When DIY Assembly turns into, 'Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader?'

You know how Ikea and other assemble yourself products are notorious for having instructions that are difficult to follow? How you’ll be assembling a coffee table and construct it upside down but upon reviewing the instructions you can’t see where you didn’t follow the instructions?

Well, I’ve solved that problem. The solution is my 12 and 13-year-old. They have an ability to look at the instructions, understand them, and then have the finished product look like the picture on the box and not in an upside-down, tilt your head to the side and squint kind of way.

I think we may have Lego to thank for this. The boys have been building Lego sets according to Lego set instructions since they were small. I’m convinced that, since I rarely ever built Legos with instructions as a kid, I don’t have the same attention to detail/ability to decipher the subtle clues that differentiate pieces that they do.

I bought a plastic shed that had Ikea style directions. I decided I would glance over the instructions and then hand them off to the boys. Despite the 13-year-old sounding intimidated (he kept saying, “Oh boy, the next step is super complicated”) he interpreted the instructions just fine and basically told one of his brothers and me what the steps were while we did them.

We got to a point where I couldn’t figure out how a hinge was supposed to go on and his Lego training took over and he flipped the piece over and slid it on seamlessly. Maybe I should just try turning everything over?

As a side note, I think these instructions are getting even less helpful. I notice they rarely have any words anymore and just show pictures. They also almost all come with a QR code that shows a video of how to assemble the item. That may be a good way to demonstrate a build, but I don’t think they need to pare back the written instructions so much. There’s a level of precision you can get to with words that pictures and even videos can’t always capture.

Anyway, this summer is our assembly summer because I was building another piece of furniture with the 10-year-old and he too proved to be adept at reading instructions. He’s a very capable assistant and liked to look ahead and get the pieces I would need ready which is just what I’m looking for in an assistant.

But my instructionally challenged genes may have skipped his older brothers only to fall on him. After we had assembled the cabinets and were admiring our work the 13-year-old walked into the room. In less than three seconds he said, “you did that wrong.”

Incredulous and eager to disprove him I demanded to know what he was looking at. He pointed to the doors and said, “the stoppers are on the wrong side.”

Which meant, you guessed it, we put a piece on upside down. I think I’ll let the older boys do the next assembly project solo.