White dude wrote a thread about how he 'taught' his hungry 9 year old to use a can opener; 'figure it out' The child was in tears unable to figure out how to get the opener to align with and bite the increasingly damaged can for 6+ hours, during which time she didn't eat anything

Leaving aside all the incredibly abusive elements of this, I want to talk a bit about the things I've learned about teaching children, something I've spent a decade doing.

1) Kids, even very young kids, are incredibly perceptive, intelligent, curious, and sensitive.

2) Kids can figure out very complicated things on their own (I taught media analysis/fiction writing ages 7-16), but they need to be given the parts.

ALL my kids knew what a character arc was, but would not have been able to give you the words 'character arc' in a million years.

To repeat, I didn't teach them what a character arc was. They already knew what it was, I just pointed it out to them so they could see the patterns.

Same for plot structure, grammar, punctuation, etc. They all knew what these things were, but not necessarily how to apply them.

Kids can absolutely figure things out, but because they're kids and lack life experience, they have to have what they need in front of them.

You don't tell them 'find all the apples in this picture' and then surprise 'there's two in the shopping bag!'