That’s like asking will your child be an engineer, an artist, an athlete, a musician…
My mother was handier than my father with the EE degree. I’m much handier than my H- both of us are physicians but guess which one worked in the internal medicine world and which one in the surgical one…
Parental backgrounds as well as innate abilities and interests help determine how much one does. H figures out computer software for me (I lack the patience and desire for some of it) and I install the hardware changes. And the light fixtures, replacement fans, much of our landscaping and so much more. He did the TV and its associated wiring to all the devices/speakers et al. He’ll tinker with some things forever before deciding he needs to buy the replacement- it’s the challenge. We could afford to just pay to have things done-but it can be a lot more fun to do it yourself. As we get older we will outsource more things, however.
Like someone said above- son is a mix of the two of us. Much better in the kitchen than his dad. Not as interested in some things that I am. Differences in abstract versus real world thinking between parents and a son more into the abstract than I am.
Of course my kid can do anything- without any help. He is slowing aging out of his teen arrogance and acknowledging those no nothing parents may actually know a thing or two. Give him a second ten years before we can discuss this with him…
btw- will never learn to tie a tie whereas less handy H did it all of the time back in the day.
I was just thinking about this the other day. My DH is a great handyman and just seems to know what to do. He has an extensive set of tools, etc., and enjoys them. He can improvise fising things and figure it out. He makes stuff to…shelves, etc.
My boys can’t do this, not like he can. They don’t want to. Sometimes I wonder if it’s because there wasn’t this crazy social media for entertainment. DH said he remembers going to the garage when he was a teen and organizing it just out of boredom sometimes. Now, the kids noses are stuck in their phones. Oh…they do stuff around the house, but couldn’t really fix something if their life depended on it. It’s kind of sad.
I think it’s a valid point @conmama. I also remember when you used to be able to take things apart just so you could see how it worked, and then put it back together.
My son loves any of this type of stuff. Right now I often give him a shot at fixing/repairing things. He reads the manuals for everything. When he was younger he would read manuals for garden equipment on the way home from the store and then tell me everything I was doing wrong when I put it together (without reading the manual of course – or at least just skimming it).
" I also remember when you used to be able to take things apart just so you could see how it worked, and then put it back together."
That would never have interested me, to take something apart and figure out why it worked. That’s why I’m not an engineer or mechanic. Seriously, if I weren’t married, I’d have a handyman and just have him come by once a month or whatever and do all this stuff. I had a very handy mother who did all this and a completely un-handy father who preferred to hire it out.
H is pretty handy when it comes to simple things (clogged drain types of things, painting, etc.) S can probably do simple things too. He would likely call H to consult and help. H’s dad used to come all the time to help H when we first moved into our fixer upper house. H doesn’t really do much anymore because his job doesn’t allow him the time and we have the disposable income to afford to hire people.
My father couldn’t even change a lightbulb. The handyman practically lived at our house.
DS’s are both engineers. The mech E is, well, more “mechanical” than the chem E, and generally more able to fix stuff. Chem E son calls task rabbit. That said- they together assembled an elliptical for us. That was no easy task.
I think my kids are pretty handy. Both have nice tool kits. They can easily assemble furniture and both have done so. They can do routine things around an apartment…but nothing major. They are renters somtheynreallynare not responsible for plumbing or electrical fixes!
DS has done some nice shelf building. Really nice! And he has made a few pieces of furniture for others as well.
Both are very good at painting walls.
At this point, because they are renters, they call the landlord with any fixes for other things.
My H is the kind who could be really handy if he had the time. He built from scratch (not assembly) a beautiful bookcase we have in our bedroom, and took a lot of pride in it. I just don’t have that gene. I don’t even untangle necklaces!
Ex-H is a fabulous cook, but not so handy with tools. Current H is just the opposite. I can do a little of both, but I’m not great at either. Sadly, neither of my kids seem to have picked up any of these skills.
@Pizzagirl - lol. My H untangles my necklaces too. I have no patience for that sort of thing.
I agree that it becomes a time/value thing…but what keeps H and i and our kids fixing “stuff” is that many in our area charge you $50 to simply come to the house and “tell you” what’s wrong and what’s needed and then they leave because they didn’t bring the right parts or tools and have to come back…even if you tell them what’s wrong and what’s needed. Another issue,local repair and handyman people tell me straight out on the phone “Well your husband can do this.” To which I reply, “Yes I know but we’re both very, very busy, please just come and fix it for us.” That’s a small town problem :-). Plus in our area, the “best” summer job in terms of making money for teens is construction. They pay alot more than minimum wage to get those kids framing and roofing or pouring cement in the hot sun and for the young 'guys" it’s a great way to get tan and buff and not have to go to the gym in the summer. #3 is doing construction and maintenance this summer and he loves it because it’s something different everyday and some days when the weather is bad, it’s just taking the “company” vehicle and running around to lumber yards and machine shops.
Some handyman things I just “do better” than my H, too. I have more patience and attention to detail. My hands are “thinner” so things like changing headllamps of fuses on the car or wrenching or screwing in tight spaces are easier for me. But I don’t do anything with electrical. I’ve got a paranoia about electrical which is silly I know.
We went from doing everything ourselves out of necessity to now picking an choosing what we pay for. We still lay our own floors, paint our own walls, and H does electrical work. We pay someone to grow better grass for us, put in toilets, and install windows. It pains H to not do it all, but something like plumbing he can do, but isn’t terribly efficient at, whereas he spent his teen years helping his dad out on electrical jobs.
We always made home repairs a family task - from having the kids do the math on how many boxes of flooring would be needed to redo their bedrooms to painting to landscaping. Between that and Scouts, both kids feel handy enough to try a lot of different tasks.
I may lay sod in the front yard, this fall. I’m about to start repainting inside. Some house jobs have a Zen to them.
I forgot that, in hs, when the girls went on service trips, they learned to build decks, ramps, repair porches, etc. They loved it. One continued with Habitat, during college, painting.
I bought a pair of surround sound speakers from Craigslist years ago, and one of them had a loose wire inside. I was upset and really through with the guy who’d sold me the item.
My husband told me he could fix it (!) and proceeded to do so by going to the garage and getting a solder gun and doing whatever does with that. Voila.
He was sorry he did that, though, and told me that the moment he’d opened his mouth to tell me he could fix it, he knew I’d think back on all the similar types of things that needed a quick little tweak that he had not volunteered to fix, and start to yell at him.
I was really through with him in that moment, but, oddly, couldn’t even find the words. He’d stunned me into silence with his awareness of how his revelation of this new skill was going to hit me.
Let’s focus, people. We’re talking about kids, and even though cooking also seems to be a lost art amongst teens, I’m asking about ‘handy’. Like, with tools and stuff!
We gave both DD and DS toolkits when they left for college. Since then, DD has assembled furniture, fixed a running toilet, hung shelves (using her level) and most recently changed the shower head in her rental unit (she had to borrow a wrench from my husband for that one). My son changes the oil filter and oil in his own car as well as all the other fluids and can set up TVs and other electronics. We we really wanted them to have some basic life skills before going out into the world. In fact, I suspect that part of the reason DD broke up with her boyfriend of 2 years was that he was utterly helpless with any kind of basic household or car maintenance. She may not have wanted to spend the rest of her life having to take care of all the work in their home and would have considered hiring someone to perform basic household tasks to be a waste of money.
