The Dangerous Book For Boys

Back at Christmas, Josh (8y) got a book called The Dangerous Book For Boys from his grandmother, which includes all sorts of fun 'boy' stuff like how to build a tree house, set traps, make secret codes, identify spiders, etc (It'd be just as awesome for girls. I don't subscribe to the idea of anything being for one gender or the other).

He never even cracked the spine. It's been sitting around f or six months. I've left it out in his path, but he'd brush right by it. Lately it's been living on a shelf in his room, a room he is very rarely in now that the cold weather has passed.

Until about an hour ago. He came out of his room asking for some copper wire. I told him regrettably I don't have any, and asked what he was going to use it for. "Making a battery. From my book, The Dangerous Book For Boys." Apparently you can layer quarters, tin foil, and do something with copper wire to make a battery. Awesome. Until we can get to the hardware store, he's outside with a friend working on some other thing from the book.

It was hard to let the book sit without pushing him to read it, without pressuring him to just take a look. But he picked it up in his own time, and I have a feeling he's enjoying it much more now than if he had opened it simply to get me off his back. It is hard at first to let go of the idea that we, as parents or adults, need to be driving the direction of our children's educations, but it gets easier. As you see all the amazing things they come up with and become interested in of their own accord it gets much easier, and eventually the idea that we need to coerce them into learning seems ludicrous.