Remember last month when I told you I was building a robot arm with my son?

I showed you this inviting box and all the fiddly components inside.

We (well, mostly I) followed the instructions to the letter and assembled this thing over a couple of weekends.

And piece by painful piece we finally put the whole thing together….

Until it looked like this!

Looks great, right?

There’s only one small problem: it doesn’t work.

I mean, it worked initially. You pulled a lever and the arm moved using the science of hydraulics.

But then it stopped working.

I removed the tubes, refilled them with water and reattached them, as per the instructions and troubleshooting guide, but still no luck.

The next day two tubes popped off, leaking water over the table.

Sigh.

I will tinker with this some more, but only when I have the patience for it.

What have I learned from this?

Toys aren’t always as good as they seem and my children don’t yet have the patience to spend two weekends building one thing that in the end didn’t even work.

Parenting, huh?