I spent my career in tech, but wasn’t prepared for its effect on my kids
I&#x27;m a retired geek but I do tractor work, I just pulled a 14 hour day and I&#x27;m having some wine so salt heavily.<p>In my opinion, the best thing you can do with kids is create boredom.  If they have access to a shop, or some lumber, they will start to build stuff.  If kids are bored and they turn that into building, that&#x27;s the first step towards getting into a good undergrad school.  Building stuff is good.<p>The hard part, as parents, is creating that boredom.  It&#x27;s so easy to give them the video game babysitter.  I haven&#x27;t done well at that.  I wish I had some magic statement that made that part easy but that part is super
super hard.<p>The other thing I&#x27;d say about kids, and I hate this, really hate this, is private school.  It&#x27;s better.  My kids went and were on track to go to Los Gatos High School which is a pretty decent school.  For various reasons we found kirby.org and both of my kids go there and it&#x27;s a shit ton better.  I hate private schools, I think kids should experience the full range of people, not just the rich kids that get into private schools, but wow, the private school was so much better.  So much better.  Hugely better.  My younger son who hates that school, it&#x27;s a nerd school and he&#x27;s a jock, came to me and said &quot;yeah, I want to go there, it&#x27;s better than Los Gatos&quot;.  My older kid is applying to schools and he has a shot at the ivys, that&#x27;s all the private school.<p>I&#x27;m ashamed to admit that I like private schools, but wow, have they been good for my kids.