The #1 Vital Skill In The Digital Age To Give Your Child An Unfair Advantage

One of the most underrated skills that any child can learn is now available from anywhere in the world.

No, it’s not mindlessly surfing the internet!

It is touch-typing.

I learned to touch-type while I was attending high school in the 7th grade. However, there were no classes. I just found a program from the library and took it home with me.

Actually, the only reason I did it was because my older brother, Paul, suggested I train this vital skill. If he hadn’t, I probably would have fallen into the trap Patrice Oneal hilariously expresses in the video clip below:

[*WARNING: He occasionally uses words that some might find offensive.]

In case you didn’t watch the clip, he made light of the fact that when he was younger and saw other children learning to touch-type, he made fun of them.

He thought it was a useless skill, unless you wanted to be a secretary.

Now (or at the filming of the clip) he finds himself in a world where everyone else can type so things like messaging are quite a struggle. He writes, “Hello,” and the other person responds in a few seconds with a full-length essay!

He’s exaggerating, of course.

The point is not being able to touch-type leaves a serious gap in being productive, creating opportunities and just surviving in this digital age.

In my experience, it has saved hours upon hours while writing my:

• homeschooling book;
• homeschooling course;
• homeschooling journal;
• any homeschooling quotes; and
• just with getting ideas out of my head onto the screen.

However, anything that I can write more quickly because of my ability to touch-type is secondary.

What lies underneath all that is quiet confidence!

The quiet confidence your child will gain from learning to touch-type will spread to many other areas of their lives. More than you might imagine. They don’t need to be an author or a programmer or necessarily directly use touch-typing as the primary activity of their profession/business.

But just think about all the emails and messages they will send over the course of their lives. Or if they are writing a diary or journal how it will help to organize their thoughts and express themselves more succinctly.

These are just a few. There are more.

And they all stem from the confidence of being able to type words on a screen quickly and without looking!

Not to mention it’s fun 🙂

You can’t go wrong with Typing.com – it’s free which is always a bonus!

I also recommend checking out Typesy. There are specific packages for:

• small homeschooling families;
• large homeschooling families; and
• homeschooling co-ops.

Within each there are modules for adults and children of all ages, so it’s quite interactive; much more so than the bland 90s program I used!

You can involve yourself with your child’s participation as much or as little as you’d prefer. Like always though, less is more.

Mick.