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You don’t have to watch all 10 minutes of this video to realize how thoroughly we have forgotten what young children are capable of. (See yesterday’s post, which hinges on the idea that 4 year olds should never be outside near their own homes alone.) Such childhood independence is unusual today, but only because we overestimate danger and underestimate kids, to the point where we barely think of them as humans. We treat them like clueless, adorable, endangered pets.
I’d like to see your puppy do THIS:
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Meantime, happy Thanksgiving! Be grateful we can change society by bringing injustice, fear and cruelty to light, and agitating for more understanding, kindness and community. – L.
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32 Comments
Adorable. I would have been impressed if he just changed the tire. However, I have serious doubts about a 5yo actually loosening lug nuts. I have a hard time and I’m an adult. I’m going to assume the parent was edited out of most of it for lulz.
Don’t get me wrong, I still found the child impressive. I don’t know all of those terms. I think it would have been a better video if the parent was shown more so we can get an honest impression of what the kid did.
This is just awesome. This kid needs to make an appearance on “World’s Worst Mom.” Let some hyper-sheltered kids (and parents!) hang out with him for awhile. Maybe he can open some eyes, and minds.
Awesome! If this doesn’t prove how NOT so helpless kids are to overly protective and paranoid parents, I don’t know what will. Perhaps we just have to come to a point where we let nature take it’s course. Survival of the fittest. 😉
My 6yo can jump start a car. I still supervise him, but he doesn’t need assistance
Dhewco,
You would be surprised how easy lug nuts can be loosened with leverage. A pipe over the end of the breaker bar and my grandma can break them free. I routinely get nuts on older vehicles that even my impact gun won’t break free. My breaker bar, and a two foot pipe and they come loose with hardly any effort at all.
This kid will be like my daughter when the teacher put fractions on the board, 1/4, 1/2 and such. Then asked the class if anyone knew what they are, and my daughter told her wrenches.
Unfortunately the crowd we hope that this video would show kids capabilities to, will not see it that way. I am sure there will be outrage at the kid being around and under a vehicle up on a jack and stands. No gloves, no eye protection and so on. They will pick this apart as the parent endangering their child.
When I was a kid I was never allowed near a car that was being repaired because my grandma was afraid something would get flung out of the transmission and hit me in the head and kill me.
There is a certain instability and danger with jackstands, but it’s not like the kid was making the video while lying underneath the car. And any danger from jackstands would be just as dangerous to an adult. We should act like kid’s lives have an equal value to those of adults, not greater value.
I never did anything this complicated as a kid, but have cleaned a distributor (was a bit older at the time, probably about 12) changed wheels multiple times, and had to change the headlight bulb on my mums car a few times as my hands were small enough to get to it without removing the battery and fuse box
While there was clearly lots of coaching behind the scenes (but isn’t that the essence of teaching?) — consider how much concentration was required from the kid just to keep up. And the kid can’t help but have learned something — not least of which was “I can do this.”
I’ve said it here before and I’ll say it again: my grandma, who grew up in the Appalachian mountains in the depression era, was cooking dinners in a wood burning stove for her 8-member family by the time she was 5. She and het brothers foraged for wild plums, greens, and berries in the woods surrounding her house to either eat themselves or sell at market. The children were responsible for their own plot of land where they grew food to eat and tobacco to sell. We give kids far less credit than they deserve.
20 years ago I was a freelance draftsman. I worked short term for several companies. After each project I would clean off my computer for my next client. I’d re-format my hard drive and install my software again. This was in the days of floppy disc drives. Most software was stored on multiple discs. It was a long boring process of, “Please insert disk no 7 and press enter to continue.” I got my 4 year old son to do this for me.
Later when he was in 2nd grade, the teacher was having problems with the computer. My son re-installed the program for her and it work fine after that.
Thanks, Lenore, and thank you, Phoenix, for restoring our faith in kid-kind.
Great video. I think what we seem to have forgotten is that it’s our job as adults to help our kids become increasingly more competent. Kids need much more than protection- they need skills.
Warren November 26, 2015 at 12:57 pm:
No doubt. Irrational people always do.
Actually, there were a couple fractions of a second in the video when the child did make me nervous, when he very briefly scooted underneath the vehicle. The rest of the time, he was beside the vehicle and only reaching underneath it with his hands. It’s much quicker to jerk your arms back at any indication of instability, than to get out from under the vehicle.
Yes, there is risk in the procedure. Full grown adults have been seriously injured or killed by vehicles on unstable jackstands.
But except for those fractional second episodes, he appeared to be doing the work in as reasonably safe manner as most adults do it without a multi-ton stationary hydraulic lift to put the vehicle on.
