[gregjor]

I tried to get all of my kids interested in programming. All three of them had their own computers growing up (they all grew up and moved out some time ago). They all did things we might call programming, mainly in the context of games (my son especially played a lot of Minecraft and ran his own server for a while). My oldest daughter learned advanced Excel to do her job better (and survive layoffs). But none of them caught the programming bug like I did (it happened to me at age 14). None of them went into programming or IT.

You can put tools and information in front of kids but you can't control what they will develop deep interests in. I think parents should show their kids skills and how to use tools, whether that means programming or carpentry, but not hold their breath that kids will follow in their footsteps.