So the other day, I had our eldest son with me at the workshop – one of the perks/downfalls of having your own business, is that your kids spend a lot of time with you in various situations that they wouldn’t otherwise – i.e. meeting with clients, driving around to source materials, and LOTS of time in the workshop.  Having grown up as the youngest child of two architects who had their own practice, I spent much of my childhood making forts under drafting tables, playing with letraset  and learning how to collate and cerlox bind proposals.  So it seemed only natural that our children would also tag along to the workshop and spend their afternoons making cities with wood off cuts, jumping on bubblewrap and you get the picture…  Getting back to my story, the other day our eldest was doing his homework in my office (or was he playing Angry Birds on my phone?…) while I was busy with the table saw, milling pieces for a new prototype, when he appeared at the door to the shop, ear muffins on, to hand me my phone.  It was Dylan wanting to know whether we wanted to meet for lunch.  He also related his conversation with our eldest when he called:

“is Mummy there?”

“nope”

“where is she?”

“she’s in the dirty part”

Ah yes, the dirty part.  And here I was thinking that exposing my children to the creative process, surrounding them with tactile materials, doodles and sketches furniture ideas and architectural projects was serving to pique their interest in creative endeavors.  When really, its  “the dirty part”.  Hm, not quite what I hoping for.