Monday, December 12, 2011

Has my toddler picked his career path already?

Recently we needed new brakes on our van. 

Wythe said "why pay a mechanic for something that a 3 year old can do?"  

At first we were skeptical but upon further thought it made sense.  So we handed the job over to him.  


However, due to his lack of experience he did run into some complications, he did not know that he needed a caliper reset tool to do the job.  

At that point we started to wonder if it was wise to trust a three year old with a brake job, after all, brakes are an important part of the vehicle.  But it was possible that even an adult would not have known about the caliper reset tool so we decided to let that one slide. 

We even drove into town and picked up the tool for him since for obvious reasons he couldn't do it himself. 

We were somewhat consoled by the fact that he appeared to be taking the job very seriously. 



Wythe did spend time explaining to me why he needed that special tool.


He even showed me how he had tried repeatedly to remove the caliper without the tool but had been unsuccessful and regrettably was going to need to incur the extra cost.  

He also pointed out that we were still well below the cost of an mechanic. 


Even after having the necessary tool he still ran into further problems.  

Apparently even with the correct tools there is a logistical issue of a 40+ pound three year old trying to pull a rotor off.  He finally admitted that while he had the willingness and the desire to finish the job it may in fact be too big for him. 

At this point Daddy stepped in with the muscle power. 


Daddy even struggled a little. Especially when Wythe was leaning on his arm. 


With Daddy's help the job was finished up pretty quickly.  While Daddy was doing the muscle work Wythe busied himself with cleaning up the tools.  It was easy to clean up all Daddy's sockets, just drop them down the arm of the floor jack and presto, the floor is clean!


Looking back on the job Wythe expresses some discouragement of how long he struggled with the caliper before he realized he needed another tool.  Despite the frustration he says he hasn't ruled out being a mechanic but he really wants to pursue some other avenues before making that decision. 

'til next time...

1 comment:

I love to read your comments...