[michael_dorfman]

I'd be careful in this line of thinking, if I were you. Projecting wishes and expectations onto one's children is common, and counter-productive.

I was very excited when my daughter, around the age of 10, showed interest in programming. I showed her Scratch (from MIT), but I think my enthusiasm scared her off-- and she dropped it quickly. I regret that I didn't play it a bit cooler.

[canadaduane]

Enthusiasm can be shown in several ways. One interesting tidbit from psychological research is that praising children's results often leads to their own paralysis. Instead, parents should praise how hard they tried.

See Berkeley's Half Full blog:

http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/raising_happiness/post/the_r...

[michael_dorfman]

I'm familiar with that research, and agree with the techniques.

In this case, though, it wasn't that I praised her-- just that I got excited about how cool Scratch was. Suddenly, it wasn't that cool to her anymore.

Similarly, she also hates the Beatles. I mean, how is that even possible?

[mgarfias]

I hate the beatles.

[Splines]

I did the same thing, and my son was around the same age.

Now we just cultivate whatever interests he has, and try our best to answer any questions he has. He's interested in marine life, but is a bit too young to help out at the Seattle Aquarium. We've enrolled him in a few robotics classes and a programming class that used Game Maker [1]. He loved the Game Maker class, I'd bet that it was a gentler introduction than what I tried with Scratch.

FWIW, he's into video games too (we have a 360, NDS, Wii, PC), but we limit his time and prioritize digital entertainment last.

[1] http://www.yoyogames.com/make

[systema]

Yes, I tried to do the same, with my youngest when she was about 13 (and with Perl), but she quickly dropped it all, due to my enthusiasm.