He needs encouragement from you. His future is bright, so do not worry about whatever he designs now. Encourage him by providing him with children scientific books, videos, etc. He will soon learn to design better things.

There is nothing stupid in the creativity of a child there is the incomprehension of its environment earlier. It is essential to leave them the freedom of action while accompanying them in the various actions. It is often said that "Truth comes from the mouths of children". Meditate

Dear Dr. Ahmad,

Good Day,

I think that is very bright sign of 7 years old kid. I should not worry about that. You should develop that by enrolling him in a near by scientific youth club, or  I would try and share things with him such as: ideas, solving mathematical quiz, discussing any scientific problems or phenomena. Or you could give him any simple IT problem and ask him to try and make an algorithm to solve it, since you are an IT expert.

Thank you guys

your answers are very helpful  

He needs encouragement from you. His future is bright, so do not worry about whatever he designs now. Encourage him by providing him with children scientific books, videos, etc. He will soon learn to design better things.

Your son seems to have good talent for science, engineering, or art. Please encourage him to study what he wants.

He may be the next Mark Zuckerberg. Encourage him to reflect!  He will produce USEFUL things.

He is a genius needs your time and guidance. You are blessed with a great scientist and inventor 

How can I deal with my 7 years old son who keeps inventing silly things?

It is an encouraging sign for your son to think & draw this way - what he has drawn is what he has thought.  Don't intervene but continue to encourage him.  Not sure you or other researcher (for independency sake) can conduct a qualitative research on your son why & how he thought / drawn this way & what are the possible stimuli that had influence him to do so.

Dear Dr Ahmad,

I believe you should encourage your son and  with incentives and recognition.

I recommend to give him some Lego. Actually his ideas are not silly without knowledge of a huge load of physics. Lego will make it possible for your son to build some of his ideas and learn a lot about physics and design. Do not give him sets for building specific buildings, but something like this: https://shop.lego.com/en-GB/LEGO-Large-Creative-Brick-Box-10698

An even better alternative is Fischertechik (but more for 10+): http://www.fischertechnik.de/en/Home.aspx

Best wishes, Daniel

Dear Dr Ahmad,

Congratulation ! By your description , your son is a potential future scientist !

Let his creativity carry on , please do think this is silly !

This is the age start picking new knowledge and with his own imaginary ability , let him go his free way , try know to stop him. You might need a special Child learning adviser how to grow him.

I have observed some gift kids in my school , majority of them are excel mathematically , and we spending time to develop them mathematically ,and they winning all the major title in Mathematics competition .Beside this , we let them skip normal teaching programme ,and completed their higher secondary get into some renowned university like Singapore University , Cambridge, UCLA and others at the young age ( average age about 16 ) . But after several years when they completed their PhD at the young age ,and most of them end up as a normal lecturer in college or university only .

From there onward , they are just like any normal PhD graduate .

I do believe , our education system and training method is no appropriate !

When I visited our sister school - Singapore Anglo - Chinese High school and Singapore National Junior college , there are quite a number of gift child ,and these school having difference approaches , like special incubator center for them to try their new ideals ,and with state of art of laboratory , library and ICT system . The most unique part will be the link to NUS, some students publishing their findings together with some tutors from NUS or NUT. This is the most exciting finding by me !

By first reading their paper , I found it is just normal articles, but , one thing , any articles published , only author name appearing on the paper , but not their age ! You can never notice some co-author are only ( A- Level ) student !

This is what I experienced about those gift kids ! But , I think I have a lot to learn !

Cheers !

Chin Yew Meng

Open University Malaysia

He seems an intelligent child. Let him think!

Team,

Sorry ! My apologies , there are some mistakes on my first writing:

Let his creativity carry on , please do ( don't)  think this is silly !

This is the age start picking new knowledge and with his own imaginary ability , let him go his free way , try know ( not ) to stop him. You might need a special Child learning adviser how to grow him.

How can I deal with my 7 years old son who keeps inventing silly things?. Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/post/How_can_I_deal_with_my_7_years_old_son_who_keeps_inventing_silly_things?view=596b6984f7b67e9b036d148e [accessed Jul 17, 2017].

