Anybody got their young kids in the garage?

[GiJoe]

I am bound and determined NOT to have kids who have no mechanical skills, no hands on experience, and only play inside with video games.

I have always taken my boys to car / truck shows. By 4yrs old, my oldest could tell a Hemi, Chevy, Ford, or Mopar engine by sight.

He is now 6yrs old and I have him helping me any chance I get. He is now learning mechanical components and is pulling tools for me from my toolbox.

Recent project is getting an old roadrace Mustang I aquired up and running. Here, he helped me pull the carb.

Anyone else involve their young kids in the garage / shop?

[Knarly Nerd]

God bless you man...that is great! I used to restore antique tractors and had my daughter helping whenever she wasn;t riding horses. She loved it and learned more about tools and tractor parts than I know. She even took welding in high school and can draw a bead with the best of them!

[Postclanker]

good for you man....it makes a special bond between you and the future man as well. Mine is grown and has two kids of his own...we did rc cars when he was 8 or so...I made him fix it when he broke it, helped him of course, but now he does the same with his two boys. what's best is that G-pa is still crawling with them when we get the chance.

[zodiaci]

I'm with you. My 5 year old son has already shown a deep interest in how things work and loves to "assist" me in the garage every chance he gets.
Being an engineer, I fully support it and I hope he follows in his old man's footsteps. Heck he already knows what a torque wrench is for and how to use it.
Yeah, I'm proud! You keep up the great work and I hope others will follow!

[ridepate]

My 6YO is already pretty-good with a wrench.!!!!! He does like the video-game stuff, but we limit it to 1-hour a night. I have his X-Box on a timer, it gives him a 2-min. warning so he can save his stuff.
I'll tell ya the Cub-Scouts has been the best activity we have been invloved with to date tho. It teaches respect, Patriotism, and is not about being P-C.

[gottwins?]

I'll second the cub scouts. It's gotten my 7yo interested in building and working on things with me in the garage.

[PFC FNG]

Good on you, wish my dad had done the same.

[kwkride]

I've gotten my kids involved early too.
Now my son is 19 and has told me a few times how much he appreciates it.
He doesn't understand why his friends don't do their own repair work . . . .

[BLOODBANE]

My 8yo son just helped me do an oil change on my Explorer so we could go wheeling. I told my daughter that when I do the oil change on the Zuk I would show her. I agree, kids should have a basic (if not advanced) knowledge of how to do things on their own.

[bigstu]

I commend you sir.. Now that is a DAD..
I still remember the first time I walked out to the garage and my dad was welding, I was about 7 or 8. I was VERY lucky, didn't get welding flash, because he heard the door open and stopped welding.
I asked him what he was doing. He said, welding, want to see? I said sure.. I remember looking though the dark green glass and trying to figure out what he was doing.
Then he pulled out two scrap pieces of metal and asked me if I wanted to try. He held my hand and guided me along. I remember sticking the electrode to the metal about ten times. Then all of a sudden I was doing it.
I will never forget how great it felt to be doing something that my dad could do.
And I still remember when the shoe was on the other foot. I was welding a bracket for a clutch lever on my buddy's old CJ. He pulled in from work and asked what I was doing. I flipped up my shield and said, welding.. Want to see? He smiled and walked in the house.
Some of the fondest memories I have of him are working in that garage.
He died 14 years ago this coming June. When my mom sold the house, about 6 years ago, I walked out the garage one last time and just sat there on the floor.
Even though he isn't here, every time I am in my garage, working on the Jeep, the lawn mower, or cutting some new links for my crawler, he is there with me.

[tmack]

My father did it with me and im gonna be doing it with my son. He is only 5 months but im gonna be showing him tools and how to do stuff. Im an electrician and made up my mind to be one by the age of 6. Nothing better than working with your hands. And work have gottan me to svalbard twice and almost to antartica.

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[dkf]

Would you rather have your kid help you in the garage and actually learn something usefull or sit on their ass watching TV and learning nothingl.

No brainer to me, teach the kid something. I always was helping my dad with something in the garage or outside even when I was very young.

[hende]

My oldest son is 11 and knows all the tools names dose most hiks own work on go kart and helps me with what ever I'm, working on My 4 year old daughter like to help and show intrest. And last but not least the five month old I have carried him out and showed him the garage and tool boxes

[DeweyCJ5]

i have my son's to help be work on this old blazer i got

[badhoopty]

one of my earliest memories is cleaning a cylinder head. i'm pretty sure my grandpa just found an old head and had me think i was helping him fix the truck, but it didnt matter...

[ghtpdm5]

don't have kids myself, but my dad wanted me at least to know as much possible mechanically. an early memory was replacing the bearings on a straw walker in a deere 7720. another one was sitting on his lap in a skidloader learning how to properly dig a hole. my late middle school and early high school summers were spent doing mechanic work for the leasing company he worked for in north and south texas. if i do end up with a young one, they'll know how to do those sorts of things.

[calikingcrawler]

I have 2 daughters. But I still try to get them involved. My oldest wants toning to do with the garage or outside for that matter. She is afraid to get dirty. But my 3 year old daughter helps with everything. Working on the scout, building fences, building dog houses, changing oil in the daily drivers. She likes to hand dad the tools and asks lots of questions. She is my little buddy.

[AX10wannabe]

dont have kids myself but when i was younger i helped my dad all the time.. still do and im 24yrs old. quite a few years ago my dad worked full time at a boat building plant plus he had a side job (his own business) repairing boats.. sometimes there would be 3-4 boats lined up in the yard waiting to get fixed.. i would always go out and help him.. put a few transomes in. dad did fibreglassing for 16yrs and he taught me how to do it.

we race lawnmowers together and its nice to get out and enjoy it with my dad. i know lots about mowers but when it comes to the electrical side of it i dont have a clue haha.. so we usually make deals saying if i help him with something he'll help me and it works out pretty good. my dad works a lot of hours 12hrs a day so he doesnt have a lot of time for anything else, we have a small hobby farm too and there's lots of fixing fences, cleaning out pens, fixing barn walls or something.. hay... lots of hay to go in the barn... those are the only times we get to bond together.. nothing like a good bonding day of shoveling goat shit together haha.. have a few beers play with the tractor and stuff...

i've been building a second racing mower for over 2 yrs now and i can cut/weld it up, lower it etc but when it comes to building clutches and pulley stuff i go over to dad and ask him for help.. i call him the "tractor fairy" because after a race and my mower is broken i will tear it apart and figure out whats wrong.. usually thats on a friday or something (few days after the race) and dad gets up at 4-5am during the week but on weekends too so saturday morning when i get up the mower is back together... so he got the name tractor fairy


my sister isnt a girly girl either.. she teaches horseback riding lessons to young kids, but she's always been a tomboyish girl. she's definitely not afraid to get dirty, she used to work a volvo big rig dealer in shipping/receiving department so hoofing 100 pound brake drums around..

[Cheatin]

Nothing makes me happier spending at least 10 times longer working on something with help from my two girls, 6 and 3. The 3 year old is the most help since she likes to take off with my tools, and the 6 year old supervises everything I do following up with 20 questions. Wouldn't change it for the world either.

[59sled]

Not very young, But this is my 16 yr old niece working on the bumper for her Jeep Cherokee.