The high highs and low lows of wrenching with your kids

I know lots of us have kids and wrench with them. Here is a thread for related stories.

I have one to start:

Last friday, I was working on the dash of my saab when my 20 month old son walks up. he asks to be picked up and sit in my lap. How can I say no? Anyway, I continue working around him and he is poking and prodding at stuff mostly watching me work. After a few minutes, he says "Fun, daddy. Having fun." Very happy dad results.

The next morning, after the friday night performance, he and I are the first two awake. So I take him right outside to work on the car. This time, he has a shorter attention span, so I'm letting him walk around in the backyard and on the deck and such while I work. Occasionally he will come over and pick up a tool and look at it for a bit then put it back and walk away. So I'm almost done with the job of replacing the dash, and I have all but the last screw installed. None of the switches are in place yet because they snap back in last. My son comes over, grabs my 'magnet on a stick' tool, and swiftly plunks it right through a switch hole in the dash. All the way in. Gone. Grr. "Ok" I think, "I can reach in with some other tools and grab it back out of the dash". So I get to work on that.

About 10 minutes go by and I decide that the only way to get this tool out is going to be to re-remove some pieces. Getting angrier. Start looking for my torx socket that I have been using on all of the saab dash screws. I look over, and realize that my son is now playing with the ratchet and extension that the socket was connected to, but there is no socket attached. Uh oh. A dark wave of reality sweeps over me as I realize that I have not been paying much attention to what he has been doing for the last 10 minutes, and that socket could be ANYWHERE. It could be in the grass in the backyard. It could be in one of a million nooks or crannies in the garage. It could have been dropped through a crack in the deck. It could be in his stomach. And it is the socket I need to fix the car and finish the job.

So I calmly ask a 20 month old what he did with the socket. That nets me a blank stare. Then I motion to the tool he is holding, and ask where it is. He offers me the ratchet and extension. I ask "Is the tool in the map pocket?" and I point to the map pocket. He looks in the map pocket and says "Tool?". Great, this is clearly going to work. I say "Daddy is getting very frustrated right now." More blank stare. I get up and not so calmly start walking around the car, frantically checking the deck, grass, garage, etc for any sign of a socket. Of course there is none. I sit back down in the car to think. No way can I bring him back inside and wake my wife with "he might have swallowed a torx socket".

He still wants to play, and is grabbing at more tools. Fine, I think, but I'll be watching nothing but what you do with them. So I put a different socket on the extension and ratchet for him. He promptly sticks the tool through a hole in the carpet up near the bottom of the dash, and is pretending to work the ratchet. "Huh", says I, and I peel back the carpet just under that hole. There's the socket!!! "SON!!! YOU'RE A GENIUS!!!" I exclaim. Still had to remove the dash again to get the original tool, but at least I have all my tools and none are showing up on a stomach x-ray this morning.

Yesterday my 14 year old son was helping me clean up the grill (post fire). He decided that cleaning the inside of the shop-vac hose was the most important thing to do at that moment and used a wet rag for the process. Lodging it in the middle of the hose.

He makes......interesting decisions sometimes.

KyAllroad wrote: Yesterday my 14 year old son was helping me clean up the grill (post fire). He decided that cleaning the inside of the shop-vac hose was the most important thing to do at that moment and used a wet rag for the process. Lodging it in the middle of the hose. He makes......interesting decisions sometimes.

My question is what did he do next? I would've promptly reversed the shop vac and blown grill gunk all over the garage.

I really need to drag my 15-year-old away from his Playstation and make him help me more often than I do. Not even just car stuff, but household projects and such. He's capable and helpful, but not all that interested, for the most part. I guess it's my job as his dad to teach him stuff even if he's not.

Yesterday my 16 year old son carried 30 16' composite deck boards up onto the deck for me.

My back does not hurt. Sometimes I think there is hope.

End of story.

