Has anyone had success bringing their younger (4 - 8 year old) kids along when mentoring FRC? If I can parent and mentor at the same time it would really help in optimizing work/life/mentor balance but I’ve yet to do it successfully. If anyone else has, I would love to hear your tips.
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Not 4-8 but we did have our head coach bring his newborn to a competition which resulted in this amazing photo
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I’m not a parent, but our lead mentor when I was a student a decade ago brought their kid with them to meetings and a few of the students would help watch her/babysit during meetings. Their wife also mentioned the team, so if your spouse is able to that could also help.
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Both my wife Heather and I mentor, our daughter will be age 4 in April.
Several other mentors have kids, so when they’re there she plays with them. Otherwise she does independent play and occasionally spends time with various members of the team when they have free time.
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l have 5 ranging from 4-16. They spend lots of time at the shop and practice field. They help and interact with the team. We have a large drive where they can ride bikes and scooters and we have Legos, and robot kits for them to play with. My oldest 2 are doing FTC at their school as a result.
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I brought my kids when they were that young, and now even when they’re a little older. If they’re with me, even now that they’re a little older, I always go in with the expectation that I will have to cut my time short. If students are having to look after my kids too often or for too long, then that’s not a good use of their time and I would take my kids and leave.
My kids love going though and have a great time while they’re there and the students are/were really good with them.
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I have a 4 month old so this will be my first year navigating this challenge… should be interesting!
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This is why I joke that FRC is for people under 28 or over 40. # kids #spouse
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I remember going through my old team’s Google drive, to find a picture of our head mentor’s infant daughter in a baby carried suspended from the ceiling by a chain. Best part was someone testing a robot in the background 
. I wish I could find it but I’m not a part of that team anymore.
this is kinda what we plan to do. we have a currently 8 month old. we have an advantage though, not only does my wife also mentor, but my parents do too.
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@vmm any tips? Though by the time you were actively mentoring she was closer to 6. But definitely hit competitions at 4.
I recommend a bag of robotics-only toys. (Things they get to play with only at robotics.) We put Bri’s sister to work making buttons, and she was scouting by 5 or 6. She was also an adorable mascot at competitions. I also signed her up for ABC Kids, and she would play that during robotics meetings. There were some other games on the shop computers that the students taught her to play. And she would bring a Kindle or 3DS to play with sometimes.
Unless other mentors have done this. I am guessing this is referring to me and my daughter At meetings in 2017. I am now wondering which of the alumni you are 
Certain ages of the kid are easier than others and certain times of the build season are better than others. My daughter is now 8. In general if my daughter want to come along then I bring her. Some days she does other days she doesn’t. When she is at meetings she has fun.
Mentoring with kids is rough. But it beats the alternatives.
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@Clodsire partially exposed.
XD
I am still many years out from needing any of this information (I hope anyway) but this thread has been a fascinating read so far.
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What alternatives kids with ni mentiring? Mentoring with no (of your own) kids?
Part of me is curious how the student mentor relationship has existed in the robotics context with your own kids on the team? How does that go? Any different than other sports where a parent is a coach?
A lot of my experience with mentoring so far has been teaching kids things their parents don’t really know, or challenging them in ways that differ than their parents. When a (core technical) mentor and a parent are the same person hiw dies that unfold?
I have a very small handful of observations to pull from with robotics in my past, I imagine it is a bit of a mixed bag.
My girls are about to be 7 and 9 and I’m going into my 7th season. I do bring them along regularly, with varying levels of success. Sometimes they’re interested in what’s going on, sometimes they’re working on homework, and sometimes I set them up on a computer with Scratch and let them build on their own. But they’re comfortable in the space, understand the safety rules (including having their own glasses), and I give them opportunities to be included. My 6 year old has helped me setup and run our CNC and both she and her sister have helped on our laser. My eldest went to CMP last year and I suspect is going to start lobbying to go again long before we qualify. They’ve both found people and activities they enjoy, and that makes bringing them more interesting and easier for them.
But for a long time, they just didn’t have the attention span or maturity to be in the lab for significant periods of time and I needed to be more flexible. I’ve also tried to set clear boundaries for myself to make it easier to get the balance right (even when I haven’t). Concretely:
- I regularly push meetings that don’t need to be in person to after they’re in bed. I know it’s probably annoying to have a leads meeting start at 8:30p, but it means I can do bedtime with my kids.
- I spend a lot of time working to make myself non-essential though delegation and training. One of the things I had to say too often when I was in management was that if the organization couldn’t handle people taking family leave or vacation when they wanted to, something had gone wrong. This isn’t any less true with FRC - if the team can’t function without me for enough time for me to go to my daughter’s soccer game or take a family vacation, there’s a systemic failure that needs to be addressed.
- I have regular scheduled days and I try to avoid over booking or working too much outside those hours. This is probably still my biggest pain point. It’s easy for FRC to expand to fill all available space.
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If you bring your child to an event, do not leave them field-side when you leave your match. (Yes, this really happened to a toddler at an event several years ago.)
My own kids are now 25 and 23, but were 4 and 2 when I began as Lead Mentor for the team I coached until this year. Others are offering advice on ways to make it work. My suggestion is that you severely limit or halt your involvement while your kids are young. I have a lot of regrets in life, and one big one is that I missed out on important opportunities with my kids in order to put in more hours on robots. I often wonder how things might have turned out differently had I been around more, or had I not brought them along to work on robots thinking they might catch the passion. Instead (this is my take) I think they saw it as the thing I was doing instead of spending time with them, so they never really liked it.
Last year was my final year as head coach, and these days I go home in the evenings to see my wife and spend time with her. Last night, while the team was meeting, I got a call from my adult daughter to see if we could meet up for dinner, and I didn’t have to choose between robots and my kid. We met up, and it was one good moment in the long journey of building that relationship and letting her know that I’ve decided to make her and the rest of the family a priority now in a way that didn’t in the past. I’m grateful that it’s not too late.
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…I have had way too many mentors tell me their regrets when it comes to family time.
I have an almost 2 year old and a 3 year old. The 3 year old started to go with me here and there. I am lucky in the sense of having several qualified adults on the team. Please always choose family over robotics.
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Bring them with. It is one of the reasons my kids love robotics. They have been coming since they were young especially saturday practices. I bring lots of snacks, coloring books, board games, legos, etc. But the real magic happens when they interact with the older kids. My youngest kid has cut so many pieces of metal with a hand saw or file during practice. He is currently 8 and the kids added a piece he cut by hand 2 years ago to the bot he was sooooo happy. As much as mentors are gone from home to see your kids include them as part of the team. It also makes the spouse much happier if you can take them with you even for a few hours. Sometimes they would come in the morning until lunch and then go home. Just play it by what they can handle.
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