My Son is Turning into a Computer Geek

Kids really do get into computers young these days. My son is 3 years old and has recently been allowed to discover the delights of the computer. He’s fascinated by the games he can play on sites such as PBS Kids and Starfall. He has been surprising me with how quickly he gets the idea.

And then there’s his fascination with the interior of the computer. Or any other machine, really. This kid is really curious about what’s inside of this stuff. Thank goodness he can’t take anything important apart yet.

It amazes me how early some of these interests start. Now that he has realized there’s more to do on these websites than just go to the places I originally directed him, I have to pay a bit more attention to what he’s doing. Mostly just because he gets stuck and frustrated when a game is completely over his skill level.

I went through a similar thing with my daughter at this age, which lead me to setting up a start page for her with all the sites she still loves to play on. She was so furious when she found out I was letting her brother use HER site!

But when it comes to the details, he’s definitely more into that part. I suspect I’ll be dealing with a lot more questions as his speech continues to improve. His vocabulary is already impressive for his age, or so the testing from his speech therapy class indicated. Just hard to understand.

I do have a site set aside for he and I to work together on one of these days. I think he’ll like having something that is about the things he enjoys doing online. Then I can just set up a profile for him and teach him to use it.

But I suspect the most trouble will come the day he really figures out how many things can be taken apart with a screwdriver. There’s a good reason why we keep those up out of reach….