The Resourceful Father

Welcome to another edition of Jack, the Resourceful Father. Actually this is the first edition of The Resourceful Father. I really like the name so be aware that if you take it without my explicit permission I will hunt you down and do something. Don’t know what, but it will be something and since I am 6’10 296 pounds of resourceful fatherness you probably won’t like it much.

Now that we have the legal stuff out of the way let’s jump right into it. My son is a Lego fiend/fanatic. He loves those multicolored bricks and so do I. They are a lot of fun to play with and they are an educational toy which gives them an extra feather in their costly to buy cap.

The picture below is of the Twilight. It is part of the Lego Star Wars series.This set was given to my son for his 9th birthday and he was more than a little excited to receive it. The picture below is not from his set. It is from the Amazon site. In just a moment I’ll tell you why.

He and began building the Twilight a short time ago and ran into a roadblock. We managed to assemble a large part of the framework and then got stuck on a particular section. For the purpose of this post consider it to be step 7. Step 7 doesn’t work the way that it is displayed in the instructions. We tried attacking this childish conundrum from a number of different angles and were thwarted each time.

Unfortunately school, work and life in general got in the way of continuing to work upon this and the set has been sitting for a bit. I never intended or planned to give up on it, but I must not have made that clear to my son because he said that we might never finish it. That is just unacceptable to me. I took advantage of the moment to go to one of my favorite Star Wars teaching moments.

I, Jack, The Resourceful Father will not be beaten by a child’s toy and neither will my child. I explained to the lad that there are many different ways to skin a cat and that we were going to figure this out. We haven’t exhausted all of our options and resources.

One of the best is that we can take this puppy down the Lego store and ask one of the Lego masters there for help. Yes ladies, this man will sometimes ask for help, but never for directions. It is much more fun to get lost and then find my way to where I need to be.

Anyhoo, the driving force here besides my fragile male ego not being able to accept defeat at the hands of a child’s toy is that I want my kids to know that we don’t quit. We don’t just walk away. We don’t give up just because things are rocky or rough. I may not growl improvise, adapt and overcome as well as Clint Eastwood does but I feel the same.

To me it is one of those important life lessons.

Here are some related and semi-related links.

Teaching Children To Lose Gracefully
Children
Blessing My Children
Some Things I’ll Teach My Children
The Growing Backlash Against Overparenting
Is Private School Worth It
Teaching Responsibility to Children
Vote for Me For Third Grade Student Council
How To Lose
Teaching Children Not To Quit
Teaching Children to Make Smart Decisions