Your kid is 7. I'm pretty sure hat I was eating dirt when I was 7. If he has showed you he's interested in programming then go ahead, but make sure you're not projecting your own interests onto your kid. It'll lead to resentment in 7 or 8 years.
You are mistaken about that "recent" part. Parents have always wanted their kids to go to best schools and learn for well paying, prestige jobs. It's just that what is well paying has changed.
Why wouldn't I want my kids to be interested in something that will get them good start in life, that could be groundwork for their future careers ASSUMING it is fun for them and they are doing this out of their own volition?
That would teach them you can have fun doing science or technology rather than treating is as a necessary evil?
Parents haven't even always wanted their kids to go to school.
FTFY
I would justs try, not to put too much pressure on him (or you) to make progress with your project, when he wants to do other things. And in fact, don't forget to motivate him to do other things, like play outside with friends in the actual dirt. Or with you. That is very important for his motoric, social and immune skills, too. In general, just being a kid. With not too much responsibilities and just being able to play freely. 1.5 h of serious work and learning every day do sound a bit much, if that means, it is cut from the outside time with you.
You can also combine being outside with the project, by having pen and paper around to discuss and write things that come to mind ...
Oh - and of course: have you considered Lego Mindstorms? I had great success with it, teaching nephews the basic of robotics. With something they can touch. And the ability to work with their hands and minds, as this involves also designing of the chassis and the arragnement of sensors, etc. In general, LEGO is very accessible. So I would start with that, before turning into a more serious base of actual robots.
Got 51515 from Santa:)
And yesterday I completed the first part of my prototype "gaming couch" and made sure those of my kids who cared could see how I did it.
Or put another way, a skill or service being a vocation just means it's useful enough for enough people, so that society can support it functioning as a distinct job (or set of jobs). The more useful it is, the more demand there is for that job - but that also means the more useful it is to know the basics yourself. A random Joe or Jane doesn't really need to know how to x-ray stuff to find material defects, but they sure as hell will benefit from knowing how to wash their own clothes, fix their own faucets, balance their own books, ... and how to automate this and that in their use of computers.
Spreadsheets are great for maths, planning projects, tracking experiments/collecting data, ... which I'd also all attribute to things "STEM-ish kids" might do.
Spreadsheets are a great visual way of programming up to a certain point.
For an extreme example, Eve Online is a game that makes kids do feats in spreadsheets that set them up straight for careers in accounting and supply chain management.
But less extreme: if your game exposes numbers, spreadsheets are useful to play with them. If I knew more about Excel when I was 13, I'd probably retype unit stats from StarCraft into it and do the maths that I ended up doing in my head. Spreadsheets have plotting functions, which are a fun thing to play with. Also tracking my own magazines & CDs is something I remember doing as a kid - entirely doable in Excel, though in my case, this was my first exposure to Access and RDBMSes in general.
Also worth noting that a proper spreadsheet like Excel is in itself a functional reactive programming REPL. FRP is what you do when you play with formulas.
It's like when students learn MatLab. While much closer to regular software engineering than spreadsheets, it is still different enough for all the wrong basic concepts to sneak in and manifest. Switching to a classic programming language afterwards might actually be harder that way (not only learn all the new stuff, but unlearn/unlink the old stuff).
So it's not totally odd for a 7 year old (or I was odd, which is quite possible).
Same here!
Getting started in programming seems so much more daunting these days.
Ok, I was also competing with my brother who was 10, but still: didn’t feel unusual at all.
My wife wishes my son wasn't so into gaming. I'm like, just push him to do gaming more, force him to game, then he will get into watercoloring.
PC games have been the gateway drug for a huge number of programmers.
I think it works in at least a few ways:
1. You discover the amazing power and value of computers, they're not just boring work devices.
2. You learn that other people made the games by writing code, and that anyone can do it if they want to.
3. You end up making your own games and/or get bored of games and want to see what else the computer can do that is also intersting.
God, so much this!
When my kid was 6 he had no attention span or desire to learn so I didn’t push it. Now he’s 9 and is asking questions.
I found that the best way to engage him is the old DOS game ZZT. It has a simple but complete OO language. And since you’re programming sprites, the notion of what an object is makes sense.
I taught myself OO with ZZT and I’m hopeful that it’ll click with him too.
Plus, it runs on the beat up laptop I let him use.
This was in 1991 or so, and the books were from 1978..... I had no idea even where to TYPE the stuff I was learning into. My dad’s friend came over and gave me Qbasic. 30 years later, I still love to code.
>As a counterpoint, I started programming on my own at 7 with no guidance.
To nitpick, that's not really a counterpoint. Parent comment already allowed for the possibility that OP's 7yr old is independently interested in programming. If a child develops that interest of their own volition, with no pressure or leading from the parents, then by all means support and cultivate it. It's only a problem when the parents try to force the child in that direction before the child has developed their own interest first.
In the 90s I got an Amiga and discovered the demoscene (basically showing off as mentioned in another comment).
Fast forward another decade and bored at my parents after finishing Uni I dragged my Speccy out of storage and managed to get the Tim Follin music routine running! And found an assembler and did some Z80 assembler demo effects for the lulz.
As you said: good times.
Similarly I have American friends that speak a 2nd language because their parents forced them to go to language school on the weekends. As kids they hated not being able to go play on Saturdays like their friends but as adults the love speaking the 2nd language. Conversely I have a friend who's parents sent him to language school but around 11 or 12yrs old he complained enough they let him stop. He still regrets it to this day.
