A few minutes ago our eldest daughter wandered in, and asked if it might be a good idea to do some online courses while stuck at home over the next weeks and months – to learn some new skills. After falling off my chair, I struggled to compose myself. Some explanation is probably required.
None of my daughters have ever shown the slightest interest in the one subject I could have easily helped them with throughout school or college. Other than a few days after the arrival of a Raspberry Pi, when writing programs in Python was “fun”, or those few weeks when they were learning “Scratch”, I have been more-or-less redundant. Until this evening.
My eldest daughter wants to learn web development.
She has a goal in mind (that I’m not going to share just yet) – so I’m trying to slow her to a walk before she tries to run – lining up courses on HTML, CSS, and so on. She asked if I could teach her, but I know enough from teaching business people to know that I shouldn’t try to teach her. I’ve seen Star Wars. I know what happens. Granted, she wants to learn – which is half the battle – but I’m also her Dad, so often the enemy as well. Thankfully the internet is full of quite wonderful courses, tutorials, and certifications led by people who are not me.
At least now if she wanders up and asks “what’s the correct standards compliant HTML and CSS to make a menu of options?”, I’ll have a much better chance of answering than “how do you do long division?”
