As told by Lydia Denton, Inventor 

Part 1 of a 2 part series

I live in a small town in Eastern, NC. Tobacco and cotton fields line the two-lane roads leading to my school. It’s a five-minute drive to get anywhere in town and the only four lane roads are by Target and Walmart. Living in such a rural spot, it is hard to imagine my big ideas could ever escape the walls of my classroom, let alone wind up in the hands of scientists.  

I think most of the kids I’ve met feel the same way. Kids’ ideas don’t matter. Kids’ ideas can’t make a difference. No one wants to hear kids’ ideas. I’m just a kid.  

I'm grateful for teachers who dreamed big for me before I did: those who noticed a curious 7-year-old dismantling musical birthday cards, eagerly disassembling computer towers to figure out how the wires and plastic created the magic I saw on the screen, and the child who begged for duct tape, K’nex, Legos, and a soldering iron for her birthday.

I remember watching Miss America making elephant’s toothpaste on YouTube using my mom’s phone.  Every day, I saw my mom get up in front of rooms full of elementary and middle school kids and teach them to love science almost as much as she does.  I looked through her journal from college to see 3D rendered cat scan images, pages of code, and diagrams for heart valves that she worked on in grad school.  My role model sleeps in the bedroom down the hall and makes sure that I know that kids from small towns do have big ideas and those ideas are worth sharing.  

Over the past eight years my identity has shifted. I’m no longer just a kid - I’m a kid inventor.  I made my first invention in the 2nd grade - a cabinet designed to protect my precious Halloween candy from my older brother. I eagerly drew inventions and entered them into kid inventor competitions every year.   

After drawing hundreds of ideas, I moved on to prototyping. Duct tape, cardboard, glue, craft supplies—my inventions didn’t work, but getting them off the page and into my hands made a world of difference. In 5th grade I started soldering wires, batteries, resistors, sensors, and capacitors. I begged my older brother to teach me how to program an Arduino (Arduino boards are able to read inputs – light on a sensor, a finger, button – and turn it into an output – activating a motor, turning on an LED, etc.) and after more than 100 failures, I had success with my first working invention - a car seat to prevent hot car deaths.   

It's been five years since I successfully developed the Beat the Heat Car Seat and four years since CITGO Fueling Education awarded it the grand prize in their competition. Next came a whirlwind of interviews with the BBC, People Magazine, Good Morning America, a Danish newspaper, a Russian kids’ magazine ... all done via Zoom during the pandemic. At times, I felt like an observer of my own life! My ideas reached far beyond the classroom or my small town's walls. I was 10-year-old girl sharing my ideas across the globe, on television and in live Zoom’s in countries far and wide. People wanted to hear about my ideas! 

Get ready to be inspired as we eagerly await part 2 of Lydia's incredible journey, where her boundless imagination continues to spark inventive solutions for real-world dilemmas.

*Photos courtesy of Lydia Denton. Do not reuse without permission.