Another commenter already identified the meat of the problem; you were restricted access to computers, whereas your children are not. Here is an article about that exact conundrum, on the concept of "antagonistic learning": https://medium.com/@ThingMaker/educ-103-antagonistic-learnin...

If you DM me, I will be happy to send you a list of similar essays that explore the concept of learning and teaching and why it's done poorly these days. I suggest you start with the essays and writing of John Taylor Gatto; his writings were ludicrously inspirational to me. Here is the first article I ever read that made me realize that I was a deficient learner and had never truly engaged in learning: https://www.cantrip.org/gatto.html

Consider that Roblox and Youtube are essentially slot machines for dopamine. If you want to engage with your children as creative, disciplined learning machines, they must be weaned off of addictive superstimulus-coded platforms, which is damn near impossible given the tech demands of modern school. I don't have any advice for you on that front, except that the more time you can spend with them the better. Perhaps you can start by playing Roblox and watching YouTube videos with them (taking care to only offer them positive and genuinely interested feedback on what they choose to do), and after they've built you into their habits, begin steering them towards more productive activities.

Btw, HN doesn't have DMs and your email address isn't public. (It's on my list to make that explicit on the profile page.) So if you want to be contactable, you need to say how in your About field.

Hey, thanks. I'll do that.

What the hell. That antagonistic learning article is amazing!

Even having a peer hold me accountable like he describes in the article would be amazing, let alone a teacher.

Reading that article made me sad that I've never had someone else challenge me like that. I've always had to do it myself.

Most of the teachers I've had in the past have been fine; the ones I worked the hardest for and still remember to this day were the ones that refused to admit subpar work and rarely meted out praise.

It sounds like you're doing the opposite of what your parents did. They resisted giving you a computer which made you want it more intensely. Whereas you gave it to them freely and are probably subconsciously pressuring them to get interested in it (e.g. your last sentence says "help me be better parent and support them better" but I think what you really meant was "help me figure out how to get them interested in computers") which is making them perceive it as work or something forced on them and are therefore rebelliously opposing it.

I know it's a truism but I think it's worth appreciating how rebellious kids can be. At least that's how I was. Tell me I can't do something, I will be obsessed with doing it. Tell me I have to do something or I should do something, I lose all interest in it.

Or they're simply not interested in computers.

Or you can try inspiring wonder and fascination and fun around computers.

I think it's probably more to do with being interested in things. I was really interested in computers and being online when I was young. I didn't have my own computer, my parents bought my sister one even though she didn't like or use computers, and I was always competing with my dad to use his. Later, I'd be vying with everyone for the phone line, to the point where my parents got an extra phone line, and (by then we had two computers) my brother and I would be always trying to use both phone lines so we could both be online.

Now, as an adult, I have more computers than I could reasonably use (I originally wrote "more than I could want" but that isn't true). I still use computers all the time and I'm pretty much always online. I love it and I expect to continue to going forward and, hopefully, expand my connection to computers and the internet, as technology permits.

My kids are too young to have an opinion on computers, and part of me is kind of concerned they won't have an interest in tinkering with computers or programming as I do. My father is an amateur radio enthusiast and I never really connected to that hobby. Maybe my dad trying to pressure me into studying the books (or maybe the requirement to study books) kept me from getting into it. Maybe I just had different natural proclivities. If my children show an interest in computers I won't restrict their access (except for not allowing them to use Windows). If they're into something else, I'll enable them (provided it's a healthy interest). We'll see.

Same, but I've realized my kids aren't me, and most people aren't me. Most young children I encounter are not innately fascinated by computers and itching to get programming ASAP in the way that I was. But they don't seem to be autistic like I was/am either.

I've tried to introduce them to Squeak, robots, and various such things on offer nowadays as gateways for children to get into tech, but the curiosity isn't there just yet. This is fine. They are into other things that I wasn't into at all.. like dancing, sports, or just being kids! :-)

Prevent your success from spoiling your kids. Your kids probably are not jealous of anything they see because you provide them anything they want. I think a parent should think and figure out how to create a challenging environment for their kids. Not just artificial challenge like games. Real challenge that will shape(and I think improve) their personality.

I'm not a parent so I can't give concrete advise, just sharing my thoughts.

