HACKER Q&A
📣 haensi

What is your education and technology strategy for your children?


My wife (staying at home) and I have a 2yo girl and a 7mo girl and raise them trilingually (English, Spanish, German). To our surprise, the 2yo has a better pronunciation than monolingual peers. She also has a remarkable memory and can remember names of places and people. Moreover, she discovers letters on signs and posters. Her favorite book is a visual dictionary. [3] In general, our daughters can have access to all tools after a short introduction and under supervision. Scissors? Hold em like this. Kitchen knife? Handle with care. China plates? Careful.

Most people in our neighborhood do not have a strategy on how to raise the children. They rather trust in day care to take care of that or follow their intuition.

I feel a strong need to strategically work out an education. So far, I have been studying the Montessori work, namely 'Montessori, the Science Behind the Genius' [2].

I am interested in the following questions:

1. What educational strategy / syllabus do you have for your children?

2. At what age do you introduce smartphones / tablets for their independent usage? ()

   1. What do you think of the WHO guidance [4]?

   2. How much screen time do you think is beneficial / detrimental?
3. How do you provide an optimal environment for your children to learn at any time?

4. How do you teach technological foundations (STEM) without technology?

5. What activities do you perform outside / in nature? (e.g., Usage of animal guides / plant guides)

6. My daughter sees me working a lot with tablet / laptop and wants to do the same. (She's even 'scheduling meetings'). How would you deal with this?

() I am familiar with a related question from 2014 (Ask HN: How much screen time do you let your kids have?[1]).

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[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8746045

[2]: https://www.amazon.com/dp/019536936X

[3]: https://www.dk.com/us/book/9781465447562-5-language-visual-dictionary/

[4]: https://www.who.int/news/item/24-04-2019-to-grow-up-healthy-children-need-to-sit-less-and-play-more

  👤 lnwlebjel Accepted Answer ✓
I can comment on "3. How do you provide an optimal environment for your children to learn at any time?"

What we have done correctly is to have loads of books in the house, often maxing out our library card to get the appropriate reading/interest level for our children. My oldest is an avid reader (now 12 yrs old) and a benefit of reading so much is that she is an excellent writer as well. We also have throughout the house art/project materials, electronic components, legos, etc. They will often say "I'm bored", then (getting no response from their parents) engage in some art/project/making activity. When they do get screen time, we try to keep it educational (though video games have started to really draw them in).

Anyway, I'll post back in 20 yrs and let you know what else we got right!