In the US it’s not crazy for kids maybe as young as 6 to make themselves sandwiches like a PB&J/Ham & Cheese either if parents have an emergency, or to take to lunch for themselves because parents didn’t have time. (Or you know, they’re neglectful)
So is there a go to food for children to make in other cultures?
EDIT: Sorry for phrasing it like teaching 6 year olds to cook is mainly to help parents. Personal experience of dad going to prison and mom working 12 hour days at early age shined through. So me being taught to cook wasn’t “This is a skill that’ll be useful as you grow older” but instead was a “Things are going to be rough, and sometimes things won’t work out with me being there when I need too, and I want you to be able to be okay in an emergency”. So cooked myself food when I was little probably a lot more than others, then when I was a teenager I was cooking dinner for the family a lot.
But makes sense it wasn’t the case for others! Still the curious, what other cultures teach their children to cook!
Curry-pickled herring with raw onion and caper on rye is the first dish served on our traditional Christmas lunch. Served with snaps.
Fish generally don’t go to well in a lunchbox. The most common are mackerel in tomato with mayonnaise and cod roe with rémoulade, but most kids would frown at it. Also, it requires a fork and knife to eat. The traditional lunch box sandwiches are made to be eaten by hand.
I just found some random photo from the web. Apparently it’s difficult to find a photo of our common lunchbox hand-served-rye-bread-open-sandwiches. Most are of restaurant high topped “smørrebrød”, which also requires knife and fork.