At what age did your child learn to use the computer?

[Anonymous]

OMG! You people are hysterical.

"You child will be behind in K..."

yeah, like clicking a mouse and hitting the keys on a keyboard are skills that are going to take days, weeks, months for them to learn!

An average kid can understand how to use the mouse, keyboard, start a game, etc. in less than a half hour at most.

Really, this is not a "skill' that needs to be worried about.

In school, the comptuers are set up for point and click.

[Anonymous]

This is an interesting thread, thanks OP for starting.

My kids are almost 7 and 5. They get about 1 hour each a week of computer time at sites like Lego.com and PBSkids. Short bursts, 10-15min at a time. So they know how to use a mouse and type in a site. They also get about 1 hour per week or so of TV time. I consider the two very similar, some modest value at this age, but otherwise time-wasters.

But that is it, no daily automatic use or entitlement to hop on the computer or turn on the TV. They have their whole lives to figure out computers and watch televison. Somehow all of us managed even though PCs have only been prevalent for the past 20-25 years.

And even if my kids failed computers in kindergarten, they would ace the classes on getting dirty, digging up worms, goofing off around the neighborhood and physical toys like Legos, games, sports, etc. This to me is far more important to reinforce early and often.

Again just one opinion.