Wednesday, January 16, 2013

Not a Lightbulb Moment

Well, Big Kid's project ended up being a great way to deter anyone from being an inventor.

I'm going to go ahead and guess that Edison and his mom weren't bickering with each other for 5 straight hours about quality of work and methodology and that Edison didn't drive his mom to drink. Edison also probably didn't get the due date wrong by one day, making everything an even more wild rush. Edison probably wouldn't lose points for not caring about making his poster board look fancy (even though his mom thought the presentation board should look fancy! It's not her project, what can she do? Besides complain?) And Edison probably didn't have to stay up two hours past his 8 o'clock bed time to finish up. We were both exhausted and crabby by the end of this.

"It's still a good idea," I offered. (During a moment of peace.) "Maybe when this is over with, we could hire someone to make a real one for us. It's not the invention's fault that we lack the technical knowledge to make it happen. Then you could at least use your invention, because it is a very good idea."

"No, thanks. I never want to see it again; I'd light this thing on fire if I could."

I bet Edison didn't say that.

Parenting fail, indeed.

(But...I kind of blame the scope of the assignment, too. I would also like to light it on fire.)

2 comments:

asnell said...

I'm really scared my kids' teacher is going to find out about this.

Jennifer said...

I've felt that way about projects I was working on before so I totally get it.