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Ask HN: How to keep my daughter busy while tickling her curiosity

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Re: Ask HN: How to keep my daughter busy while tickling her curiosity

#121

Post by splintercell »

mcv wrote: post #74
TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Works well with mine. He’s got 3 choices most mornings.

It doesn't with mine, I'm afraid. I frequently give them 1-3 options and they shoot them all down (even pancakes?!). Eventually I give up and ask them what they want, and they still don't know, or just want to eat nothing.

> Eventually I give up and ask them what they want, and they still don't know, or just want to eat nothing.

I force a choice on mine, and she immediately 'strongly' choose the other one, which I reject, which makes her want it even more.

Re: Ask HN: How to keep my daughter busy while tickling her curiosity

#122

Post by svnt »

mcv wrote: post #74
TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Works well with mine. He’s got 3 choices most mornings.

It doesn't with mine, I'm afraid. I frequently give them 1-3 options and they shoot them all down (even pancakes?!). Eventually I give up and ask them what they want, and they still don't know, or just want to eat nothing.

It’s because they’ve learned that they can say no and you’ll keep coming up with more options. They’ve exited the game because you created the exit by failing to enforce the boundary.

Re: Ask HN: How to keep my daughter busy while tickling her curiosity

#123

Post by ArnoVW »

rawbot wrote: post #117

Maybe the rest of HN has a similar, better option, but I could recommend LEGO Mindstorms. Eleven would be a good age to start getting curious about robots and automation. You should of course, help her with it, as it may be too complex for her to handle alone at the start. It is pricey new, but you could get an older version used for cheaper. There's also Nintendo Labo, for a similar, less expensive version.

LEGO Mindstorms is great, but it's amazingly expensive.

They recently released LEGO Boost, which has some limitations wrt Mindstorms, but you won't notice it unless you're doing advanced stuff. Moreover, it has a great app. And it's one third of the price of Mindstorms.

Re: Ask HN: How to keep my daughter busy while tickling her curiosity

#124

Post by wongarsu »

brailsafe wrote: post #90
credit_guy wrote: post #76

My son is 12 y/o, and he's into Minecraft. Yesterday he discovered the server mc.openredstone.org. He spent all day yesterday and about one hour today, and he ended up building a 4-bit adder. On this server players learn how to build logic gates, and mix them so they eventually build CPUs. It's fully gamified, so beginners are called "students" and more advanced players are called "builders". To become a "builder" yo…

I've been programming for 15 years and had to google what NAND was. Had a sense of XOR

To be fair, AND, OR and NOT are enough to compute any function, and you can make all the other operators out of a combination of those three. For example A XOR B is just (A OR B) AND (NOT (A AND B)). Knowing things beyond AND, OR or NOT is useful, but not strictly necessary. XOR has useful properties though: with random inputs you get TRUE 50% of the time, allowing you to chain it without trending to 0 or 1; also it's the opposite of bitwise equality.

The others aren't that interesting if you aren't dealing with hardware, and their function is obvious if you know the naming convention.

Re: Ask HN: How to keep my daughter busy while tickling her curiosity

#125

Post by anon84873628 »

dpz wrote: post #101
brailsafe wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been programming for 15 years and had to google what NAND was. Had a sense of XOR

Quoted post unavailable.

The truth is that you can be a successful computer software developer and not need to know much at all about how computers work. Or even how things like compilers work.

Some of us never even studied in a CS program - gasp!

Re: Ask HN: How to keep my daughter busy while tickling her curiosity

#128

Post by Flankk »

sunshinerag wrote: post #116
dymk wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Says you. Enough karma and I’ll unlock the HN Dating page.

Whaaat … there is an HN dating page :)

Yes but the market is kind of poor right now. You'll need to have good numbers to attract any kind of attention.

Re: Ask HN: How to keep my daughter busy while tickling her curiosity

#129

Post by aldebran »

social_quotient wrote: post #65

Might be off topic but a nugget from having two girls (5 and 11). Kids don’t care about budget or how much things cost. We have toys we’ve spent hundreds of dollars on only to have the near free to free one be a hit. I say this to make sure you know your employment status likely only effects your kids if it effects you. Or said differently, to the extent it effects you it will effect them. Kids will generally have fu…

100%

My kids (boys) have probably a couple thousand dollars worth of toys in the house. You know what they enjoy playing with? “Toys” that we’ve made together. Planes, boats etc. the one exception probably is Legos. Legos are cool!

Get legos from garage sales or something and open the doors to endless fun!

Re: Ask HN: How to keep my daughter busy while tickling her curiosity

#130

Post by zoomablemind »

> ...My daughter is 11

At this age, I rather try to get in tune with the initiative that comes from the kid. She may already have some projects that may benefit from your [measured] participation.

Alternatively, I'd try to find something fun for myself, and then would try to see if there's a room in it for the kid's effort.

All in all, the pre-teen/teens want to know that their choices are respected (no matter how self-contradicting these may be).

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