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Agreed and this is something I started whilst he was still in the womb!
I'm going to get my future wife to put headphones on her belly and play a 24/7 loop of the speech Jor-El gave superman from the movie. Kid will come up a winner.
Wait.
Wasn't there... Oh right, http://superdickery.com/
In other news, you'd be surprised what supermanisadick.com points to.
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You're absolutely spot on but speak to any scientist or doctor and they will undoubtedly tell you that they would probably benefit from being ahead of the curve from a technological perspective. All of todays innovators embrace technology and all of todays technology require a distinct understanding of computing and/or electronic engineering.
Try to have the confidence that your kid will get to computing technology if they need it. Your job is to enable them to identify their interests and follow their curiosity. Not so much to direct it.
Good luck, it's always great to see somebody considering child education.
Love him. Unconditionally. And make sure he always knows it. Everything else is just details. With this, things will inevitably fall nicely into place, no matter what tactics you take. Without it, he will be fucked up no matter what you do and will be coming to hacker news in 2028 posting, "Ask HN: I'm confused and depressed and don't know why."
I'm sorry, I really dislike this answer. Obviously this guy knows that he should love his kid. He was looking for specific answers on how to introduce the kid to computing. And you gave him this glib, content-less, greeting card answer. I cannot believe this is the top comment.
Unconditional love is hardly a guideline anyways. Kids need rules, instruction, challenge, inspiration and just generally good examples to follow. That's the tough part. Loving your own child is an achievement akin to dressing yourself.
buy Lego. Lots of it.
Legomindstorms - once they kids get older. Don't you find lego is very kit-based (you buy a box and get to build a specific "thing" - wouldn't it be better to buy some building toy which allows one to build whatever they want). How about meccano? (again not the kit based). What other construction toys?
People always say this about Lego recently. They still have a ton of generic building block kits which are great.
My kids love doing both though. They love having the kits, building them, and keeping them 'for display'. But we have boxes and boxes of general lego bits, of which they're always using to build hogwarts castle, a school, or some contraption.
I think Meccano takes more patience. But good when they're older.
K'Nex is ok, but not as flexible in terms of what you can build with it than Lego IMHO.
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Enthusiasm can be shown in several ways. One interesting tidbit from psychological research is that praising children's results often leads to their own paralysis. Instead, parents should praise how hard they tried. See Berkeley's Half Full blog: http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/raising_happiness/post/the_r...
I'm familiar with that research, and agree with the techniques. In this case, though, it wasn't that I praised her-- just that I got excited about how cool Scratch was. Suddenly, it wasn't that cool to her anymore. Similarly, she also hates the Beatles. I mean, how is that even possible?
Just by being your son, he is guaranteed 1000s of hours of practice and exposure to these topics.
For example, for me, it was Chinese math textbooks from an early age. I ended up attending Stanford, but my social skills suffered. For your son, I would guess reading, writing, math, and programming are covered.
Other things are invisible to you, and will be nonexistent to your son unless you identify and pursue those topics despite your unfamiliarity to them. For example, I didn't know what "sports" were, and still do not to this day. It's such a large part of society, but does not exist to me.
You should figure out what's "free" and what's "missing" for your son simply as a result of growing up in your household, and plan your educational priorities with that knowledge in mind.
One last thing: expose him to as many different people and social situations as possible. Camp, church, sports, etc etc etc. Whatever involves heavy interaction with other kids and people. The more the better. You may have to get heavily involved yourself to do this properly. Social skills, just like any other human ability, is simply 1000s of hours of practice.
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How do you mean? People still used browsers to make requests over http, didn't they? Actually, I guess there was a lot of text-based interaction going on, come to think of it. Telnet, etc. Hm.
I still telnet. So much fun! Wish gopher's were still around. I was thinking of using a gopher to do a blog with.
Play the board game Go. It's simple, tactile and astoundingly complex. I've found wrapping my head around that game is a similar experience to wrapping my head around programming concepts. Your son will come to you to play board games, whereas teaching programming is something where you'd be driving what your son learns. Building a Go game on the computer is also not that difficult-- but developing AI for it leads de…
You may be able to start with Go earlier, since the rules are so easy. Just be sure to start with a very small board.
1. Teach him about managing money. Get him into the habit of saving from a very early age. And writing down all the expenses. (Rockefeller had a rule for his kids. He gave them money for all the chores they did. And they had to donate 10% to the Church. And save 10%. But because they had to donate exactly 10% to the Church - and not 9.5% or 10.5%, they were required to keep an account of every penny they received. Th…
Games are also good for bartering and other social skills, besides math and logic. Settlers of Catan may be the obvious example in the English speaking world. Though Bohnanza is probably better.
Of course there are also lots of games you can play outdoors. Including just running around with your friends.