to ask for your ideas helping my ambitiously inventive/aspiring mechanic son

[babystep]

10yo DS is always coming up with ambitious ideas for inventions - dynamo powered motorbikes, perpetual motion machines. He has a strong urge to create and invent - specifically mechanical, electrical type stuff, usually vehicles in some way and usually sustainably powered.

For his last birthday he asked for a "tinker set" to enable him to create stuff - very specifically he did not want a child's set but proper tools. More recently he decided he wants to build a motorbike from scratch as precursor to building this dynamo one he has got in his mind.

This is all great, except of course he doesn't remotely have the skills to do this, Nor do me or DH. And I have no idea how to help him build skills in this area which obviously interests him. This is partly because while he is very creative and ambitious in his ideas he is also very averse to any kind of kit, class, book or show which might help him learn.

When we bought him some scaled down real tools (advertised as women's tools on amazon 😂) for birthday we also got a lot of STEM kids - solar powered robtos, that kind of thing. But he never finishes them - gets fed up if one thing foes wrong or starts, gets distracted, forgets. He never even enjoyed lego when younger as disliked following instructions. Offered to get him one or two Mark Rober kits as his brother enjoys them, but he was vague and I'm loathe to keep spending money on vague.

He imagines he can just pick up some tools, open the shed and make something. Great, that's the innocence of kids, right, But then he gets upset when say "we can't just buy some parts and make a motorbike" as he clearly feels we SHOULD be able to bridge this gap with him. For example he thinks my DH must know about motorbikes because "daddy went to university, right"?

DS is bright, enjoys science at school, I'm not exactly losing sleep over all this, because I know ultimately he's ten and if he does want to be an engineer or mechanic he'll eventually work out he needs to learn it in some way that he possibly finds boring.
But would love ideas of where you actually begin to learn these kind of skills and whether I can help him in an age-appropriate way to be able to build things and develop his interests?

turns out we do! and I have an old toaster which I've been dithering about what to do with - maybe two birds with one stone :)

Oooh Repair Cafe sounds a brilliant idea, must check if we have one locally! Never heard of it before.

Re possible ADHD traits as well as the learning style you mentioned that he is forgetful, distracted, creatively makes grand super ambitious plans but then often does not follow through or finish projects he is actually working on, and obviously it sounds like he has this slightly unusual “special interest”. These could all fall into ADHD territory. Just something to have in the back of your mind perhaps as time goes on.

I'm not sure all the 'take it apart and see how it works/fix it' ideas work so well nowadays if there's any electronics with complicated circuits, microcontrollers, embedded software etc. It probably has to be somewhat simpler, more mechanical systems rather than a modern TV I'd have thought.
And at this age I'd be quite cautious about safety - e.g. anything which uses mains power rather than a few batteries would, imo, need some supervision by someone who knows what they're doing.

It occurs to me that one area of 'transportation' which might be more accessible is boats - wind power, or rather simpler engines.

Model railway? My 18 yo ds is studying mechanical engineering at college and loved his model railway as a child. There is usually a local group, as well to meet up with and build projects.

Ha was a bit of me as a kid, always in my dad's workshop hindering him & coming up with some sort of project! & when he died I put some of those same tools in my own workshop & I encourage my daughter to use them with me, tho she's a bit young.

As well as the bicycle idea & repair shop one, is there a friend locally who tinkers with stuff?
I'm sure there's no chance we are in the same town but someone like me who's got a ton of stuff to finish on a race car & just had to refurbish an old machine etc & wouldn't mind a little helper.

So you have a local Repair Cafe? Many towns do
Perhaps he could help/shadow one of their repairers