The Great Experiment

We have been super upfront about the fact that raising our children has basically been a huge experiment.  However, we kicked it up a notch or two (thousand) on Darin's 15th birthday.  If you want to know about our reasoning, you can read about it here.  

We put a bow on Darin's car and parked it in the driveway.  The siblings blindfolded him and walked him all around.  They took off his blindfold and he was basically in shock for the next few days!  Actually sometimes it seems like he is still in shock.  Darin has told us quite a few times how every time we would drive over a bridge or under a tunnel or when he would blow out his birthday candles for as long as he could remember he would wish that he would get a car for his 16th birthday.  Seriously, how cute is he??!!

 He loved his birthday present even with all the conditions we gave him. 

He barely met the first deadline and the second was extended a month because Ken and I decided we wanted to go on vacation over Christmas rather then staying home giving him time to finish, so in our book he met both deadlines.  Darin is one very happy boy to be completely finished and to have total freedom to use his car as he wishes!  For his 16th birthday present we told him we would get it painted.

 

Not only did he have to do everything on the list above a few repairs also came up.  Here's some of the highlights of those:

*The Odometer and Speedometer

*Cleaning, testing, and replacing the battery

*Replacing the framework for headlights

*Replacing the clutch (this was major and included removing the transmission, getting things machined and rebuilding the clutch)

 

I'm not gonna lie there were a few times Ken and I would question if we/he had bit off more then a 15 year old should handle.  This experiment literally took our son's blood, sweat, and (a few) tears.  This was not some fun father/son bonding project.  People assumed that quite often, but we literally gave our son a manual and said,  "Here you go".  Darin used a lot of YouTube videos in addition to his book (thank you people who share their talents!).  For most items on his list Darin would do 3-4 hours of research/work and Ken would consult with him for about 5-10 minutes, and it is not like Ken would necessarily know much about it but he would be Darin's sounding board and would double-check his solutions.  The most time-intensive part for Ken was the hour he spent helping Darin pull the transmission-- mainly because it was heavy and a two-person job.  Darin somehow recruited a friend to spend a few hours putting it back in:)

 

So from our perspective the hardest challenge was having faith in our son and stepping back and letting him fail.  Darin had to re-do a few things and struggled with managing his time.  Ken and I's philosophy is more to teach our children to be successful, and if they are struggling with being successful we need to teach/support them more (not to be confused with taking over).  Letting him fail and not interceding was extremely hard.  There were a few tears shed on our side too.

 

We consider the crazy, car experiment to be a HUGE success!!! 

 

We purchased the car for $900 and spent an additional $839 on parts, tools, and miscellaneous lubricants, etc. that Darin needed.  $141 of that was actually for someone to machine a part or when we sent away the odometer piece to be fixed, but we absorbed that under the parts since the tools he needed to fix them were very cost-prohibitive.

 

For a grand total of $1,739 our son has a reliable vehicle that he basically knows inside and out.  Learning the mechanical skills was an obvious outcome.  However, we think the real value comes from what Darin has learned from the "Great Experiment". 

 

Darin said this, "I learned how to finish a big project, a lot about building a car from scratch, and how to carry out something from start to finish." 

 

We feel like we got a great return on our investment of $1,739.  For all we care the car could be totaled tomorrow but because of the growth we saw in Darin it would have been worth every penny!  Having the actual car is just a bonus.  Here's a few things we noticed that Darin learned:

 

How To Manage His Time

Darin had to choose quite often between working on his car and hanging out with friends.  He missed out on movies, soccer games, video game parties, etc.  Darin also learned how to deal with things taking much longer then anticipated and following through. Managing his time wasn't just between car stuff and friends.  There has been a noticeable change in how he has managed his time for school work, job opportunities, even with his home responsibilities.

 

Taking Ownership For His Life and Things He Wants to Accomplish 

Darin has always been a somewhat responsible kid, but now he takes complete ownership for everything in his life.  We rarely need to remind him of anything or even make suggestions that he do something.  For example, the boys got their transcripts in the mail from UT for an independent study Health Class they took.  Darin emailed his counselor to see who he should give it to and handled taking it to school, turning it in, and checking back with his counselor to ensure they removed the health class from his schedule next year.  He did this all on his own.  We didn't even suggest for him to do any of those things and a few weeks later when I asked him where he had put his transcript because we should really turn it in, he told me what he had done and that it was all taken care of. 

 

We've also noticed that Darin hasn't needed reminders (at least from us) about his church responsibilities or things he is in charge of.  He has set-up study groups on his own and attended tutorials when he felt like he has needed them, spoken to teachers about extra credit, etc.  His grades have been better then ever even though school has gotten more challenging and he has had to deal with a couple of difficult teachers. Are we going to worry about him graduating or if he is going to apply to college?  Nope, not at all.  At this point it's more likely he will inform us that he is accepted after the fact:)

 

How to Deal with Disappointment and Difficult Situations

His attitude has matured a lot.  Darin has learned how to work through set-backs and disappointments.  I'm sure there was a time or two that he wanted to kick the heck out of his car--for the record he didn't.  We've seen his emotional maturity grow all around, whether it was dealing with a difficult situation with a friend or with teachers that were tough and sometimes unfair.  He will still complain and expresses  his frustrations when things happen but there is a big difference now where he will accept it and quickly move onto what he can do to make the situation better.

