For giving alcohol to children the law varies state to state. In Ohio for instance, the law states: "No person shall sell or furnish any low-alcohol beverage to, or buy any low-alcohol beverage for, an underage person, unless given by a physician in the regular line of his practice or given for established religious purposes, or unless the underage person is accompanied by a parent, spouse who is not an underage person, or legal guardian."

New York State is different. While parents can consent to underage drinking, it has to be in the privacy of their own home, and the law is purposely vague, just saying "Moderate amounts" which essentially means you never know the limit until someone prosecutes you for it. The beverage must also be served by the parent, and they may not serve anyone except who they are legal guardians for, so no going to a friends house and having his parents give you wine.

Don't let them play it is first thing that comes to mind.

As a rule we have limited screen time a lot (30 minutes/day is generous) and that counts TV/DS/Wii/Computer. Adding in something that will get her familiar with computers (She has the same interest in computers I had at her age) isn't a bad thing. We're not stopping those extras, this is just something else to add to the list.

Well, I do feel I can judge my daughter's interests well enough to know what she's enjoying and not enjoying. So far she has really really *really* enjoyed the youthdigital course, which is why I'm looking for more to give her.

We do game night every week. She's taking piano and plays the Trombone. She's in girl scouts as well doing yoga and joining ski club.

She's not isolated in any way. We engage with her every moment she wants to be engaged. I'm not asking her to go to college with these skills, I'm trying to find fun ways of challenging her even more with her current interests.

I do believe between this post and the others saying Kano is good has helped me choose one of her Christmas gifts this year. I'm glad so many here have had good experiences with it.

I actually had something similar happen, as posted in a different response, I have a couple of minecraft servers I run for the girls. One day I went through online minecraft schematics and tossed in a few castles, homes, a roller coaster and a pyramid maze and when they found them a few days later they were amazed. Even more so when I showed them how I got them there.

In this case, anything engaging, which in general for a kid mostly means games. I've done board game design with my kids, having them design a board game that we all play on game night. That was fun, although I found is quite unfair that if you're over 20 years old you start with no rerolls and if you're a girl you get 3 extra re-rolls. The girls of course felt that was perfectly fair...

As I posted earlier in thread, my goal is to take what they enjoy doing and attempting to broaden their focus a bit into useful life skills. Non programming example: My older daughter loves cookies. We started with teaching her how to assist making cookies, moved on to her making cookies for us, and from there she's moved on to making dinner, etc. She's 12, but able to pull open a cookbook and throw together a decent 30 minute meal.

That might be a little simple of an example, but my goal with them playing minecraft is similar. Get them to mod the game they enjoy, get to them to learn the stuff that goes on behind the scenes and it lets them determine if it's something they enjoy doing.

See, I wouldn't say my daughter is currently interested in programming, I would say she is currently interested in MINECRAFT and I'm adding something I would consider a life skill to that interest by showing her how to mod minecraft. If I'm successful on guiding my daughter into interests that add life skills, I believe I will have succeeded as a parent. By showing her how all this stuff she is interested in runs, I hope to broaden her horizons.

Right now I run two private minecraft servers for the kids. They invite their friends from school and have done some nice building. The effort and thought I see them putting into their house designs and stuff is what made me think she would enjoy modding a bit and letting others see what she makes. I'm sure if this course she's taking keeps her interest I'll be setting up something so she can run a server with the mods she's writing and I'll work with her on ideas for other mods.

Very valid question on her desires. Up until I got this course on modding minecraft what she wanted to do was "Play Minecraft". I am strongly of the opinion that my children need not only time to play, but that it's a good idea in general to make that play something that they can build on in the future. If she gets her "Play Minecraft" and I get my "She's learning a life skill at the same time" it's a valid redirection of her energy IMO.

Now Java itself may or may not be a useful skill in the future, but the thought process behind the programming at this point I believe is most important.

As for the eclipse part, the online course she's using has presented it well. In the first part of the course she's learning some about syntax, but mostly doing some art in gimp, typing in names to make things be named differently and editing code that already exists.

My older daughter has done a 2 day GEARS program at RIT. http://www.rit.edu/kgcoe/women... and I found that quite interesting and she enjoyed it. I'm planning on sending my 9 year old next year when she's eligible for that course. The Modding course I linked to above actually has my daughter interacting with her mod and launching minecraft to see her work quite often, so when she makes changes to her sword or other, she gets to see the results quite quickly. The feedback is quite fast for her, which is nice.

Tongue in cheek as firmly as I see it there, I'm not sure it would keep her attention very well. I have shown her the Flight Sim Easter Egg in Excel 97 as an example of an easter egg and also had her looking some up for her Wii games. The searching for things has really opened her mind for thinking outside the box a bit. (example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... )