Also worth noting, a couple of time-lapse sequences where he said something like “ask your dad to remove/replace this thingamajig” and it was “magically” removed or replaced. He then continued with the procedure.
I don’t think his parents have him replace wheel bearings without supervision. The context of the video makes it apparent that his parent was supervising (watching him, ready to intervene if he endangered himself), along with running the video camera. The video showed his competence to replace a wheel bearing, not that it was a regular chore for him to do unsupervised.
As to the “strength” issues others noted, Archimedes covered levers around 300 BC: “Give me a place to stand, and I shall move the Earth with it.”
Omg how adorable! 🙂
That 5 year old is smarter than me! I am currently sitting in my car on the side of a busy highway waiting for the AA, as a ‘bit’ is hanging off my car and scraping the road. I know it’s not the exhaust pipe, and that’s about all I know…where are you, Phoenix? Or Warren’s daughter, for that matter ☺.
” Full grown adults have been seriously injured or killed by vehicles on unstable jackstands.”
The vast majority of those incidents still come down to human error. Using them on soft surfaces without a base plate, using them on uneven ground, and or not engaging the parking brake or blocking the wheels to prevent rolling.
Personally I only ever use stands as a backup to my floor jacks. Should my floor jacks fail, which isn’t a sudden fall, but a slow descent due to loss of pressure, my stands catch the vehicle and prevent it from coming down.
Now jacking up a trailer with over 100,000 lbs of cargo is a completely different beast.
I’m slacking. The best I’ve got is last Sunday having my three-year-old help me change the oil on my car.
Happy Thanksgiving.
Thanks, Doug! That’s the point! Oil change today, brake shoes tomorrow.
Very impressive! Hope my daughter (13 mo now) will be as smart and confident by the time she is his age! Wow!
Warren November 26, 2015 at 9:10 pm:
Didn’t mean to suggest otherwise, only that the procedure does have risks. The risk of being crushed due to unstable stands is reduced to zero by not getting under the car at all.
I saw nothing to indicate the stands were actually unstable. But it was the only fraction of a second in the video which “the crowd we hope that this video would show kids capabilities to” might find anything even remotely possible to complain about. Because they will complain about even infinitesimal probabilities. So it got my attention.
He was probably at greater risk of being struck by lightning if it happened to be raining outside.
En Passant,
I wasn’t saying anything about this kid being at risk. Hell I have been all the way under a vehicle and had my kid bring me tools. What I was trying to say is that the most inherent risk in pretty much any situation is human error or oversight.
Awwwe, that little guy is cuter than a bug’s ear! Not only that but he’s smarter than a whip! Now I’m just waiting for the gestapo organization, Child Protective Services, to have the parents arrested for child abuse because they “violated child labor laws”……sigh.
My dad taught my sister and I to identify tools at a very young age. My mom worked, and if he made us his “tool-handers” it kept us close by and under observation while he could still work on his car.
Warren November 27, 2015 at 11:36 am:
Got it. Agree with that point. We’re on the same page.
I was proceeding on the basis that it’s good to know the opposition’s likely attacks as well as possible. I put on a pair of “Oh no! What if? Call CPS!” spectacles to find anything in the video that the most irrational advocate might see to claim that the child was “endangered”. That was the worst I could find. We both agree they’ve got bupkis.
This child’s father “knows” his child has a brain and can use it. And he respects that.
Helicopter parents have little respect for their own children’s abilities. Maybe it’s because they spend little time with their kids. Maybe it’s just total ignorance, or maybe they just live a life of fear.
If you go to youtube and find this same video Lenore posted, you can read the the questions and answers between viewers and the father of the child.
Youtube has many videos posted by very competent children. Unfortunately, you often have to just discover them when you’re searching a topic. Most kids who post do NOT say things like: “10-year-old showing you how to ______” … That kind of title would usually be worded by a parent who is posting.
I wonder how many of you have seen this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=omuYi2Vhgjo
No, he’s not an average kid, but lots of kids are not average.
Everything I ever knew about wheel bearings I learned from a Kindergartner.
my little one start to hold staring but i don’t allow him for safety. actually parents need some lesson on good parenting.
This perenial Christmas article on helicopter parenting from Chesterton:
http://www.artsandopinion.com/2006_v5_n6/from-the-past.htm
@tz
“This perenial Christmas article on helicopter parenting from Chesterton”
Thanks. I hadn’t seen that one.
Here’s Chesterton’s wonderful essay on “militarism”. As a hook I will give you the ending first: “I am not in favour of the child being taught militarism. I am in favour of the child teaching it.”
http://auto-didact.blogspot.com/2007/05/chesterton-again.html
Is that Danny Champion of the World? Totally reminded me of Roal Dahl.