I noticed with my daughter back in the eighties that though she liked to run the trains even at five she got tired of watching it go round and round. I remembered the articles written by Frank Ellison about running a model railroad as if it were a real railroad. I got a stack of file cards and wrote a car number on each one and made a stack. Then I made a stack for each locomotive. Then I named each siding and made a stack of cards for all the sidings and spurs. We would play make the train and pick up and drop off cars and I explained this is the purpose of real railroads. Along the way I would sneak in a maintenance and repair session and she was expected to help. To start I taught her the names of the tools and her job was to hand me which ever tool I asked for and I would explain why I need that tool and what I was doing with it. By the time she was 10 she could pull apart and repair most of her trains occasionally asking my advice. I was hoping to create an engineer but she turned out a school teacher. Close enough. She doesn't hesitate to pull apart common household items lawnmowers, hairdryers, toasters etc. and repair them. I bet her shop is better than half of those on the forum. I could go on about her skills but the point is too many of our young people have no mechanical or technical skills beyond scrolling a smart phone. The phone is smarter than they are. Technological societies stand atop the hammer screwdriver and pliers. Grammar through high schools have removed shop from the curriculum, too expensive and too dangerous. To my way of thinking toys should be about something other than the latest cartoon monster they should teach useful life skills. Be it model trains, airplanes, doll houses. Kids really don't know what they like it is up to the parents the adults in their life to push them in some direction if you don't someone will and you likely will not like the direction they go. You cannot start when they are eight or ten you must start when they are very young the process must be entertaining and they will follow not noticing that you are pushing from the front. j
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