I have no clue where the balance is but I don't believe it's 100% only do it if the kids want to side of the meter.
Now he has finally given up on his rock star dreams and working in his career but he is far behind his peers. His family struggles financially right now. He wishes that he was never into music and was focused on more productive stuff. He thinks his parents wanted him to play an instrument because they wanted him to impress their friends.
So the lesson is children will find any excuse to complain about their parents.
So as long as one isn't forcing a skill exclusively, and isn't resentful when the skill doesn't stick, I'd say this is a wise approach.
When I was 8 years old, my dad offered to buy me a go-kart. I think he was concerned I spent too much time indoors, and wanted surprise me with an exciting idea. I knew that my dad didn't have a lot of money, and I also knew he'd be angry if he bought the go-kart and I never used it, so I lied and said I didn't want one.
My point is that there's often more going on inside children's brains than we realize, even at a young age. The kid could be asking for that present because he thinks it will make his father happy, for example. Just something to think about.
Why do most adults know how to read and do basic math? Because we consider these to the important enough to teach them to children whether they are interested or not. Obviously the thing that differentiates good teachers from bad is the ability to make learning interesting. So in the case of reading, we have books specially written for children of all ages.
Programming is a much younger subject than reading, and it's changed a lot in the last few decades. I am happy to provide my kids with the tools I had available, but honestly I never got good enough at BASIC to build anything useful and LOGO was fun but again, useless. Scratch and other modern kid-focused languages are much better for the job.
To go with your calculus example, we don't teach 11 year olds calculus, but we do teach them things that they will need to know later in order to do calculus. We expect them to practice those skills again and again until they are easy.
You expose your kids to things, and hope they'll like some of them. That's just how it works. You just have to hope that they end up liking some of those things you've exposed them to, or at least gaining enough from them that was worthwhile. I know I got dropped off at soccer class plenty of times, even though I fucking hate soccer
I don’t think this is something you can (or should, it’s basically the definition of parenting) avoid as a parent.
From John Carmack Twitter's feed, it sounds like his kid is well on his way to being a great programmer, which should surprise no one.
Some people grow up never knowing they have some inclinations and or talents.
My childhood had a ton of this stuff. I saw and did a lot! And peers who did not have that diversity sometimes found out later.
While it is good to eventually know, earlier is often, but not always better.
What I did was a balance. And given my son is in meth hell, am doing again with my granddaughter.
That balance was:
Take them through things I hope they have an interest in. I had some familiarity and real skill in many of these. I brought in other people where I felt I was not the right person.
Take them through some rando things! And frankly, I lived vicariously in this way. Very highly recommended. They may benefit and so may you! Sports was one area where I sucked as a kid, but was able to lean and excel with them as an adult. Neat! Major bonding and memories happen this way. It is kind of terrible sometimes too. (Hold that thought)
And finally, take them through things they are interested in, ask for.
Now, the terrible experiences?
All good, and here is why:
Regardless of how we want to shape our kids, they are their own person. Some are strong in all this. I was as a kid, and after major conflict with parents, I was very lucky to have others in my life who understood how people work.
Self discovery happens when we have experiences. How we respond, what piques our interest, latent talents, skills, understanding all present themselves during experiences.
Nobody knows who they are, until they have opportunity to respond and interact. The more diverse the body of opportunity is, the better of a look we have at who we are.
This all moved me as a young person, and as a parent too:
I see our job as making sure the basics get done. Competent, well rounded, civic minded, people. When the basics are there, one has all the tools needed to learn how to learn, get along with others, follow instructions and all that basic, important stuff.
And our job is to seek those diverse experiences, observe, discuss all that with kids and tease out the good stuff! Most importantly, nobody knows what that stuff actually is! Or maybe we do, to a degree, by inference or various signs. Fine. But I assure you it is nowhere near inclusive enough.
Some molding and shaping can and should happen, but some of the canvas gets filled in and we can either weave that into the potential person we are raising, or bodge over it, hoping it all works out.
Where they are aware, crave things, themselves looking to contribute to maximizing who they are, parents may see themselves shut out, less relevant when their expectations and efforts do not align well with who their kids are.
And in some ways, the die is cast. In other ways it takes shape, and we can plant seeds, and have some influence.
My 0.2 having raised very different kids.
Good luck. At a minimum, give a shit, respect who they are, try hard to get them through to quality adults and it is hard to go wrong. Just know, despite your efforts, they may be very different people than you may expect or hope for.
Celebrate that. People are amazing. Try to amplify the good.
The brain evolves really quickly at that age, at 7 you're still trying to learn not to eat that dog poop you found in your garden.
In the end, I would rather be able to influence what my kids are using the screens for than introduce them to screens at a point in their life where I will have no say about what they are doing.
If my kid is interested in the former I would not stop them, because it's an effective tool to learn about thinking, just like other toys... but the later I'm essentially treating as soft drugs, they ain't using that shit until they are an adult.
Just like alcohol, I think there’s nothing unacceptably wrong with it in moderation.
“Moderation” is a cope used by addicts.
Internet and computers are a critical part of everyday's life and will probably grow even more in the future. Childrens should definitely have screens and learn how to use it safely and smartly.
When my parents limited my video-game and television time during my teenagerhood (because it "makes you idiot/violent/whatever") it made my life worse, not better. Not being able to talk about the last video-game, movie or event, I had no idea what people were talking about most of the time.