My son's 2, I just tell him I'm reading. Unless there's pictures he isn't really interested.
I'm not sure I could get into much more detail than that, perhaps a library metaphor?
Ask HN: How Would You Explain HN to a Two-Year-Old?
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Re: Ask HN: How Would You Explain HN to a Two-Year-Old?
#12My 2 year old is just happy to talk on the computer mouse like it's a phone.
Not sure where I would start other than "daddy reading".
Re: Ask HN: How Would You Explain HN to a Two-Year-Old?
#13> He didn't get it, which makes sense since it isn't really a "place" and there are no visible "people" here.
Looks to me like the two-year-old is the one explaining it to you.
Re: Ask HN: How Would You Explain HN to a Two-Year-Old?
#14People write about cool things and you can read about cool things. The cooler a thing is the more people look at it.
Keep your vocab limited when explaining to kids. Otherwise you'll go down a rabbit hole of "what does that mean". Which is fine if you want to do that, but a 2 year old isn't going to remember a lot of it.
Re: Ask HN: How Would You Explain HN to a Two-Year-Old?
#15You know how books have stories? This is like a lot of books, where the stories are told by people like grandma. We can just pick which story we want to read and ask them questions about it.
Re: Ask HN: How Would You Explain HN to a Two-Year-Old?
#16Re: Ask HN: How Would You Explain HN to a Two-Year-Old?
#17I’d take him outside and give him a stick to play with instead :-) That used to bring a smile to my 2yr old’s face who is now 22 and finishing a computing degree. It’s a special time when the kids are that age.
I remember when my son was little having him help me pull ethernet cable through our roofspace ceiling. As the cable kept coming through the hole in the ceiling as he pulled he shouted up to me, “Dad, is this magic?” :-)
Re: Ask HN: How Would You Explain HN to a Two-Year-Old?
#18When a 2YO asks you something like that it's time to close the laptop and switch to something he can relate to.
Re: Ask HN: How Would You Explain HN to a Two-Year-Old?
#19I just saw you ask this question yesterday. On your profile it says indeed that this thread is a day old. But here it says it's two hours old. And all of the old responses from yesterday have had their timing reset, "10 minutes ago" -- I definitely remember that boffin comment from yesterday because it made me look up the word.
What happened?
Re: Ask HN: How Would You Explain HN to a Two-Year-Old?
#20I just saw you ask this question yesterday. On your profile it says indeed that this thread is a day old. But here it says it's two hours old. And all of the old responses from yesterday have had their timing reset, "10 minutes ago" -- I definitely remember that boffin comment from yesterday because it made me look up the word. What happened?
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