Inspired by Iddo's question: http://friendfeed.com/e... - Pawel Szczesny

My dad taught me how to recognize birds and build mechanical toys. I'd probably do the same, in addition to programming and general curiosity - Deepak Singh

I learned logo in 1st grade, approx. 1979. I fricking loved it. Maybe two years later, I got a Commodore64 for Christmas. It was just the computer, no storage device. I would write BASIC programs during the day, and then at night I would turn off the computer and my programs would vanish (since I didn't have a tape drive). I shit you not, this is what I did for fun! As an 8 year old, spend 12 hours writing BASIC code (elaborate variations on 10 print "Steve is cool" 20 goto 10), and then turn off computer and lose all work rewrite differently the next day. I distinctly remember the thrill of getting a cassette drive and the anxiety of waiting 1/2 hour to save data and wonder whether it would work or not. :) - Steve Koch

But aside from my thrilling history, to answer the question, I don't know yet. I'm inclined to provide them access to computers but not force them into doing anything. I have a reluctance to dictate my kids' career paths. My main goals are: for them to desire to be excellent in something, to be able to be excellent in something, and to be good people. And at least two of those three things I don't think are taught well in schools, at least in the US. - Steve Koch

English, Python, some basic statistics, working in console, chess, sailing and climbing :) - Piotr Byzia

From Siddhartha: how to think, how to wait, how to do without. That is, critical thinking, patience and a certain amount of detachment from the material things in life. - Bill Hooker

Steve, I remember doing exactly the same thing, on the C64, too. My brother and I would get in fights because I didn't want to turn off my bouncing color-shifting "I'm so cool!" animation and he wanted to do a growing and shrinking bouncing color-shifting "I'm so cool!". - Mr. Gunn

My C64 experience went as far as an attempt to code in BASIC an application that could answer any possible answer in the world - but after hardcoding something like 200 questions (and their variations) I gave up. Probably I wouldn't go as far, if I didn't have tape recorder ;). - Pawel Szczesny

But back to the original question (personally I'm not going to buy C64 to my son), anybody else having an opinion on this topic? I expect that "mastering MS Office" is not going to appear (or maybe it is?), but I'm curious about other things that may appear to you as important (or more) as programming. - Pawel Szczesny

Mr. Gunn--How about the Spider, using /\*/\ kind of stuff? Pawel, that is hilarious. I remember one of my projects was to build a word unscrambler. I started typing in a dictionary and after a few hours realized a scaling problem. :) - Steve Koch

How to cook and appreciate food, to enjoy the outdoors, and to retain that sense of wonder (or perhaps they can help teach me :) - Shirley Wu

I would add teaching martial arts such as Judo and Jiu-Jitsu; Many of the things learned in competition translate well to other aspects of life. Team sports are great too. - Adam Kraut

Man, I don't know about you all, but I wouldn't let my parents teach me anything directly when I was a kid. I guess I was too stubborn. In my experience, there are too many emotions involved when it comes to a parent teaching a child. Indirectly, they taught me all they really needed to, though: put others ahead of yourself whenever possible, be tough but forgiving, practice moderation, and make decisions that you'll appreciate down the road. I hope I can pass that down the line, should the time come. - Chris Lasher

+1 Chris - Nils Reinton

As far as science, I've been pretty blunt about evolution being the family-preferred model (had to -- my daughter began asking questions at age 3), and otherwise tend to model/focus on the "about" side of knowledge--how to think "about" things, put them in perspective, form concept maps (they do a bit of this in school) -- generally, school is good at details but weak on big picture and connections. - Mickey Schafer