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Ask HN: How do I give my son a head start?
41–50 of 157 posts
Re: Ask HN: How do I give my son a head start?
#421. Act rationally. Let him see you making rational decisions, and searching for explanations.
2. Make him talk for himself. Encourage him to meet and talk to as many different people as possible. This starts early, when he wants to hide behind your legs, and it's probably the most valuable skill he can have.
Re: Ask HN: How do I give my son a head start?
#43First and foremost I want to commend you for caring enough as a parent to be thinking about this, but I think you're asking the wrong question. While not a parent myself I believe I can speak from my experience of once being a child.
It is my humble opinion that children should be slowly, slowly introduced to technology. The first example that comes to mind is my own introduction to a pocket calculator in the late 1980's. I was given one before I had been exposed to the intermediate concepts of mathematics and looking back it hurt much more than it helped as it immediately became a crutch. I became more interested in getting the problem done than learning from the experience.
A slow and methodical approach to learning is what works best for me, and may not be optimal for everyone. Laying the right foundation is pretty much the only way to excel, and given the perverse incentives that abound in (America's) public schools you need to pretty much accept that it's up to you to make this happen for your child. As someone who didn't have it I cannot stress enough how important it is to have a parent that is intensely interested in helping you build from simple concepts to the advanced, learn how to learn, and how to think critically about everything you encounter. Having someone there to help you cope with the anxiety of being a novice (at life and learning) is worth more than I can express. Making sure your child understands the core of a concept before he or she has access to tools that shortcut and accelerate its use is paramount.
Also, don't be disappointed if they want to write, sculpt, draw, or paint all day. We need artists too.
Good luck.
Re: Ask HN: How do I give my son a head start?
#44I read through almost all the comments and no one mentioned spoken/written non-computer languages.
I would say introduce him to at least one foreign language like spanish, french, german, portuguese, japanese, or chinese. I learned spanish as I learned english, by age 3 I was fluent in both. I had the advantage of having a spanish teacher for a mother, but it gave me the building blocks for understanding the rules and concepts of other languages (on 4 so far, working on 5th). These rules, grammatical, syntactical, etc. can help with picking up things like computer programming later. I mean they are called languages for a reason.
I think that giving your son excellent communication skills will give him a huge leg up on all his peers. Make sure to include reading in both english and another language too if possible.
Re: Ask HN: How do I give my son a head start?
#45Get him legos, things he can build with his hands, internalize the process of building, designing, visualizing. Do lots of projects with him. Show him how stuff works. Give him musical instruments to play with and give him lessons.
Honestly programming isn't that hard. If he finds it interesting he can start teaching himself at any age, so I wouldn't focus on that. All that said, IANAD. congrats on being a dad!
Re: Ask HN: How do I give my son a head start?
#46I'd be careful in this line of thinking, if I were you. Projecting wishes and expectations onto one's children is common, and counter-productive. I was very excited when my daughter, around the age of 10, showed interest in programming. I showed her Scratch (from MIT), but I think my enthusiasm scared her off-- and she dropped it quickly. I regret that I didn't play it a bit cooler.
I did the same thing, and my son was around the same age.
Now we just cultivate whatever interests he has, and try our best to answer any questions he has. He's interested in marine life, but is a bit too young to help out at the Seattle Aquarium. We've enrolled him in a few robotics classes and a programming class that used Game Maker [1]. He loved the Game Maker class, I'd bet that it was a gentler introduction than what I tried with Scratch.
FWIW, he's into video games too (we have a 360, NDS, Wii, PC), but we limit his time and prioritize digital entertainment last.
Re: Ask HN: How do I give my son a head start?
#47Time. That's it, nothing more - just spend time with him. Reading, playing and doing lots fun things.
I have two kids and had massively complicated plans on how to 'program' them (and I mean that with nothing but respect for what you're trying to do) but you can over-think this. By all means encourage, support and mentor them but try not to project your ideal image of what they should be too soon.
All the little dude needs is your attention and time - things will work out great. Good luck!
Re: Ask HN: How do I give my son a head start?
#48Read to him when he is young, with him when older. It is the most stupidly effective academic intervention I'm aware of.
This! My son has grown up in a house of readers and loves to read. He consistently tests above grade level, doesn't have his own computer (allowed to use my wife's occasionally) or TV (only one working TV in the house). Meanwhile, his friend down the street who is a year older and has his own laptop computer, TV, XBox, Nintendo DS, etc. spends his summers in remedial reading classes.
Growing up in a house of readers undoubtedly gave me a massive head start on all of my peers, but I also had my own laptop [1], TV, N64 (it was the 90's), and gameboy and did far above my grade level on reading tests.
If you feel good about not letting your kid mess with that stuff, more power to you, but don't confuse correlation with causation.
[1] Actually I had my first computer, running MS-DOS, well before I could read. That was kind of an exercise in futility though. I did get a laptop later on (elementary school) and I learned and practiced writing HTML on it.
Re: Ask HN: How do I give my son a head start?
#49I would just forget about computers and programming completely and focus on the building blocks by a playful approach to solving day-to-day problems with logic and reasoning. Like how do we decide which things belong together? You can also play progressively more complicated iteration games like for-each-time-this-happens-let's-do-this-this-and-this! Or make complicated rube goldberg devices out of household objects…
Not to discourage computer use, but I'd like to second the importance of the playful aspect.
Our innate playfulness seems to be beneficial to creative processes. At the very least, it makes learning more fun, engaging.
My dad used to hide notecards around the house, with a little clue ("turn around 90 degrees and walk 2 * 3 - 1 steps"). At the location specified, there'd be another little candy and a clue. Worked wonders for me, and it gave me a lifelong desire to learn and grow.
Anyhow, just a +1 for keeping it playful. It helps a ton. And it just might make your child more creative.
Re: Ask HN: How do I give my son a head start?
#50This might sound totally narcissistic but here's how I learned programming:
Taught to play Chess at an early age;
Taught another language (Russian, even though I never finished) at an early age (note that I didn't really like learning Russian, but it helped regardless);
Given Legos and Lincoln Logs. Basically, any toy that uses building blocks encourages the kind of thinking used in programming;
Read to often (but not about programming);
Taught BASIC (the concept of "goto" goes a long way in realizing what is possible.);
Got into creating game mods (as previous user recommended)
My parents actually sort of discouraged me from liking programming. If I would have, say, been really interested in chemistry and experimented with chemicals, they would have been less worried than when I would work on the computer for long periods of time.
It's also worthy to note that your son may not be interested in becoming a programmer, so don't try to consciously influence him. Surround him with the tools he needs. He'll find a way from there.