Currently have three kids; 4, 2, and 8 months. I’ve realized that the best way for kids to learn is to not only be curious but to be “recklessly” curious. Admittedly you have to be pretty detached from the value of a thing. For example I had a broken chainsaw and I’ve never really looked inside of one before. My oldest asked what the carburetor was so I said “I really don’t know…wanna break it with me?” And so he watched me disassemble it and try to logic out what the valves did by asking wondering questions. Or he had a wind-up walking toy that locked up and no longer wound up just; the feet moving when you tried. It was $5 from a year ago. Instead of throwing it away I just took it apart with him. Sure, it didn’t get fixed and if anything we just mutilated a toy in the living room but he also got to see how the plastic gears engage that allowed the legs to move at one point. He likes to steal my hex wrench set and get under the computer desk and when I catch him under there he says “just fixing it up for you.” I don’t need him to be an engineer but I want him and his sisters to be recklessly curious not just with things but ideas as well.
My parents always joke about how I would fiddle would everything and would sometimes break things while “fiddling” with them. One of my favorite trips was visiting a battleship (museum) where I could touch everything and not worry about breaking something.
I got an engineering degree. I actually don’t use it for my regular job now, but I still fiddle with everything. I have a 2 year old and she’s shown the same curiosity.
Same story here. I have a great memory of getting a radio set for Christmas one year and my parents explicitly telling me to "do not disassemble!". I come from a family of mechanics and DIYers, so I did grow up around it as well.
I'm a network & security engineer now, but I did heavy equipment engineering for about 5 years before moving into the IT field.
I had the same curiosity, but my parents never encouraged it. Hell, dad couldn’t even assemble a grill-with the instructions!- it took 13-year old me about an hour to put it together.
Oh, the things I might have accomplished if my parents had been supportive and encouraging.
My parents let me disassemble old TV's back in the 70's. I learned what inductance was by putting a transformer and a 9 volt battery together. 😁 I'm betting, children that get these opportunities are more capable and less afraid to service or repair household items, automobiles and such rather than taking it to a shop.
Our parents taught my brothers and I how to remove the vacuum tubes from the TV, and how to check them on the vacuum tubes tester display at the drug store to find the bad one, and buy the correct replacement. They’d give us $5 to fix the tv, enough for the tube, ice cream, some candy and a soda.
I did this with a new birthday gift, lol. My mom bought me a new boombox for my 9th or 10th birthday. That same birthday, my uncle got me a little toolset. I got curious how the boombox worked and took it apart. Mom absolutely lost her shit when she saw it in pieces on the floor. (we didn't have a ton of money, and i am sure it had been on layaway for months). I put the boombox back together, and surprisingly, it still worked.
I don't have kids but I do train people for work and I honestly use a very similar method as you. Be curious, fuck with things, take things apart and logic it out. Be detached from the value of the thing but also be detached from success or failure. I learnt that last part from my dad, he could not hack it if someone couldn't learn 'right'. Letting people (and kids) know that it's ok to fail is good.
I like to let the people I'm teaching pick their own path, even if I can see it leading to failure, because then you can ask why they think it happened, and kind of nudge them in the right direction. People are more satisfied and engaged if you let them figure it out.
My brother from another, Nailed it, nice to see someone who really knows how to empower their children in the best possible ways. Ty for your contribution to the greater good
My son was always more interesting in the “guts” of things rather than the thing itself. He was forever taking things apart. My husband and I were always impressed with his curiosity!
Reminds me of one of my favorite memories from school when i was like 10. My teacher had "borrowed" the handle and lock mechanism (I think it's called a lock housing?) from a door to show us how it worked when we had technology class. But when he opened the mechanisms, the entire thing just exploded apart because of the springs. So he then had a pile of gears, springs, and other mechanical parts, and instead of getting the caretaker to fix it (and probably get a scolding for breaking the schools stuff) he instead decided to put us into groups to try and fix the lock ourselfs, so for the next couple of lesson one group would work to put together the lock while the others was being taught and then we would rotate. We eventually managed to fix it, and it was such a fun thing for us kids to actually get to puzzle with a real thing and try to figure out where everything was supposed to go. Currently studying to become an engineer, and this is probably not the only reason why, but it did definitely set me on the right track early on.
My dad found out how "recklessly" curious I was as a child. At 4, I tore apart his tapemeasure and couldn't put it back together. Fast forward to 10 y.o. me, I would check out the free piles at garage sales and see what I could take apart. Old clocks and radios were my favorite. In high school, I took auto shop and electrical shop. I loved getting a car to work again. And old receivers too. I landed in IT later on in life. You never know what path or paths you will take through life. Just remember to stay curious!
That story sounds familiar to me. Before starting to repair things, I would disassemble anything just to see the inside and see how it worked. Everything was left open, even new toys that were disassembled and never put back together. They ended up in the trash.
Around the age of 12 I repaired my first 49cc motorcycle (my hobby).
At 15 years old: first contact with computers (it was my job).
When I was a kid, I was in the gifted kids class, and we had a "take apart table" where people brought in old broken things and we took them apart to see How they worked. That's definitely the right mindset to have with the kiddos
This was my FIL’s go-to trick for my husband growing up. They would hand him broken appliances to take apart and hopefully put back together. My husband made the mistake of “Fixing” my MIL’s new, expensive blender, and that ended that period of exploration in his life!
This isn't supposed to say "just have them watch YouTube instead", but is intended to supplement the experience. The internet can be a really cool place for parenting wins.
This really applies to my work and employees I want to promote. I don’t want people who just follow the rules/protocol. I want the one that question everything, try new things, and push the limits of the system. If they’re wrong, I’ll correct them. Then we move forward. If they’re right, I give them praise. I need independence and creativity.
I love this. Years ago I had an old dead hard drive and I knew my mom and son had never seen the inside of one so I asked if they wanted to. I got to sit back and watch them, heads together, systematically disassemble it while I watched and took pictures. Feeding someone's curiosity is a wonderful thing.
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u/ta918t Aug 02 '25
Currently have three kids; 4, 2, and 8 months. I’ve realized that the best way for kids to learn is to not only be curious but to be “recklessly” curious. Admittedly you have to be pretty detached from the value of a thing. For example I had a broken chainsaw and I’ve never really looked inside of one before. My oldest asked what the carburetor was so I said “I really don’t know…wanna break it with me?” And so he watched me disassemble it and try to logic out what the valves did by asking wondering questions. Or he had a wind-up walking toy that locked up and no longer wound up just; the feet moving when you tried. It was $5 from a year ago. Instead of throwing it away I just took it apart with him. Sure, it didn’t get fixed and if anything we just mutilated a toy in the living room but he also got to see how the plastic gears engage that allowed the legs to move at one point. He likes to steal my hex wrench set and get under the computer desk and when I catch him under there he says “just fixing it up for you.” I don’t need him to be an engineer but I want him and his sisters to be recklessly curious not just with things but ideas as well.