Teaching your child another language - code

I often wish that I knew another language so that I could speak it all the time to my son and he could pick it up. (Yes, I know I could make this happen, but I can only handle so many personal challenges in a year.) I am grateful that he is learning Spanish in school, and I am super proud of him when he speaks it. It is something I want him to keep up with.

But beyond Spanish, there is another language I really want him to learn: I want him to learn how to code.

I taught myself HTML when I was in my first job, and I've used it ever since. It was a skill that I was happy to pick up, as I've used it throughout my career. I know that not everyone enjoys learning new skills, as it was also in that first job that I worked with a gentleman who didn't know how to type. The company hired him a secretary to type all his forms for him. When I politely asked him why he didn't want to learn how to type, he said that he was older and didn't grow up with computers as I did. (I told him for the record that I didn't grow up with computers and learned to type in high school. I also reminded him that typewriters had been around since before he was born.)

But back to coding. As that link above points out, jobs in the computer programming field continue to grow. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if coding was a mandatory part of the school curriculum by the time my son reaches high school. Until that happens, there are some great apps out there that can teach basics to youngsters in a fun way. Looks like we'll be downloading some of these to get started.

What skill do you really want your child to learn and why?