We just finished his first baseball season (t-ball). The present he wants most for christmas is a hover-ball, and he has tennis lessons every Friday. On the days he reads he typically spends anywhere from 10-15 minutes depending upon his familiarity with the book.

Programming teaches you how to think and break problems down into manageable tasks. It also requires you to be able to teach yourself in order to master it (or rather a subset of it). It also changes you from a consumer into a maker.

Literacy is a barrier for a self motivated exploration of knowledge and interests. I wanted to remove this barrier as quickly as possible so he can begin exploring his interests earlier.

* Edit

Ah yes, more outside stuff.

On thanksgiving we played in a hammock under the stars in the country. I asked him which star was his favorite, he said "the colorful one, but its actually a planet". Of course it was just a star. But I like him dreaming about the stars so I said nothing and smiled.

He spent most of the night chasing dogs in the grass, laughing. We built a fire and roasted marsh mellows.

We went driving around the ranch in jacked up kind of gas golf-cart. He drove the tractor with his hands while sitting on his grandpa's lap. And he used the front-loader to lift me in the air.

He explored the barn by himself, much to his surprise thinking I would require him to have a chaperone. When I went to check on him a few minutes later, I found him in the loft trying to persuade a bird to come close.

*

He gets a lot of outside time. But all this stuff I just wrote didn't seem relavent to this post.

He also doesn't mention feeding his child. It doesn't mean that he doesn't.

Its sad that you use this father, who seems to be doing a lot of things right, to grind your axe on.

I think it's fair to include that in the 'plenty of days where he opts to not read and not play video games'. Not sure why you would criticize the omission of an unrelated topic in a great comment about sharing his passion with his kid. I also think it's more helpful to think a bit more charitably about people's intentions. Of course I'm guilty as anyone of hasty conclusions and comments... :)

> It's sad that you don't mention giving him any time to play outside.

This is an example of where we should apply the Principle of Charity on HN: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_charity. It's possible that Sakes never lets his kid play outside, but that's so far from the best way of reading his comment that positing it is a distraction.

There are plenty of charitable ways of raising the same issue, such as asking "How do you balance this with the need to play outside?"

He also didn't mention giving him time to go to the bathroom.