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This is amazing! This is the sort of thing that makes me want to have kids––the opportunity to turn whatever life throws at you into an awesome DIY science proj

by amha 9y ago

This is amazing! This is the sort of thing that makes me want to have kids––the opportunity to turn whatever life throws at you into an awesome DIY science projects. (Though, I guess I could do it without kids, too––but imagine how cool it would be to be a kid growing up in this kind of household!)

tyingq 9y ago
I had a fair amount of exposure to this kind of thing solely because I grew up in the 70's. Families didn't spread as much geographically. So, I got lots of great experiences with aunts, uncles, cousins, neighbors, sharing things they knew, etc. Also, there was more freedom for me to interact with strangers. No cell phones, etc, so my parents couldn't really manage me real closely. Big potential downsides, of course.
smoyer 9y ago
As a parent of four kids, I'd encourage you to decide to have kids based on some other criteria - you can do this project without the presence of kids. However ... taking your comment in the spirit in which I'm guessing it was intended, my wife and I have had a lot of fun helping the kids try almost anything they were interested in. There's simply no reason to limit a child's curiosity (and I'd argue that many of us here are those whose childhood curiosity survived somewhat intact). Kids interests can change weekly and we just let that happen. We did usually require that they finish a project once they started it. One example is that I was digging fence-posts and commented to my wife that, under the top-soil of what was once our farmette, there was a layer of clay. Of course my daughter pictured the type of clay that artists use (and a pottery wheel) but did you know that, with the right amount of water added, you can mold Pennsylvania (US) clay just fine. And you can do a reasonable job of firing it on a patio grill (don't try glazing it). I was brought up helping my dad around the house and we also extended this to our kids ... if we didn't know how to do something we learned it together. And so now our kids (the two who are adults and out-of-the-house) will do much of their own maintenance. My daughter's first car is a '71 Super Beetle in which she completely restored the interior. I helped her weld new cooling manifolds which was the only exterior/mechanical problem with the car. Finally, there are lots of kids that don't have parents (and plenty that have absentee parents. Here in the US you can volunteer with Big Brothers / Big Sisters and "borrow" a kid for a limited amount of time. Volunteering is also a great way to help the next generation of "makers" grow in their craft!
- killgrove 9y ago
  When I was a kid in the 80s, my dad started something called "Family Home Evening." We'd get together and my brother and I would ask questions like "where does lightning come from?" or "does coke rot your teeth?" We'd look up info in our Encyclopedia Brittanica (ha!), and often do experiments (like putting my dad's extracted wisdom teeth in coke). So, yeah, I couldn't help but do the same with my own girls!
  - smoyer 9y ago
    When my oldest two (now 26 and 24) were in high-school we often had 2-4 extra kids at our dinner table each evening (we purposely bought a big table). We had a lot of comments about how "interesting" our dinner conversations were compared to their own houses. And there was lots of laughter too. It turns out that high school is also a good age to teach your kids the difference between debate and argument. The other thing we did was optimize our house so our kids and their friends would want to hang out here. It's much easier to keep an eye on them when they're not off somewhere else (thinking back, there were a lot of times my parents didn't know where I was). A few of their friends could be problematic but by treating most of them as adults, they tried to live up to it.

by amha 9y ago

tyingq 9y ago

I had a fair amount of exposure to this kind of thing solely because I grew up in the 70's. Families didn't spread as much geographically. So, I got lots of great experiences with aunts, uncles, cousins, neighbors, sharing things they knew, etc. Also, there was more freedom for me to interact with strangers. No cell phones, etc, so my parents couldn't really manage me real closely. Big potential downsides, of course.

smoyer 9y ago

As a parent of four kids, I'd encourage you to decide to have kids based on some other criteria - you can do this project without the presence of kids. However ... taking your comment in the spirit in which I'm guessing it was intended, my wife and I have had a lot of fun helping the kids try almost anything they were interested in. There's simply no reason to limit a child's curiosity (and I'd argue that many of us here are those whose childhood curiosity survived somewhat intact). Kids interests can change weekly and we just let that happen. We did usually require that they finish a project once they started it. One example is that I was digging fence-posts and commented to my wife that, under the top-soil of what was once our farmette, there was a layer of clay. Of course my daughter pictured the type of clay that artists use (and a pottery wheel) but did you know that, with the right amount of water added, you can mold Pennsylvania (US) clay just fine. And you can do a reasonable job of firing it on a patio grill (don't try glazing it). I was brought up helping my dad around the house and we also extended this to our kids ... if we didn't know how to do something we learned it together. And so now our kids (the two who are adults and out-of-the-house) will do much of their own maintenance. My daughter's first car is a '71 Super Beetle in which she completely restored the interior. I helped her weld new cooling manifolds which was the only exterior/mechanical problem with the car. Finally, there are lots of kids that don't have parents (and plenty that have absentee parents. Here in the US you can volunteer with Big Brothers / Big Sisters and "borrow" a kid for a limited amount of time. Volunteering is also a great way to help the next generation of "makers" grow in their craft!

killgrove 9y ago
When I was a kid in the 80s, my dad started something called "Family Home Evening." We'd get together and my brother and I would ask questions like "where does lightning come from?" or "does coke rot your teeth?" We'd look up info in our Encyclopedia Brittanica (ha!), and often do experiments (like putting my dad's extracted wisdom teeth in coke). So, yeah, I couldn't help but do the same with my own girls!
- smoyer 9y ago
  When my oldest two (now 26 and 24) were in high-school we often had 2-4 extra kids at our dinner table each evening (we purposely bought a big table). We had a lot of comments about how "interesting" our dinner conversations were compared to their own houses. And there was lots of laughter too. It turns out that high school is also a good age to teach your kids the difference between debate and argument. The other thing we did was optimize our house so our kids and their friends would want to hang out here. It's much easier to keep an eye on them when they're not off somewhere else (thinking back, there were a lot of times my parents didn't know where I was). A few of their friends could be problematic but by treating most of them as adults, they tried to live up to it.