What Age should my Child Start Coding Classes?

What's the Right Age For My Child to Start Coding Classes?

Parents who want their kids to start attending coding classes are torn between whether their kids are old enough to start coding. Like most modern parents, they tend to teach everything even on a very young age. Some parents focus on developing their kids' natural child development including physical and cognitive development. Other parents are naturally excited to teach young children new foreign languages to make them more competitive in the future. Others say that doing this would affect their native vocabulary language. We have a lot of things that we want and don't want to teach our kids especially when we feel that they are very young.

In the same way, parents believe that teaching coding to kids should not be abrupt and should not be overly challenging. But others think that it's best to start at a very young age. With all the nitty gritty of whether it is the perfect age to allow your kids learn coding, this blog will definitely help you know what age should you allow your child to start coding classes.

Start them very young

There's really no definite age for kids to learn coding since it will greatly depend on your child. Children's development is different for every child. But experts say that children should learn how to code at the earliest age as possible. In general, you can allow your kids to learn the basics in coding as early as 5 or 6 years of age. You can start with using visual programming codes underneath interactive games that your kids can enjoy.  Then from there, they can level up depending on their performance or their ability to accept new challenges in coding.

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Several studies have shown that children who code from the beginning of their elementary schooling achieve better academic performance throughout their education. A higher percentage of children who start coding early gets into the STEM area, both in college and in later career.

Another way of thinking

Parents usually like the idea of preparing their kids for success and giving them the best possible chances of getting into great universities. This is a good motive, but what’s actually even more useful and beneficial for kids who code is that they will learn how to think logically.

Other aspects of thinking, such as creativity and critical thinking skills, should not be neglected. They should be taught and practiced as well. However, coding provides learners with the incredible skill of problem-solving. This is a very powerful skill – not only professionally and academically, but throughout everyday life. A child who codes learns how to approach every issue with a solution-oriented mindset.

Often, coding is talked about as something you should pivot towards if you want to be a more competitive candidate for higher education or jobs. However, the most important social group that should focus on coding are actually children.

The core principle of coding is tapping into your problem-solving mindset. To do that, you need a disciplined and dedicated approach to work. Perhaps the most important aspect of coding from a children’s perspective is learning the core skills of logic and reasoning.

Fixing bugs is another important aspect of coding. When you start a program and see that the result is not what you were expecting, you need to continue researching, exploring, and finding out why that happened. Going through the program once again, behind the scenes, step by step, will enable kids to trace back the logic behind it. When you do that, you can deduce where the mistake happened.

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Learning how stuff works behind the scenes

Once children find the solutions for their program bugs, this is followed by another challenge. The next step is to learn how to avoid that from happening in the future.

Today, kids are growing up with technology as a crucial part of their life. From the moment they wake up to the moment they go the sleep, they are deeply submerged in the technological realm. Many parents fear these habits because of tech’s connection to addiction and behavior changes, but you can never eliminate the technological surroundings of today’s world.

However, it’s one thing to know how to use a mobile phone or a tablet. Knowing how exactly they work and which technological principles they are powered on is a whole other game. Coding, therefore, helps children realize how stuff works “behind the scenes.” By using coding-related software, kids will slowly learn what powers an application, website, or other types of programs. With these knowledge bits, they will gradually fit them into a bigger picture and learn how to recognize the poor design, a faulty app, and much more. As a result, they will perceive the world around them in a completely different way. They will understand why something doesn´t work in a way that it should, and they will learn what´s happening beneath the surface of everyday tech activities.

Coding as an expression of creativity

All humans need some kind of a creative outlet after a day of hard work (or in the child`s case, after a day in school). Everyone needs the opportunity to work on something that makes them feel great. Namely, children who don`t usually enjoy other types of artistic expression (drawing, writing, or music) can reach incredible expressive capabilities in coding.

Even as total beginners, they can start creating their own games, websites, apps. For children, as well as teens and adults, it’s very important to feel that they have the power of creation. This, in turn, will help them build self-confidence around their skills and abilities.

Conclusion

Introducing children to coding in their early elementary years is the best age for a child to start coding. This way, they will use the perfect cognitive moment to sow seeds for more complex knowledge later. Many great coders started learning around the age of 5 or 6.

If children are taught to think logically, and they adopt a problem-solving mindset, they will understand complex concepts from coding later in life. Even if they decide to completely move away from coding later in life, the ability to understand basic technological concepts will be invaluable in the future.