TechLahore

One of the things we’ve always loved and cherished about Pakistan is how close families are in our culture. Generally, we’re there for each other regardless of what the occasion or the severity of the problem! We’re also thrilled to see that younger parents are spending an ever increasing amount of time with their children. I’ve seen countless young moms worry about their kids’ academic performance in kindergarten – yes, kindergarten – more so than ever before. And it’s absolutely fabulous that this level of time and attention is being spent with children. They, ultimately, are our investment in the future. However, it’s not just the quantity of time but also the quality of it, that matters. At the end of the day, your children will be influenced by your values, by how diligently you demonstrate the difference between right and wrong and so on… But in addition to a value system, parents should also do as much as they can to cultivate an active mind in their kids… to imbue them with a sense of curiosity about life, about how things work, why apples fall to the ground and how windmills mill.

As a parent, I’ve found that building toys for my kids with their active involvement, has been a fabulous way to get them to appreciate what they can achieve if they apply their minds to something. Both my boys – a 4 year old and a 2 ½ year old – are in love with the Pixar movie, Cars. I hear about Lightning McQueen and M’ater all day long. And over the past few months, they’ve probably bought all the Cars toys they possibly could. My younger one, though, has been wanting a “Blue” version of the Mac truck that Lightning McQueen travels in. Since such a truck doesn’t really exist in the movie, there’s only one way to solve the problem…. build one! But of course, readers who are parents will understand, you can’t do anything for one child without compensating the other. So to make a long story short, the three of us ended up building a slew of toys (including the vaunted ‘Mac’) with nothing other than scraps of wood, glue, perforated packing cardboard, a dremel drill, basic tools, and some paint. Once we were done with the basic form, we became a little more imaginative and decided we would add motors and lights and all sorts of interesting things. Our pact was that every day when I came home from work, we would “add a feature” to the trucks.

Once we were done with the trucks, of course, we had to keep going… so we built a railway engine (powered), a helicopter with powered rotors and much more. Now, we’re working on adding microcontrollers to our toys so the kids can program them to behave in interesting ways.

I’ve never had so much fun and the kids seem to be enjoying it too! They keep asking me insightful questions which can only mean they’re picking up on things. They know what a gearbox is, and what an axle is. The older one came up with ideas on how to build in handles and rear view mirrors… good fun and constructive too.

Would you consider taking some time to do something similar with your kids, or kids around you? It’s so important for all of us to help develop the next generation of brilliant, optimistic, confident and indomitable Pakistanis – those of us who can make a difference, absolutely should. Small things go a long way…

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