[personjerry]

Piggybacking onto this thread, does anyone use software or any services for their parenting that they find invaluable? I imagine mentors and services like Kumon are popular with this crowd? How about the non-academic front?

[conductr]

> How about the non-academic front?

We limited it to coloring apps until they have an opinion at which point it will be a game and followed by whatever game their friends are playing (we haven't opened up multiplayer, they are still just playing individually then bragging about it to each other at school. It's a small glimpse into my NES days, except I was a bit older.)

Either way, ours get about 10 minutes a week but that's up from 'only on airplanes and in airports' last year

[adastra22]

> I imagine mentors and services like Kumon are popular with this crowd?

Not in my bubble at least.

[personjerry]

How do you make sure that your children will go to a top university then?

[adastra22]

Was that sarcasm? I’m vastly more concerned that my kids lead fulfilling, happy lives than that they get into a top tier university. Or university at all, for that matter.

But also my 12 year old daughter is working on publishing her first iOS app on her own initiative. I’m sure they’ll do fine.

[lloeki]

> on her own initiative

My daughter is 3yo so a bit early ^^, but 2 years ago I bought my nephew (then 8, loves to tinker) a Pi 400 plus a couple of kid-oriented introductory programming books (about Scratch and Python, very nicely done I must say, I reviewed them beforehand). Of course he started with playing Minecraft Pi but an hour after he was moving a cat around in Scratch.

Now I heard he's tinkering with Python. Pretty sure the GPIO is going to get some heavy use down the road, bridging the digital world to the physical one (where he tinkers with mechanical and electric stuff already).

There was zero pushing nor action on my part (except showing him how to operate the mouse), I literally just handed him the device and books over, he plugged it in and went exploring his merry way. Curiosity is a powerful engine.

[adastra22]

Yeah my daughter got her start with the Piper computer, which is just a rebranded raspberry pi (albeit at a much higher price point), in a balsa wood case you put together yourself. The built in software is a customized Minecraft Pi, with built-in subquests where you learn how to put together the peripherals on a bread board.

That's all she needed, really. She graduated from that to Swift Playgrounds on my iPad, then once she had some understanding of Swift and programming in general she was solving problems on replit. Not sure yet how she'll jump the gap to making actual apps, but that's her goal and she's trying. She doesn't have to do it alone though; I'll help out as needed.

[personjerry]

Not sarcasm! I was under the impression that in the US that getting into a good uni is a big deal, and since those of us in tech have the means, then those sorts of advantages for our kids would be great investments.

[adastra22]

The way you phrase it sounds like you’re either not American or a first generation immigrant. If so, what’s your home culture? Just curious.

My family goes back to the 1830’s on one side, and the 1600’s on the other, so I’m pretty integrated. I don’t think any of that is really in the radar for people in my family. We are relatively well off middle class, and most of my aunts, uncles, and cousins went to university. But not Yale, Harvard, or MIT. We didn’t do cram schools, but did band or soccer or theatre instead. Whatever our interests were.

Cram schools and intense stress related to academic achievement is more typical of recent immigrants, and/or particularly though not exclusively East Asian and South Asian families. When I sat for the SAT I was shocked that some of the people I sat next to had been attending study schools for months to prepare. Me and my friends just sat for it and took it cold, lol. There is a much stronger drive in that culture for academic achievement and living up to your parent’s expectations. In many-generational American families, not so much (not just white, but anyone whose family has been here for a while).

[personjerry]

I'm Chinese-Canadian, but went to university in Caliornia.

I really appreciate your anecdote, I felt like a lot of the students I went to school with had worked pretty hard (i.e. college prep, extracurriculars, way more than most Canadians at my high school, although I went to a public high school). But it makes sense if I had a biased sample!

[in_cahoots]

I pay for a fitness app and a meditation app. I’m such a better parent when I’m not constantly burnt out and at the end of my rope.