Jon Magidsohn wants to know how important it is for a father to teach his kids to fix stuff.
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According to a recent poll carried out by a soap company, the majority of parents consider the most important lesson a father can teach his children to be basic DIY. Fixing stuff. How to be handy. What this has to do with soap I’ll never understand. Although when I worked as a handyman I did often require a good scrubbing after a day’s work.
I’m no Ty Pennington, but I can handle most necessary jobs without having to refer to the Reader’s Digest How-to-fix-everything Almanac. And I would never consider calling a plumber, electrician, plasterer, carpenter or builder unless I was certain I was unable to carry out the job without burning the house down. I do it myself.
The majority of parents consider the most important lesson a father can teach his children to be basic DIY.
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My father died when I was young so, although he was good with his hands, he had little chance to pass this indispensable message on to me. Yet I always had the innate ability to fix things. When I was five years old I used to take apart my yellow pedal car for the sole purpose of putting it back together again. It had nuts and bolts and everything. My mother, as a conscientious single-parent, insisted I take responsibility for things that needed to be done around the house, so I was tightening loose door handles and spackling the walls from early days. I built a picnic table from scratch and could change a tire on the family car before I’d even reached puberty.
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I’ve tried to convey my invaluable do-it-yourself knowledge to my ten-year-old son, even dragging him along to my clients’ houses for unofficial Bring Your Child to Work days. My son is a lovely, talented boy; he’s musical, he has a great sense of humour, his observations are keen and thoughtful and he loves his family. But his interest in basic tool functions is low and his initiative levels are in the red. After all, why should he have to know how to plumb a washing machine when his dad is quite capable of carrying out the task?
I’ve tried to convey my invaluable do-it-yourself knowledge to my ten-year-old son
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I once asked him to cut a one-by-two piece of timber along a line I’d drawn for him and was shocked to find out he had to be told to face the pointy side of the saw down. He still can’t distinguish the difference between a nail and a screw. Blu-Tacking posters to his bedroom wall leaves him with the sticky blue putty under his finger nails, in his hair, his ears. Every time he uses scissors to cut paper, he behaves like they’re left-handed ones. He can’t even use the eraser at the end of a pencil without destroying most of the pink rubber and the paper in the process. Even then, there’s still enough graphite on the page to make it look like he never even made an attempt.
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I should have known from the start. When he was a toddler I bought him a set of plastic tools with which to pretend-fix his toys. A terrific little hammer, pliers, screwdrivers—slot-head and Phillips—adjustable wrench and a saw that couldn’t cut butter. I could have played with them for hours. He was more interested in how they tasted.
I blame myself. I didn’t do enough to infuse him with the feelings of satisfaction he’d get from hanging his own blinds or replacing a toilet siphon. I should have strapped him into the Baby Bjorn and carried him around the yard with me when I mowed the lawn. I should have made him assemble his own crib. I should have pushed harder for Bob Vila to be his godfather. I should have forced him to watch re-runs of Home Improvement.
It’s not his fault he hasn’t inherited my genetic predisposition for repairs. But how do you teach a man to fish if he’s constantly looking toward the land?
On the brighter side, I can be sure that when he moves out he’ll always need to call me.
‘Hello?’
‘Hi, Dad.’
‘Hi, son.’
‘Would you like to come over?’
‘Sure, son. Shall I bring lunch?’
‘Just bring your tool box. My sock drawer is stuck again.’
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Number two in the soap poll was How to Drive, which in our family is not a priority since we don’t own a car. But if and when my son does learn, both he and I will enjoy it more if he’s taught by someone who’s less likely to disown him should he not demonstrate a proper three-point-turn. Number three in the poll is Avoiding Debt, which I’m afraid will have to come down to ‘Do as I say, not as I do’.
So do I go back to the drawing board? Will my legacy of confident cabinet-door repairs and streak-free wall-painting end with my son? If that’s the most important lesson I can teach him then I feel sorry for whomever he ends up sharing a house with when he grows up. Sometimes I fear he won’t be able to fix so much as a sandwich let alone a broken window.
I suppose he could always sell soap.
A different version of this article first appeared on The Handyman Voyeur on October 29, 2013 http://handymanvoyeur.wordpress.com/2013/10/29/what-a-tool/
Image: katerha/Flickr
Don’t take the dirty of comments personally Jon- as I said in re a tool oriented article of my own, we’re dealing with a readership that thinks “crescent wrench” is a spell check mangling of the description of a waitress in a French Bakery. Some kids are just hard wired without the tool gene, granted fewer of them are male. My estrangement mid-divorce and during the economic crisis with my sons was painful, especially, because my eldest stopped being interesting in doing repairs. (I thought the ex was going to shit when the home inspector, for the buyers of our… Read more »
Dirth not dirty
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJby0BCJwDQ I guess we can only do so much… Some things you are born with.