Washing a car with your son, what a wonderful activity to do on a bank holiday Monday
A laughter filled hour spent getting wet and having fun. What you teach your son as the best way to wash the car is immaterial … it is sharing an experience that is special. But I think it is also an opportunity to teach them about life. It’s the attention to detail that makes the job go from average to good or good to great helping them to learn that it is a process that if done right gets great results.
In sharing this experience with my youngest son he posed a question, “why don’t we go to the car wash instead?”.
Rather than saying I am a cheapskate and child labour saves me money, we discussed how long it would take to drive to the garage and use a car wash and what would cost in terms of money, petrol and time. My son is no slouch and he said it was probably better to go to the hand wash by the local football club and have them do it which whilst it would cost more would be a better finish … And they have more people.
So as we are scrubbing the wheels and pressure washing the soap off he popped up again: “Dad how much do you get paid to wash cars ? It can’t be a lot”
I asked him what he meant and he said it takes ten to twenty minutes at the hand car wash though they say come back in thirty minutes or an hour, but they have six people on it so they split ten pounds between them, which means about one pound and thirty-five pence each for ten minutes … That’s not a lot and they need to be doing cars all the time.
The conversation continued, “Daddy we are having fun but it is hard work … It must be hard work to do it all the time … And not a lot of money … I think you should pay me more for doing your car”.
“Why?”, I asked.
He looked at me and said, “It’s a personal service and you love me”.
The joys of our children, a clean car, a discussion on work ethics, maths and finance and talk about attention to detail with my eight year old son. What a way to spend an hour on a bank holiday. Sometime the role of dad can be just make your heart swell with contentment … but then the bill arrived and negotiations started !!!!
Till next time,
Marc
The views expressed in this blog are solely those of the blogger and do not necessarily represent the views of Dad.info
