protect her.
Perhaps cooking isn’t her thing?
clumsy or just spacey?
Love her.
Seal her in bubblewrap.
This may be the lesson she needed to learn, in terms that there are some chores where your mind can wander a bit and it’s not a big deal, but when dealing with instruments that can injure you if you aren’t always careful, better to stay focused.
Not everyone learns the same way and sometimes a brick to the head (or a knife to the fingertip) is required to cement a lesson into the brain.
Pad the corners?
Nerves...stress..lack of sleep...hangover....doing too many things at once...or....drum roll.....an accident.
I’ve seen it all working in restaurants in my younger days.
Remember, it can always be worse.
Any chance she gets nervous working on tasks around dad?
It sounds like she is trying very hard. Bless her.
Perhaps you were hovering and managing the task too closely, thus making her nervous enough to slice her finger. Harrassing your daughter appears to have negative effects. Consider trying another method to encourage her.
I know nothing about the culinary arts, which may be the root of my uninformed question.
Why are you using a mandolin to measure the thickness of cucumbers? Is that the musical instrument? How, pray tell, do you use a mandolin on a counter to cut cucumbers? Isn’t that incredibly awkward? If so, I’d think that working in a confined, awkward environment may throw off her “groove” and could lead to cuts.
She'll never have to cut cukes again!! Smart girl.
Maybe she’s like my daughter and gets tripped up (pun intended) by mere simplicity. Mine can do the most difficult gymnastics routines and tumbling passes but faceplants at least 10 times a day just WALKING. Not even chewing gum at the same time, either! :O
How about using the little ‘gripper’ that usually comes with those mandolins? I sliced the tip off one finger years ago — because I DIDN’T use the nailed gripper. Learned a big lesson!
It is not so much clumsiness as much as much as simply getting too close to the blade without realizing how close you are - sometimes because the vegetable changes its angle as you are slicing away, and you can be deceived by how close you are.
You do know what I’m talking about? The thingy that has some prongs to hold the vegetable, and a handle that protects your fingers or hand.
I wouldn’t read too much into this incident. Unless there is a lot more you are not telling us about.
It may be just ‘her’. My 12 yo daughter is very, very bright but loses things constantly and can’t find things that are directly in front of her. She gets very hurt when I point out these issues. My younger son, OTOH, could find a needle in a haystack and knows where everything is at any given moment. He’s dangerous, too, though, in his own way. The other day he programmed his sister’s phone so it’s all in Spanish, or “Mexican” as she said. He put a security lock on my cell phone and then changed the code, ‘just for fun.’ Like I said, DANGEROUS.