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Comment by thearn4 | Hacker News Reader

I've started a habit of sitting down with my son and taking them apart, screw by screw, piece by piece. He loves tools so he's into it 100%. The louder, brighter, and more annoying the y are, the more likely that they don't make it back together.

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I used to take apart electronics in my house all the time, watching my dad and learning how to repair TV,toasters, VCRs etc. I was too young to remember how much damage or good I caused. These days I cannot concentrate on a lot of things, but repairing things is not one of them.

i used to buy second hand VCRs in the thrift store(or something like that) nearby to clean the heads. It took a while to understand than by cleaning them the way I did I would damage them irreparably.

VCR heads are incredibly delicate. They are essentially coils of extremely thin wire held together with a little bit of resin around a tiny mu-metal core. Touch them from the wrong angle and they're already gone.

Why did you do that? And how did you not realize that it broken after the first one?

My dad used to bring home broken desktop computers from work that were being thrown out. I would spend hours taking them apart, it was so much fun for me.

This is the best idea I've heard all day. My kids have some toys that desperately need to be taken apart screw by screw.

That's absolutely brilliant and I'm going to steal that idea when I'll have kids.

BTW., I just shared it with my cow-orkers, and the first reaction was: <<And so one day, you buy yourself a $1200 drone, then come home after work and see your kid smiling and saying "daddy, daddy! look, I took it apart all by myself!"...>> ;).

Sounds like the seeds of a young hacker are being sewn. Has he given off any signals about combining the pieces into cool new things yet?

That was the most awesome part when I was a kid, I remember the first time I played with the electronic components of an old toy, I remember being amazed about how a small switch worked the same way with a small led and with an electric motor, I was amazed about how every part could work independent from the whole toy, it was a really big discovery for me.

This is an awesome idea. We have so many useless battery-powered chunks of plastic. My 7-year-old would LOVE deconstruction lessons.

This is genius! I know exactly what I'm getting my daughter for Christmas now! Thank you so much. You have just changed my entire life for the better :)

That's awesome. Next step: circuit bending.

This sounds like a much better approach than our current "No V-Tech". Thanks for posting.

That's fantastic! I'll have to do that with my kid.

Make sure he makes it back together...

-edit- I just re-read your comment and the (great-)grandparent, and embarrassingly, just got the joke which I think you were making from some of the ambiguity of the original phrasing. That said, I'm leaving the rest of my original comment, as I think it's a point worth making. -edit-

No, don't.

If he desconstructs his favorite electronic toy and isn't able to get it working again, that's an opportunity for a lesson on how to take things apart without causing (more) damage, how cheaply and non-repairably many things are built (and the value of good design), how anything is repairable if you're cussed and resourceful enough (and when not to be), or any number of other lessons, limited only by your imagination.

for what it's worth, we do it for fun too, not just for getting rid of the annoy-a-trons :)

Thanks for acknowledging my admittedly weak humor ;-) I agree with your points.

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