Things are a little different now than when I was a kid. We were not allowed to operate the home electronics, mom and dad took care of that. Since we are in the age of electronics and more homes have PC's than ever before, it is important to teach our children how to operate these "toys." Toys, that is what they see, while many of us view them as an essential business tool, children see a toy. Teaching them how to use this toy is the important part, the younger they start the better they will become and the better prepared they will be for the future.
My daughter, who is seven now, has been using a PC since she was five and has developed better PC skills than some adults I know. I saw the gleam in her eyes when she saw the things you can do with a computer, cool games, pictures and painting are just a few of them. She was ready to do those things and not just sit and watch what I was doing. So as all good parents do, I sat her down with me and began to let her play, she liked it so much she wanted to play the games all of the time.
This posed a couple of problems, one, I was not getting the time I needed on the PC, and two, I always had to come load the game in for her. The first problem was no big deal, I simply adjusted the time I spent on the computer so it was after she went to bed, unless I had something pressing to do. The second problem was a little more challenging, teaching her Windows Vista. Things were a little slow at first, being five her attention span was a little short and her patience was even shorter, after all, what I was showing her was not near as fun as the game she wanted to play.
The one thing I noticed is how much she retained after each short little session, I was amazed. I would take the ten minutes or so and she would sit there and watch me show her some of the basic things she needed to know to get the job done and allow me a few minutes to show her something new. This really paid off, before long she could do all of the things I had been showing her on her own, and anyone who has children know at this age their independence is really starting to show. She loved to show me what she could do and that she did not need dad's help to do it, I was proud.
She does things on her own now, makes her little pictures, plays her Barbie games and has even loaded a few, which was a little scary. The teaching really paid off, she loves the PC and is very comfortable using it, not because it is just fun, but because I helped make it fun for her by taking out the frustrations. She knows what she can and cannot do, what programs to stay away from, mainly Windows Explorer. I am still cautious though and I make backups of all of my important files in case they are accidentally deleted, but other than that she is free to roam and do her thing.
The whole point of this is to share your knowledge with the kids, they absorb it like a sponge. Make the new PC something the whole family can enjoy and not just a big persons toy, it is only a machine and with the proper guidance your child will be operating that machine better than you one day. When they are grown and doing things you never thought were possible, you will know that you go them off on the right foot.
Source: ezinearticles.com