My family lives in Sydney and is very close. We are pretty laid back and we are always on the look out to have fun. My husband and I encourage our son to experiment with anything that is creative and positive. For us, learning through experience is a good approach that works for kids. We try to instil healthy eating habits in our boy and engage him in outdoor activities as much as possible. Still, we don’t impose some strict rules in any way or form, but rather invite him to taste different things and teach him that the body needs certain ingredients, in order to function properly.
The house chores at home are kept to a minimum. General upkeep of key areas, like kitchen and bathrooms, is done on a regular basis. Our lad tidies his bedroom and he also doesn't mind doing the dusting around the living space and that's about it. We feel that whatever free time we have, we can find a better way to spend it. Basically, we are quite relaxed about germs and if we see a silver cobweb, swinging in the corner in the summer breeze, reflecting the light of the morning sun, we usually praise Mr. Spider for his building skills and for his intricate masterpiece creation. Well, this attitude of ours was tested quite significantly by an innocent event.
My son is pretty inventive and from a very young age, he always tries to make stuff from already broken toys that he combines with other pieces of materials. Whether it is a catapult, crafted from various old items, attached together or a climbing plywood structure for the family cat, his mind and hands never "sit" still….
His latest craze was to invent vending machines from Lego blocks that actually worked. Those were built by applying purely his imagination, as the brand’s instruction books did not feature similar projects. So from the complex functioning mechanism to the final colourful design, he managed to produce a line of little vending machines that took a coin and delivered a Tic Tac candy or a chewing gum. To sum it up, he has shown a scientific approach to executing every creative idea of his.
Other than that, he is an average kid that gets occasionally hooked on new gadgets like any other child. Considering the peer pressure and the modern technology age we live in, this is probably not that unusual. However, it is pleasing to see that he does not spend more than a couple of hours a day on his phone or tablet and he is definitely not addicted to any of the popular computer games that other kids may be. So much for introducing my family...
My story is now set to divert towards the gizmo, he has recently acquired from his uncle. My brother is an avid gardener and a small-time fruit grower, I need to note, and he gave my son a pocket size gardening microscope with a build-in light as a birthday gift. He mentioned to my son that he personally couldn't go without such a device if he wanted to grow healthy plants. He would use it to check them for plant lice and mites that did a lot of damage to the leaves of fruit trees. My brother winked at me, and said that this present was perfect for a ten year old boy and that the gadget could easily join the premier league of birthday presents for young lads, where pocket knives, fishing rods and boxing gloves had already won a special place.
My son was ecstatic with his new “toy”. He has this inclination of not leaving anything that is new alone, but this time he really surpassed my expectations. He was spending, firstly, hours in the garden, checking out plants and flowers, chasing ants and discovering invisible monsters in tiny dew drops. Then he moved onto scrutinising different subjects like his own skin pores, the cat’s ears, and his father’s socks. The boy ran around for days, plucking hairs from his cousin’s silky blond mane to discover that they looked like wooden sticks. Of course, his test was accompanied by her screams.
At the beginning, we were excited for him and praised his curiosity. But when he went on to picking and analysing every apple and pear from the fruit bowl, making loud announcements that they were no longer edible and had to go in the bin and then rushed to inspect every surface that he could think of, focusing especially on the inside of the fridge and demanding that the house was not clean enough and that we should polish everything on a daily basis, his dad and I decided that enough was enough.
I reminded him that I actually worked as a marketing advisor for a cleaning service provider and that it was commendable that he was growing to be more self-conscious about hygiene and the effects of cleanliness or its lack of on our health. However, I pointed out that as long as he washed his hands regularly and ran some water over the fruit he was about to eat, everything would be all right. His dad even gave him an introduction on the role of our immune system and how it was designed to fight off germs and disease.
As with every fad my son had in the past, this one wore off rather quickly. The microscope now is neatly put away in his drawer and it is most likely well forgotten. I believe his uncle is getting him a telescope for his next birthday.