I agree in that constraints can make for creativity, but as a parent, it is very very difficult to create that environment.

Not a parent either, but constraints such as "you can only play videogames that you code yourself" could be an entertaining way to teach: they might want the reward, teach them to enjoy the path as well.

I am not saying they should learn computer science, but it's one of the best ways to use computers, and having some basic skills with it is incredibly useful still.

You can't really do that today. In 1980 Frogger was the state of the art of video games, a kid could code a clone of it over a few weekends so the hurdle was reasonable. However modern games takes years to clone even for professionals, even the indie ones, so you banning them from games they haven't made themselves today essentially means you banned them from ever playing games.

The main problem is that basically everything a kid would want to do with computers is already done in neatly packaged binaries, so the reward for exploring is just the exploration itself. And preventing your kids from using those binaries wont make your kid excited to recreate programs from the 80's, it will make your kid resent you as a conservative parent who wants his kid to relive his own childhood.

Well, there are plenty of game engines out there that empower the user a whole lot. And I bet any kid who codes a simple snake today would still play the hell out of it, and have plenty of ideas on how to improve the game even further.

You are right, however, that some parts are simply impossible to replicate: narratives, for instance, have to be experienced. Gameplay however, is where the fun is when it comes to games and game programming (this might be subjective), and is usually quite simple to replicate.

I had to do the same thing and thought that was funny. I still remember I had been saving my paper route money for a while and my dad took me out on a walk and after some silence him saying "Breck, I've decided to help you buy the computer.". They put in 50% and I paid 50%. Even then had to do a payment plan with the kid in the city who could build computers on the cheap.

Nowadays I let my 2yo play with my some old laptop that is 100,000x more powerful than the first machine I had.

I have the same problem. One thing to try to get them to do is build their own Roblox game with you or maybe build some compute machines inside Minecraft. My kids also want to make their own you tube channel so I look at it as broadcasting experience, story telling, and they also Facetime with their friends while playing so they get socialization as well.

Another idea is to take them on a trip with no electronics and internet. Camping or a cabin. Maybe with another family or friends so the kids can play together. That way they can see life without roblox and youtube and the change in scenery helps with that.

The pandemic has made this a little harder to do though.

The 80s-90s was a small window in time where computers were becoming powerful enough to do cool things without modern UX hiding all the implementation details.

I got into computer programming when I got a Mindstorms Lego set, which built off my love for Legos. My younger brother learned some about C literally because he wanted to write cheats for Counterstrike, or more accurately how to remove the DRM-components of cheats that he didn't want to pay for.

You just gotta find a gate-way drug activity, as well as a gate-way programming language because going straight to Lisp is like going straight to heroin.

You nailed it.

I've found the "drug" for foreign languages , by letting them watch certain cartoons when home goals are met (good behavior etc), with the caveat they can only watch with audio that is a specific foreign language.

The next step is the hardest one. Once they read, I can probably migrate to a 4th language, and leverage RPGs for that purpose. Or I can branch out to programming like you say, but that may be much more difficult.

You need to have a partner that is supportive of this. If you don't present a united front, any (learning) policy will soon be forgotten.

Motivation should be a significant part of teaching. Pedagogy is quite outdated in this regard, as a whole I think.

Not a teacher, but some thoughts.

Direct "telling" of motivation, i.e. a rational explanation, doesn't necessarily achieve intuitive motivation, which is excitement, that knack for learning or doing something great; but I'm certain it's a good step. Talk to them: why should they learn things in the computer? You can make games, you can change the world (it's complicated, but it's true enough to be valid to tell children!), you can understand how nature works (when building models and simulations); you might use (increasing chance) it in most jobs you can get in the future, from a writer to financial analyst to lawyer. And motivation ought to be about taste as well -- show, and tell, how it is awesome what you can build, how it is awesome how everything works, develop their internal (intuitive) motivation and sense of beauty.

Try to get them to do it, however simple: make a tiny simple game using perhaps pygame or scratch, or draw some lines using p5.js. Let them have fun. Teach them about science and philosophy. Things will develop from there I'm sure.

Good luck!

Lots of kids back then weren't begging their parents for computers and lots of kids today are writing code.

Restrictions breed creativity.