 

Social Independence

Now that Darin is 16 he has started dating!  He has been lining up buddies to double-date with him and basically informing us of his plans.  Pretty much exactly what we have always hoped for!  We still haven't even had time to brainstorm activities or dates he could go on but he has it covered. 

 

Darin texts or calls me when he gets to places and before he leaves.  He does this for seminary in the morning, everyday when he goes to school and before he comes home, or when he is going to a friends house.   I am grateful he is considerate of our feelings when he is gone and keeps us in the loop so we won't worry.  Can I just say this one habit is totally awesome husband material-- you are welcome future daughter in-law!!  (For the record he and Nathan started doing this when they got cell phones in middle school.)

 

Self-Reliance and Service

About halfway through the experiment Darin taught a class to the Mia Maid class for activity night all about basic car maintenance.  Obviously he was thrilled to show off his skills to a bunch of cute girls his age, but this was the first glimpse he had that once he has learned a skill then he can use it to serve other people.  He hasn't even had his license for a month yet but he has helped with a few things for our family and has also given  a number of friends rides when their parents needed help getting them places.  We have particularly enjoyed him driving to seminary in the morning!

 

When my transmission melted down last summer Darin was the first one to think of pulling out the manual to see what the code meant.  I have no doubt that he would be the first person to offer to change a flat tire too.  He is proud (rightfully so) of his mechanical knowledge.  He even took apart my kitchen aid mixer and diagnosed the gear slipping problem so that it could be repaired instead of replaced.  Seriously, it is so nice having him around to help out!

 

Fiscal Responsibility and Gratitude

Darin has also become super responsible financially.  He hasn't been too bad with finances most of his childhood.  He has been the child who spent the most by far but we also have required our kids to save and budget quite a bit so his spending never was out of control.  But, the big change this year is he has become responsible financially when it comes to OUR money.  This is so huge to me and Ken! Darin was on the hook for the labor and we agreed to pay for parts during this experiment.  Darin has shopped around for the lowest priced parts even when it has delayed what he could accomplish.  When he realized he didn't need a part recently; he kept track of when the deadline was to return it (Ken and I completely forgot), packaged it, looked up where he could return it to, printed off directions, and one day after school he drove to the auto dealership to take care of it.  I just got the sweet phone call from Darin telling me he was leaving for the store now.

 

Also, since we set him up with his own debit card I have transferred money into it a few times so he could grab fast food or something since we were out of town or busy.  But, Darin would choose to eat at home or not do something.  Then he has reminded me (sometimes multiple times) that I should take the money out of his account because he didn't need it.  It really means a lot that he has been so grateful and realizes that we have limited resources, has cherished what we are able to give him, and is respectful of that.  Really, what parent doesn't like to be thanked constantly:)  Love our son! 

 

Here's some pictures from his journey... 

 

Thank you YouTube!! 

Consulting with Ken.

Odometer work

First Oil Change.  Darin does not like to get his hands dirty and this was the first item he took care of that really tested his resolve.  Now it's no big deal to him and I have to live with a bottle of go-jo in my bathroom.

We learned that changing your own oil pretty much costs the same as when you use a coupon and have someone else do it.  However you get super premium oil.  I doubt for the hassle though that we will be switching to him doing this on a regular basis.

Registering his car.  Or getting the temporary registration.  His clutch failed like 2 weeks later so we put off finalizing the registration until that was fixed.

He was so thrilled when it passed the safety inspection!

 Teaching the Mia-Maids car maintenance.

 

Darin got tired of jacking up his car plus he wanted more room to work under it when he pulled the transmission so he did some research and came up with a plan to build a cheap car ramp.

I actually think he looked forward to designing and building his ramps more then he did fixing his car.  The ramp project took his free time up for about 6 weeks.

After all the major repairs were completed and the clutch was replaced.  Darin was super excited!  I was completely terrified of Ken and Darin taking it out for a test drive.  It was a huge leap of faith to let the man I love and my baby go out and drive this car.  Especially when I started freaking out that we just let our boy rebuild a dangerous machine with only a book and youtube videos to rely on and now they were going to test it out.  It didn't help that Ken started going over what the worse case scenarios would be with Darin based on the parts he had touched.  And then my wicked husband made it spin out in our cul-de-sac as they pulled out just for kicks--he's still paying for that:)  I will admit now that Darin did an awesome job.  His clutch is super smooth!

We will definitely be repeating this same experiment with our other children.  Yes, even the girls, or especially with the girls.  We don't want them being prissy girls and we certainly don't want them marrying sissy boys.  Ken and I have always talked about how when our kids hit 16 we wanted them to be as responsible as adults and to basically practice functioning as an adult with us just being a safety net or sounding board.  We could not have imagined that Darin would have been ready and capable of that just 13 months ago, but he is pretty darn close (like he only needs a regular job now) and I think this process made all the difference.  I may love his car more then any other car we have ever owned!