'ing of this thread, more than a little frightening.

At 6? No way - and I am a little lax at times and the whole h and S thingy - even I wouldn't do this.

Dis you read my post properly Oblomov? Or are you too busy frothing to think coherently?
Power tools post 12 without supervision, if the child is mature enough, able to read the instructions, keep their temper.
You know, grown-up stuff like that.

baloosta I assure you there was no 'arguement'.

Im known for being over sensitive and over protective of my children, so respect the opinions of MN for persepective.

I will continue to use MN for this as and when I need.

I find your reply surprising, you could give that reply to 90% of the threads on here.

Under close supervision no problem with it at all. It's good for childen to learn now to do things like that safely.

OP - what was the level of supervision, do you know?

My dp is supervising my son with a drill at this very moment and he's 9. So yes I would let them cut the grass. My youngest is nearly 6 and he could manage it with supervision.

yes, DS was doing this when he was 6 (mostly with my ex). He has now moved on to using my steam cleaner. For that I am in the same room, control the electrics and (pretend) am busy doing some other household job.

It is scary tbh, but DS is an only child, very stubborn and sometimes lacks confidence, so if he actively wants to help I do try to let him.

I don't think that a child of 6 really has the full mental capacity to know, think about and fully understand the dangers and consequences of what may very well go wrong in this instance.

Maybe a child of 9 or 10 (not mine, he wasn't allowed to mow until he was 14, but each child is different).

Can you imagine the raised eyebrows at A&E if it all went tits up? Fwiw one of our staff at school ran over his foot with the lawnmower a few years ago and sustained an injury that meant he was off work about 6 weeks.

Nope.

Under 7's do not have the spatial awareness to cross roads unsupervised, so using a potentially-lethal power tool ? Very easy to get distracted when you are "supervising" too. No way.

No problem under supervision imo

OP, if you've managed to get to whatever age you are without ever having mowed a lawn...why not give it a try and then perhaps you'll be less worried about your DS?

It depends on the definition of "supervised".

If dad is holding the cable I don't see a problem. My 3 year old pushes the petrol mower with supervision.

no, i wouldn't let them.

Interesting point about capacity. Read the manual. I think that if anything bad happened, eye damage/ amputated fingers or worse, questions about neglect could be raised by social services. This is not a cake mixer but a potentually lethal piece of equipment.

I think the level of supervision is key here.

If it meant an adult holding the cable whilst walking alongside the child, then maybe. If it meant watching from the window while the child attempted to mow a lawn then no bloody way.

Just a very quick search of the interweb retrieved the following from the Amercian Academy of Pediatrics (I'm sure that there is a UK guideline somewhere if anyone can be bothered to look..) and they recommend 12 as being the minimum age for a walk-behind power motor.

Link

Indeed re. level of supervision. Walking right beside carrying the cable is one thing, getting distracted by a pesky-looking weed that needs to be pulled is quite another. As we all know, accidents happen in the blink of an eye.

If it requires such a high level of supervision to make it safe, I would consider any activity like this to be a complete waste of my time. Easier and quicker to mow the lawn myself, give child the (equally important in their eyes) benign job of watering the beds (or similar) and everybody wins.

Why take un-necessary risks to give a child an experience it isn't ready for, just for the sake of it ? It doesn't compute for me.

my 4 year old has just pruned our trees with a chain saw.

what is wrong with you people!