61–70 of 157 posts
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."
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 cou…
First of all today many people see programming as a career. I think by 2040, every kid will be a programmer at some level. I'm assuming by then, a youth then will need to know how to program to survive - it will be a basic elementary skill like we learn in school. So a school curriculum could be something like: draw a face using ascii characters on the screen using print statements in say grade 5. Use a for loop in grade 6. Function call in grade 7. Recursive functions in grade 8. Grade 9 - Advanced programming - introduction to the x86 CPU (optional - you can drop computers and take some other subject if you want). Grade 10 - put the CPU into 32 bit mode with 5 page tables. Do you think these things are very hard for these age level? I don't think so.
What if by then - kids played football/or hockey on some days of the week and got together with friends and built a website on another day and played with Lego on yet another? I think by the time you reached college then, and you had Physics as a subject, you would probably write a program to simulate 3 billiard balls on a table and someone strikes them with a 4th. Or implementing a problem solver applying Kirchoff's laws to circuits using Graphs traversal algorithms which she learned somewhere around high school. Today I think people see careers in the IT industry as an end, in 2040 I think Programming will be a means to an end - they will permeate every branch of study you are dealing with - be a Psychology, or Physics or Maths or anything else - creating a website will be normal.
A lot of people are saying IT skills may not be necessary because your child won't work in IT; I think basic IT and programming skills will help people in the next generation understand and integrate in the world around them - so for me programming could be right alongside Math that you learn in high school (how many people use factorization of polynomials in day to day life (which we learned in school)? )
So I think you are right about teaching your kids some basic programming.
I'm just wondering what is it that I had difficulties with/enjoyed: 1) Typing - throw out the QWERTY keyboard and start your child on a Dvorak keyboard from day one - and do typing lessons with her 2) I remember in basic you had screen 2 - 640x480 mode graphics. You could do some great drawing stuff with that - like a circle in a for loop whose radius and origin kept changing with each iteration. 3) Writing PC boot code as more advanced stuff (like when your child reaches high school and still wants to learn more other wise you can stop at recursion and let her take it forward from there)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Agreed and this is something I started whilst he was still in the womb!
I claim that my daughter recognized me by voice at birth when I first spoke to her.
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. This: keeping track of money from an early age is the trick to making sure you never end up poor.)
2.
Teach him confidence. Elocution and public speaking and drama classes.
3.
Make him love reading. Dr. Seuss. Comics.
4.
Teach him how to delay gratification. The trick is to focus on other things.
5.
Teach him discipline in exercising early on. And healthy eating. Sports.
6.
Play all the wonderful board games besides the popular ones like Monopoly. Excellent for math and logic building skills. And figuring out the winning strategy.
These above are the building blocks. Its ok if he learns to code a bit late in life too.
Read to him when he is young, with him when older. It is the most stupidly effective academic intervention I'm aware of.
Encourage a love of books, even if its just the picture books to begin with. Story before bedtime. Feel sad? Lets go read a book? Waiting for mom or dad to come home? Lets read a fun book.
Aside from that I do those large jig-saw puzzles with my daughter and those match the wooden shape to its equivalent spot on the board.
It should all be fun, playful and something you you're happy to do. No one wants to read with a grumpy dad.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 cou…