

My 7 Year Old Son Found His People at the Maker Faire - jackwest
http://jackcwest.wordpress.com/2012/05/22/last-saturday-my-son-found-his-people-at-the-maker-faire/

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Jun8
"... walked the half mile to the San Mateo County fairgrounds to join
thousands of others where I discovered that my son was probably adopted"

Nope, you were probably like that when you were a kid. Unfortunately, the
"look, but don't touch" mentality has been thought relentlessly to children
for the past N years. In some cultures kids, after a certain age, say, 10, are
supposed to be _totally_ focused on studying so that they get to a good
school, so none of that tinkering stuff. Unless, of course you wanted to
belong with the grimy, poor souls who had to work with their hands, e.g. the
young boys who were taken out of school and given as an apprentice (my mom
made an argument similar to this when I was studying for the middle school
entrance exams, when I was 11.)

~~~
guard-of-terra
I would take studying in quotes: "studying" Because they do not actually earn
any useful or marketable skills during those almost ten years. My wife told me
this is called academism.

~~~
excuse-me
Some do. The smart ones learn to read and then sit at the side of the class
reading - ignoring the "education" that is going on around them.

~~~
guard-of-terra
This is in class; but there is a huge pressure on them to "study" after class,
spending all time on it.

They because myopic, weaker from vitamin D deficiency and still do not learn
anything (adult would consider) useful.

~~~
protomyth
I still don't understand how the typical adult can talk about work / life
balance with a straight face with what we do to children.

~~~
guard-of-terra
Many adults do long hours of rather unproductive work so it's the natural
state of life for them.

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jmillikin
Direct link: [http://jackcwest.wordpress.com/2012/05/22/last-saturday-
my-s...](http://jackcwest.wordpress.com/2012/05/22/last-saturday-my-son-found-
his-people-at-the-maker-faire/)

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ChuckMcM
As a parent I cannot express how profoundly useful it can be for your child to
find their 'people' at this age. Some people don't find their cultural match
until college or even later.

And as I have told my kids, find one other member of your 'tribe' and you can
find the rest, since finding someone who knows others like them is more common
than discovering people who have yet to identify their common interests. I was
lucky in that I discovered the 'hacker/makers/tweaker' community when I joined
the Amateur Radio club in High School.

~~~
JonnieCache
That is one of the greatest things about the internet: it makes finding your
tribe pretty trivial, no matter your location or circumstances. Even if you
grow up in the middle of nowhere in a homogenous social context, you can find
a culture that intrigues you, learn about it from afar and then you have a
direction in life when you leave home.

Of course it makes it easy to then isolate yourself inside that tribe as well.

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blahedo
A good story, and the best closing line ever:

"Mommy, I'm not that weird."

~~~
richardlblair
I found the story interesting, but it was this single line that made it for
me.

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mbreese
I feel for the "look but don't touch" part. I did the same thing to my son,
but in my defense, he's 4 and wasn't quite as into how things worked. He was
more interested in anything that was his favorite color (red).

What I did learn about him though was that he has good geek potential, and
that he could be entertained for about 2 hours there.

I can't wait to take him back next year.

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microtherion
One of the aspects of living in the Bay Area that I enjoyed most was the
feeling of not being the only geek in the room, or not even being the geekiest
person in the room.

Never been to a Maker Faire yet, but I used to particularly enjoy the
Psychotronix Film Festival that way:
<http://www.kfjc.org/promotions/psychotronix/index.php>

~~~
jackwest
Love it! I still have a 16mm projector in my lab store room.

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junto
The wonder of childhood curiosity. Fantastic!

I wish we had something like this in Germany.

Lots of photos here: <http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/makerfaire/>

~~~
Roritharr
Where are you based? I'm from Frankfurt, maybe we could organize something.

~~~
junto
Up in Bremen.

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polyfractal
I was in SF for work last week and was delighted to see the Maker Faire was in
town. Was a great way to kill a Sunday afternoon. About half the place was
awesome activities for kids, and the other half was awesome demos/products for
adults.

The first thing I thought to myself when getting inside was "this would be an
awesome place to bring my kids (when I have some)"

~~~
jackwest
And a great place to bring out the kid in yourself - for me, the one that I
regularly have to be reminded not to tell to be quiet.

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rmATinnovafy
Time to take Cody to a hackerspace.

Get that kid an arduino, some welding classes, and a set of basic tools.

ASAP.

~~~
sankyo
My six year old son and I attended the maker faire. It was nonstop fascination
and engagement for both of us all day. He loved the Lego Jeep, building
squishy circuits with play-doh, 10mm LEDs and DC motors, building switches
with aluminum, foam core, and alligator clips. When he asked, "Dad, can we
build circuits and a robot too?" I got a huge smile on my face and felt really
great.

The Arduino controlled fire breathing machines scared the hell out of him and
he wouldn't go anywhere near them no matter how much I tried to convince him
that they were safe (you could feel a heat blast from them and they were
loud).

We watched the future engineers of America compete with their TETRIX robots,
moving bowling balls and picking up racquet balls.

Overall the Maker Faire gave me confidence that in the U.S. there are still a
lot of smart inventors shaping the future. Not everyone is tapped out watching
"American Idle" blaming red states and blue states.

3D printers were everywhere and fun to watch. I have no use for one, but
suddenly I want to build one. Luckily the price tags north of $1500 brought me
back to reality.

We bought a few inexpensive electronic projects that we look forward to
building and plan on attending both days next year. It was crowded, but the
people running the booths were so nice and knowledgable, there was so much
there to spark the imagination that it was worth it.

~~~
jackwest
Oh man. We were only there for about three hours. So I missed a lot of that.
Next year I'll have to get the full weekend ticket.

~~~
jianshen
You can do one better and submit a project with your son. Non-commercial
projects that are accepted get in for free. (I'm a grown up and I can't tell
you how proud it made me feel to present this year) :)

