The Mother of Invention

My brother recently shared with me a memory of something our grandmother said to him. He told me that when he was 10 and he mentioned within her hearing that he was bored, she told him, "If you're bored, it's your own fault." He said he was never bored again.

My childhood was blissful in the fact that my mother let us create, invent, and otherwise make a mess. We got to make our own home movies. We got to turn the hide-a-bed into a spaceship. We even got to dig our own "pool" in the backyard. We went as far as lining it with a black tarp to keep it clean - which didn't work of course - and we ended up with a spa mud bath.

I vowed early on to let my own children create, invent, and on occasion make a mess. :-) I encourage activities that don't involve a screen and do involve a great deal of thought. In the midst of all of this, my son has become quite the inventor.

He recently spent hours putting this together:

It's a light and fan (made of balsa wood) that really works! He used a little battery power pack and taped the whole thing up to a piece of cardboard. Then he proceded to tape the whole thing up to the underside of our dining table which then of course had to be made into a secret tent. And they had to sleep there that night.

I went to bed smiling. No wonder my mom let us make the mud pit. This is cool.