Susan Wright’s hands would always be moving.
While her husband traveled for work, she'd be in the workshop building sleds from scratch, carving toys, fixing household appliances. Her sons Orville and Wilbur would crowd around her workbench.
“What does this piece do?” they would ask her. “why is it needed?”
She wouldn’t explain. She would just keep working, letting them watch her solve the problem.
Her family called her a “regular genius.” Not because she lectured on mechanical engineering, but because she would show them by building.
The boys couldn’t help themselves, they would take apart the toys and try to put them back together. They would study the parts to understand what they did. They were learning mechanics without realizing it.
Here's what everyone gets wrong about the Wright Brothers: they assume their mechanical ability came from their father. It didn't. It came from watching their mother's hands turn raw materials into working objects, day after day, in that workshop.
Years later, Orville would take an old tombstone, scrap metal, wood and recycled parts to build his first printing press. He wasn't following instructions. He was doing what he'd watched his mother do. Seeing what was possible in ordinary materials.
Susan never preached. She just built things and her sons wanted to be like her.
Your kids are watching you the same way. When you’re deeply engaged in something, they get curious. They want in. It doesn’t matter what it is.
Maybe you’re learning to play the piano and they hear how bad you sound. Or you’re starting a business and they see you working late into the night at the kitchen table. Maybe you’re trying to make sourdough bread and the first 3 tries come out like hockey pucks.
What matters is they see you trying things, failing and staying with it. That's the workshop. That's what Susan Wright understood.
You don’t have to be perfect at something. They need to see you care enough to get your hands dirty.