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Raising a pre-teen girl in an overly-affluent New Jersey suburb, without the tranquilizing effect of cable or satellite TV, is not an activity for the faint of heart. These days, it seems like most of our evenings are split between helping our daughter Anwyn cope with the oppressive homework load her 6th grade teachers routinely dish out and dodging the worst effects of her hormone-amplified mood swings. Despite it all, Anwyn’s basic good nature manages to poke up above the emotional maelstrom often enough to remind us that she’s still the daughter we love and to give us a precious hour or two of (relatively) peaceful, tantrum-free family fun time.

Strangely, one of the things she loves to do with me is sit at the kitchen table helping fix whatever household gadgets have found themselves on the injured list that week. She’s always been good with tools, having, at the age of four, learned the difference between a Phillips and a flathead screwdriver as she helped me assemble her backyard swing set. Although our evening repair sessions are now punctuated with the occasional screaming fit (often triggered when Anwyn becomes convinced that her idiot Dad doesn’t know what he’s doing), they continue to be some of the most memorable and happy times I spend with my daughter.

Last week’s entertainment was replacing the battery in her aging iPod. Her three-year-old hand-me-down iPod Mini had been a source of friction since the fall. With only 4 Gbyte worth of storage and a much bulkier case than today’s units, it’s made Anwyn an outcast among the kids at her bus stop who all seem to be toting sleeker, newer video-capable units. I’d resisted a month of pre-holiday begging to replace the old iPod with a lime-green limited-edition iPod Nano but, now that the unit was really dead, I was faced with a tough moral decision – should I finally cave in and get a new player or should I try to replace the battery myself? Happily, my inner cheapskate won the argument and I ordered up a kit that claimed it included a battery and all the tools I’d need to crack the iPod case.

The evening the battery and service kit arrived, I invited Anwyn to join me at the table after she’d finished her math homework. Everything started off OK as we cracked open the blister pack and Anwyn pulled out the instructions that she agreed to read to me. The situation got a little tense when she realized that we’d need to crack open the case in order to get at the battery. It was apparent to her that Apple had never intended to let anybody get inside their iPods without a fight and she began to get a tad testy with me.

Anwyn: Dad! Be careful! You’re going to break it!

Me: Don’t worry, kid, I’m being gentle. All we have to do is get the razor knife under this little plastic panel, lift it up, and unscrew the two little screws that are hiding behind it.

Anwyn: But what if you break it?

Me: Take it easy (speaking softly as I angle the blade so it gently lifts the outer panel) I can’t make it any worse, it’s already dead. So anything we do to it is an improvement.

Anwyn: But you’re scratching the case with the knife YOU IDIOT!

Me: Calm down! I’m being as gentle as I can be. It’s just that the panel is stuck on pretty tightly and needs a little more help coming off.

And so on…

Once we got the two end panels removed, Anwyn impatiently grabbed the iPod and eased its circuit board out of the case. Tucked away in the corner of the board was the battery, which Anwyn was able to pry loose and replace with the new one. Re-assembly was a bit more of a challenge as it took repeated tries to shimmy the circuit board past various obstacles and re-seat it within the case. Needless to say, the exchanges between Anwyn and myself became a tad more colorful.

Anwyn: Wait a second – can you do that? YOU IDIOT! You’re going to break the board if you push on it like that!

Me: Calm down, I’m not pushing very hard.

Anwyn: Yes you are! Here! Give that to me (grabbing the half-assembled iPod out of my hands) - YOU IDIOT! you don’t know what you are doing!

Me: Whoa! Don’t use that tone of voice with me! And don’t grab like that! You nearly snapped the board. C’mon, let’s take a deep breath and relax a sec before we try anything else…

Eventually, we managed to tease the board past a little tab in the case (it seemed to have been placed there specifically to foil the amateur service technician) and get the rest of the parts back in the right place with only a minimum of snarling and screaming.

The moment of truth arrived and Anwyn thumbed the power switch. She was rewarded with a stream of music in her headphones and I was rewarded with the biggest grin I’d seen on her face in a long time. We pranced around the kitchen doing a little victory dance and giving each other high-fives as Anwyn kept up the singsong chant “We hacked an iPod, we hacked an iPod, yeah yeah yeah!”

The next day she took her old, but cheerfully functional iPod to the bus stop and, to hear her tell it, she bragged to her friends about how she and her Dad had hacked into it and saved it from the great recycling bucket in the sky. Strangely, most of the pressure to get a shinier, newer unit has ceased and she seems really pleased to fool around with her old Mini. I’m not sure exactly what it all means, but I’m grateful for the chance to help her create a bigger, more interesting world for herself.

Comments? Questions? Suggestions for helping your kid deal with pre-teen angst? Write me at lhg at en-genius dot net or post your comments on our blog.