How to deal with an ambitiously creative 8 year old

image from captainbs.blogspot.com

  My oldest, the big brother skunk, is a visionary.  He comes up with the most creative plans for building the wildest things.  No wonder he is such a fan of Phineas and Ferb!  However, the part of that wonderful cartoon that he doesn't seem to get is that.....you just can't do that!  For example, when he was 2, my wife discovered him trying to drag a chair into our closet with a butter knife in his hand.  Turns out, that's where our attic access is, and he was planning to build a rocket.  However, he didn't want to ruin the house, so he was going to cut a hole in the roof for him to shoot it out through.  No thought was given to the point that a 2 year old on a chair can't reach the ceiling.  Nor that a butter knife won't cut through the roof.  I have no idea what his plan was for the rocket....

  Earlier this year, he came up to me and announced I was going to help him make a submarine out of a 2-liter bottle.  I was amused, accustomed to the drill by now.  I decided to let him figure out the feasibility on his own.  He came up with a complicated drawing, with all of the parts labeled.  When I asked him where he was going to get a torpedo launching mechanism, he looked at me matter of factly and said, "Radio Shack...I'm sure they have something like this."  Oh buddy....

  Tonight, the Toes (his nickname since he was a baby), was messing around with some batteries, wires and an electric motor I got him a few years ago from, you guessed it, Radio Shack.  He was trying to think of things to do with this rig.  He tried making a propeller out of foil, to make a fan.   He tried to convince me to cut him a sheet metal propeller out of a tin can.  Ummmmm, he's never needed stitches and I don't want to change that fact soon!  Next he decided he was going to take apart the motor and reassemble it so the casing turned instead of the shaft.  I asked him how he was going to attach the wires if he did that.  Blank stare...

  I love his interest, he reminds me SO MUCH of myself at his age. I feel horrible having to bring him back to Earth sometimes.  I don't want to damage his spirit at all.  I think the only way I can think to address the issue is to work on some actual projects and show him what we can do.  It reminds me of a comic that is attached to the wall in my University Physics lab.  It shows the two teenagers discussing huge nuclear equations and using lasers to form new molecules in the first panel.  In the second, it shows them rolling a cart down a ramp and sighing.  Real science isn't what you see in the movies, at least without a PHD, and Toes has to get out of 3rd grade first...

Simple is still fun....