Teaching Confidence With Hammers

Last week, Erin asked if we could purchase a baby gate. She sometimes has a hard time keeping tabs on our very-mobile 1-year-old, Henry. The trouble is, the area in which she wants to contain the little guy has a very large opening into the kitchen — too big for a standard doorway-sized baby gate. Which means we need a baby gate wide enough to fit.  And since Erin and I are trying to massively cut back our expenses, this might be a problem.

Erin first went to a second-hand kid’s store to see if there was one for sale. No luck. So I decided to break out my oft-unused man skills and make a simple gate out of 2×4’s and chicken wire. But touting my incredible 2×4 cutting skills is not the point of this post. What happened during its construction was what I wanted to share.

Saturday afternoon, I decided to head to Home Depot to purchase the materials. But instead of carving out this trip as “me time”, I made sure to include my kids. First of all, any trip to Home Depot with kids can be fun, but I knew that building the gate would give us some good one-on-one time, so including them even in the initial trip would be good.

After arriving home, I had the girls help me measure out the dimensions of the door frame. We then went off to the garage to begin cutting 2×4’s. I think the girls are both a little too young to be operating power saws (6 years and 4 years old), but they were allowed to watch to the side. I also let them help me measure the cuts and mark the wood.

After the gate was completed, I could see that both girls wanted a little more. More time with me and more time to learn and experience what I was teaching them. So I grabbed a box of nails and the 2×4 scraps and we learned to use a hammer.

In retrospect, including my kids in this project was not the most efficient way to go. The Home Depot trip would have been shorter and my construction time would have been cut in half (pun intended). And even though my daughters may never become master carpenters, they’ll know how to swing a hammer.

You see, I want my kids to be confident young adults one day. And it starts here. It starts with me giving myself to them. Giving my time and a little knowledge. It starts with me instilling in them a sense that they can do it.

I know far too many people who lack basic confidences in their lives, and more often-than-not it all started with either distant or enabling parents. The former teaches their children nothing because of their non-involvement. The latter won’t ever let their children do anything on their own. I want my kids to learn and experience life. And that requires me to be involved, but to let them hold the hammer, too. Yeah, they may smash a thumb, but they’ll learn. And if I want my kids to grow, I have to let them hold the hammer.