Stac’s Place

beav=Levi, my 14 year old son…

Having a 14 year old son is turning out to be pretty fun.  I don’t know what your experience has been like, but Levi and I are wired similarly, and we tend to butt heads over some pretty trivial stuff.  It’s an area that we’ve talked about, tried to show grace toward each other in, and are working through.  Things have been better of late, and we’re seeing some growth, which is a good thing.

I’ve been trying to find some things that we can do together, areas of shared interest that will give us the opportunity to learn and grow together.  He likes video games; I don’t.  I love baseball; him, not so much.  We both like music, and although we don’t have much electronics experience, I think we have an aptitude for learning, and both enjoy putting things together.  Levi is working on electronics in a science unit at school, so I thought it might be fun to try to build a simple electric guitar tube amplifier.

I’ve been doing a lot of online research over the past week, and have a friend or 2 who know way more than I do about soldering and stuff like that.  If any of you are electronics aficionados, drop me a note, because I am ready to start buying/scrounging parts for a Fender 5F1 Champ clone.  It’s a sweet little 5 watt tube amp based on a classic Fender amp from the 50s.

I figure that while we work on the amp project, we’ll have the opportunity to build our relationship together.  All relationships take work, don’t they?  And there are few relationships that are more precious/precarious than the parent-child relationship.  I want my son to know that I love him, that I am proud of him, and that I believe in him.  Finding a common interest is going to be a fun way to strengthen that bond, open lines of communication, and should give us lots of opportunities to practice showing grace to each other!