Focus on my children's future salaries is not really my thing.
Nor is it mine... but neither is limiting her future options. I see my job as a parent as providing her with an opportunity to develop a rich set of skills, then standing by and watching what she does with them.
That said, they are going to have computer skills, of course. Like I said, it's unavoidable. And they're very smart. They'll pick it up as soon as it's made available.
I didn't have my own computer till the age of 23 and I have never had any problems picking up the computer skills I need, though I don't work in IT or anything like it. Same with my husband, and he's effortlessly picked up things like GIS and SPSS. But am I starting them programming at age 4? No. I suppose some people could see this as a failing on my part. Enh.
I don't see much value in using my experiences with technology as a benchmark for my child. She'll be an adult in 11 years, and in the last 11 years, the field has changed dramatically. I see no reason for that rate of change to decelerate in the next 11 years.
My DD7 did a writing project on her computer, which is a decision she made herself. But since her school experience is such a mess (she's in 1st grade, ready for 2nd grade, and jumped into a G/T class full of G/T 3rd graders) she needed a lot of assistance and some heavy editing. She was angry/frustrated/overwhelmed by the assignment enough as it is... it would have been 10x worse if she'd had to do all those revisions by hand.
I don't disallow computer use, anyway. But I limit it, and I certainly don't actively suggest it. Pushing computer literacy for these kids just seems utterly unnecessary. IMO, they'll be in front of screens all day soon enough.
I don't think anyone has to push computer literacy on children these days, especially gifted ones. I think that computer illiteracy can be pushed, though. Restricting screen time is fine if it's necessary... as I said, in my DD's case, we don't restrict simply because she's self-regulating pretty well. If her behavior were different, our policy would be different. But there's restrictive and then there's prohibitive.
