I think some of you are confusing 'computers' with 'Windows' -
My kids grew up around computers too... since I worked on one at home in the early stages of getting my company off the ground. It's still widely held (according to the pediatrician at the time) that eye-hand coordination - specifically the ability to associate a hand motion >here< having an effect on something >there< (in this case, mouse/cursor) doesn't show until about 18 months.
Each kid was happily mousing away and playing (very simple) games by the time they were 10 months old (I love my IIGS). They both have taken the darn things apart and built their own machines (the older is 13).
The difference between them and snarkophilus is that they don't need to program to do what they want to do. We've already done that... and they've not reached the stage where they need to write tools to do things more easily.
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Originally Posted by farmerjumperdon
My observation is that most homes treat their children as 2nd class residents. Not out of lack of love or concern, it's just the standard model most practiced. It galls me when I enter someone's home and if you don't go to the kids room, you might not guess kids lived there.
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LOL - you'd love my house. Kid stuff all *over* the place. In fact, it generally looks like hell.
The kids, when they were VERY young (see first paragraph) spent a lot of tim e on my lap 'helping' me work. I have a photo, somewhere, of my older boy sitting on my shoulders while I ran invoices... I rather like that photo.
I do think there's too MUCH involvement by parents in many kid's lives. You have to be able to draw the line between running their lives and showing support for what they want to do, and encouraging them to try new things and think for themselves. That does not mean forcing them to play some random musical instrument or play pee-wee football.