My little one is 19 months old so at a pretty similar stage of helpfulness. I haven't had her around any major repair projects yet - the shop is barely a place for adults much less kids - but she's been there for some work done around the yard. Just the other day, I put her in the front seat of the station wagon while I was hooking up the landscape trailer full of brush and when I got back in she had the left turn signal on, wipers on, and had the gear shift in third. I think she'll grow up to be a retiree in Florida.

For the last couple days she's been upset when I go to put her in back - she points to the front and wants to "drive."

One day my six year old son will be able to wrench with me in the garage, but we aren't there yet. I let him help some, but getting him to pause long enough to follow directions is nigh impossible. He's coming around slowly now that he's realized that if he listens to me tell him how to do a task, he will be allowed to do more.

In reply to slefain: At six when I had just taught him to ride a two wheeler the boy insisted that he could ride into the garage between the silver allroad and the black phaeton without dragging an uncapped handlebar end on either one. We put a stop to that and instead he showed us he could ride with his eyes closed () and promptly ran over his baby sister.

Like I said: interesting decisions

I had my three year old nephew at the track with me this weekend. Taking him out on parade laps in the "race car" made his whole year. He did help me pack up - turns out he's not quite big enough to lift a fully loaded steel toolbox into the bed of a 3/4 ton truck despite his assurances to the contrary.

It was...interesting. Gave my wife something to do while I was driving, at least.

One of my earliest memories was a low point for my dad.

I was probably 5, and thrilled because I got to go to the shop with my dad and uncle. They had a harvesting business so the winter was spent tearing down the fleet of combines and trucks to get ready for next season. My dad is underneath the combine trying to remove a bearing. I was the designated tool fetcher. He asks me to go get the full size sledge hammer they had cut the handle down to about 18” on. I remember thinking first, how heavy it was, and second that it was slipping. I started going as fast as my little legs could carry me. I got to my dad at the exact moment it slipped from my fingers, and watched as it fell straight down on my dad’s crotch.

I learned some new words that day.

My three oldest sons have all helped me with oil changes, so they know the drill. They've also done a great job with other projects around the house and the yard, and I appreciate the help.

Hopefully, they won't be as much help as I was when I was younger. I did a great job of filling up the gas tank of my dad's lawnmower with grass clippings

Yesterday the boy offered to "organize" my garage for me while I did something else. I came back a half hour later to see him breaking a brick with the shop press. Wearing safety glasses, ear-muffs, and gloves. (good)

I ask what's going on (curiosity) and he says: "I'm definitely NOT breaking a brick and posting it to YouTube!"

OK then, have fun.

My two year old son was helping me in the garage one day when I was installing manual window regulators. He walks up to me and hands me something that looks a lot like a dipstick handle with no dipstick attached. Yep he broke the handle off.

A few minutes later I'm asking him to hand me a tool. Usually he hands me random things near what I am pointing at until he gets the right one. He hands me a few, then picks up a stubby screwdriver and he starts "using" it on the engine hoist, cool he can't mess anything up or hurt himself like that. A few seconds later I hear him saying, "In there."

I look over at him and he is pointing at my engine. He had dropped the stubby screwdriver in a coolant passage that was pretty much the exact size of the screwdriver. Of course he dropped it handle up so it can't be picked up with a magnet. Thank God it came out with a little effort with a pry bar and a ball of gorilla tape.

I still like having him around the garage when I am not cutting and welding.

I'm cracking up reading the stories here! I remember getting stabbed in the hand with a screwdriver once while lying under a car, plus a bunch of other stuff I've blocked out.

To give you a small amount of hope, there's this:

He did at least 90% of the work changing the pinion seal on his truck. Bonus, nothing broke, and it still appears to function as before . Progress, one project at a time...

I think I'm still suffering trauma from my Dad yelling at my 4-5 year old self when I couldn't keep a flashlight pointed at the part of the car he was working on.

There was an episode of "That 70's Show" that I remember Red doing exactly the same thing.

Not really my kid but my old Little Brother had the engine die in his daily driver. He managed to limp it to my place. He then proceeded to pick up a replacement from a local wrecker and swap it out. All single handed since I had just had cancer surgery and couldn't lift, twist or bend. I was happy and proud.