In an effort to do with my son as my father did with me, I went to Wal-Mart recently to buy him some model airplanes and model rockets, but I was stunned. Not by the price, but by the fact that Wal-Mart didn’t even stock models anymore, and the rockets they had were mostly all pre-made. Obviously I don’t blame them. They’re a business which sells what people buy.
That’s why it made me so sad to think that so few kids these days build models with their dads that the biggest retailer in the world doesn’t even stock them anymore. Their shelves are lined with finished toys that beep and whir, but boys in need of fine-motor-skill development, attention to detail, and (most importantly) the joy of creating something themselves, certainly don’t require more battery operated distractions.
What they need is to learn the value of wasting a few hours constructing something difficult with the patient assistance of their fathers: toys that require imagination both to build and to play with as well.
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