Felicitations, Ahmad.  It must be a lot of fun to be the father of such a child :)

To give concrete recommendations: the Lego idea is definitely great.  But additionally, try to get him to put things together from things he picks up here and there, and try to put things together with him.  I am attaching a picture of an artillery piece my son and I built when he was 7-- out of a paper towel cardboard, a hose-clamp, a coke-bottle top, a spring (invisible), a door hinge (for raising/lowering gun barrel), and a wooden skewer.  It was more popular with him than the Playmobil cannon right next to it :)

Give him things and tell him you are wondering what can be made out of them.  Let him pick up things from the street if he thinks they would be useful in a project (I still have some of the stuff he picked up in a shoe-box, after 10 years).

Yes, it is lot of work. Does it pay off? We shall see, albeit from the grave :)

Good luck and Regards

Thank you guys for all your excellent answers, your supportive comments got his sister to invent an irrigation system [attached], I have become an in-house patent reviewer over here :)

You have intelligent and serious-minded children. They are future scientists. Just keep encouraging them, and very soon, it will pay off.  

Congratulations!

Let them live-out their creativity. Some of their ideas might seem "stupid" these days but who knows what the future will bring.

LEGOs might really help to construct/build some of their dreams. As far as I can recall from my own youth, at this age virtually anything is possible. And there is nothing negative in "inventing" things that should work according to your current knowledge. With the progress of time you either add to your knowledge or you eventually file some patent :) Both options are not bad.

So be a proud father and patent application revisor - creativity will be smothered too soon (by pysics, "reality", circumstances, colleagues) when reality cuts in.

Congratulations for both your children from me, too!

As to your original question: A long while ago, I thought that if my father had had more knowledge in physics, he could have spared me a lot of time by pointing out my errors to me. Later on, I realized that

a) getting my ideas was a matter of inspiration; but finding my errors by myself was a matter of endurance and work, adding to my competence; and

b) having nearly each of my ideas fast and effortlessly proved to be erroneous by someone else would have been a depressing experience; I guess in the long run, I would have moved my interests to a domain where my father could have contributed little.

So, you should certainly not lie to your children by praising details which you have recognized as unrealizable; but equally, you should not point out every error you see. When in doubt what to say refrain from judgements. I feel the important things are that your children can share their ideas with you, and that you give them the opportunity to do experiments and to understand how other people have solved similar problems (both compatible to their age, of course).

As for the experimental aspect, LEGO and similar kits are great. As a child, I had only one complaint about these elements: That there are (inevitably) only a limited number of forms and shapes. The solution would have been a workshop with a lot of machines, dangerous to children. Today, there is a much better opportunity: 3D printers! Perhaps you should still wait some years but I feel 3D printing provides great opportunities for children, especially, if (hopefully in the near future) materials with different mechanical, electrical, and magnetical properties can be added to the same object by reliable machines for a reasonable price.

Dear Joerg,

I do agreed with you , try to find fault on what they are doing using our old logic or ideals which is no  applicable for future products or invention .

Always let them try new ways of doing thing ,and encourage them.

May be , a small incubator with some basic IT equipment , electronic gadgets, manual with all sort of basic machines .let them having hand on session by them self.

One of my former IBM colleague reserve a art room for his children , they can draw and paint any thing as they wish ,dirty the wall , set up funny paper art ,and handcraft ...

Another good way was bring your children to science center, visiting museum , library , exhibition ..and so forth .

This is what my brother did in US , all his kids later get into Rutger University ,and do well in their course.

Very good reference :http://www.ebooks.com/889820/genius/eysenck-h-j/

You should encourage him and provide suitable means to his age.

You should ne proud of him MashAllah.

I was pretty similar as child to your son with coming up with unfeasible ideas, I however had a father and science teacher who praised my effort and corrected my misconceptions and explained why my contraption would not work. It is one of the main reasons I stuck around with innovation and research over the years.

I think your son has potential to contribute to the research community. 

Good Luck and give him my wishes.

Thank you guys

Ask him to explain how they would work. If he cannot, give him assignments to learn how to explain them. Do not discourage him. Encourage him to explore more deeply. Feed his curiosity and ingenuity.