[mikester]

I'm lucky at the moment, my oldest is only in his second year in scouts. My youngest hasn't started yet but LOVES it already. I built cars with both of them this year and last. The 4 year old's doesn't get much real attention to detail but he loves it none-the less. My oldest wanted his car to be pretty sweet this year. Last year's - I thought - was great. He did a Finn McMissle car and it looks pretty good to me. I helped him lay out the design on the block and we cut it out together on the scroll saw. He sanded it and when he was ready to paint I handed him the brush. We did some paper cutouts for the details like his face and windows and head lights and what not. Glues those on and then he put ALL the numbers on it. We graphited it up and were ready to race. It was middle of the pack as far a speed was concerned.

He didn't have the patience to pay attention to the details required to make it 'fast' but other dads did it for their kids or maybe their kids did have the patience. How am I to know for certain. So this year I decided I would help him with those details more but leave as much of the car up to him to do and let him know that I'd be happy to help him at his request but it was his car.

There isn't much way to prevent over-zealous Dad's (including myself) from working on their kids cars but this year he was able to pay more attention to the details and was willing to work a little harder and said he did want to be faster and wanted me to push him. I don't really want to push him - I just want him to enjoy it. Last year he was really upset afterwards and our winner was most certainly a Dad-built car. Now, my oldest's car probably looks like a 'Dad-built' car. It isn't, I instructed him and I helped him but I didn't build it. We did. Tomorrow or Wednesday we'll need to get those wheels on though...