For my 10th birthday I got an acetylene torch. One of those ones jewlers use. I used it to make metal sculptures out of scrap parts. I think we do not give kids enough credit. Of course my father was a machinist and I grew up around that kind of stuff.
Not on a bike that he’d fit. Though Harry Hurt (Hey! He’s hiring!) would point out that it is the drop, not the speed, that busts your skull and he sits too awkwardly on this contraption.
And that’s another thing, as I shift from being a responsible parent to my natural state of irresponsible ten year old. What is the appeal of those BMX bikes for kids who are reaching their adult height? No, I mean the ones who ride (well, rode is more like it since you saw it more in the 80s) them by choice, not because they can’t afford larger. You can’t get any decent speed out of a one-speed 20" bike! And, thanks to what my wife calls “that damned glacier,” we don’t have any hills around here, either. Stupid vehicles.
Ah, that’s different. You got proper training and supervision. Different from having a cleaver shoved into your Christmas stocking.
I too got a really cool tool set when I was merely five. Hand saw, coping saw, cool carpentry tools, and a great set of knives for woodcarving (daddy was glad to have a daughter who liked “boy stuff”.) So a was a decent little wood worker, making stuff out of balsa mostly.
By the age of 9, I had moved on to pine and was allowed to work unsupervised with the electric jigsaw saw, drill, drill press, and soldering iron when I tried my had at basic electronics (didn’t like electronics as much). Yes, I still have all my fingers, and no, I was not allowed to use anything that could “pull me in” (such as a table saw).
It’s different when a parent uses due dilligence to teach a child how to use a tool safely, what to do in an emergency, and how to respect the danger of the tool they are using. I’m sure I would’ve been allowed to use a small blowtorch for art stuff once I’d been properly trained by an adult.
Ex/ Some parents can and do teach 11-year-olds gun safety so they can accompany adults on hunting trips (personal note: I hate guns, hunting and the like, but nontheless, I’ve known kid’s who have gone). Quite different than giving a kid a pellet gun and then letting them run amok in the neighbourhood, saying “have fun, don’t put your eye out”.
(When I was 12 I got shot with a BB gun of some kind by some nine year olds while I was tying my shoe. Cut my shin, glad it missed my face.)
Word to the wise, a wood-burning set allows you to sculpt in fine detail, so you can finish up the figure with those distinctive skin-graft scars. Er, I assume.
He’ll shoot his eye out!
What?
Someone had to do it.
Hey…what’s this…Fra—gil-e.
It must be Italian.
You forgot about the thing that tells time!
My step brothers’ kid got a four wheeled ATV for Xmas. He is 6.
This thing costs at least a couple grand (we asked). They have a governor on the engine so it can only go at half speed, which is about 15 miles per hour.
It’s probably a matter of time before he learns how to disable that feature.
Am I the only one who thinks it’s crazy for a 6 year old to be driving an ATV around the yard?
Oh let it go. We don’t have bears and tigers to eat the stupid poeple anymore. At least they can buy their kids stuff like that.
The real problem is that some people assume that being “big enough” to ride a motorized vehicle means having the common sense to properly operate it. That seven year old might actually be large enough to reach the pedals, as it were, but I have a notion that safe operation of the bike is something beyond his comprehension. (Really–how many kids that age truly believe that they could be seriously injured on such a machine? As it is, lots of adults are apparently to stupid to realize that!)
You have to work with kids and not let them do such things unsupervised, at least till they know how (and why) to play safe! I know that you can’t keep kids in a glass box, but there’s no need to throw them to the wolves, either! 
I’ve not seen any scooters around here (southern Indiana) but I have seen children as young as around 4-5 romping around on four-wheelers. I’m not talking those lil tiny ones you buy for kids, the people around here set their kids off on adult-sized four wheelers… then wonder how on earth they keep getting hurt… doh…
Grem
Darwin is just frothing at the mouth…
Excuse me but in the South we give our kids guns, not dangerous gas powered vehicles they are not old enough to handle properly.
Hey, if he survives the neighborhood then the parents can start sending him out on a beer runs.