> my 7 year old is now able to nerd out and create games using claude even though he's just barely learned to read

Humans learn mastery by doing, not by watching.

I suppose it comes down to whether the most important skill for your kid is to give instructions, or whether it is to actually read and write.

For reference, my kid only just turned 6, and is at the level of reading books without pictures. I'm kinda proud that he reads better, faster and with more retention than kids aged 9, and it didn't come with the ease[1] that "nerding out" on Claude came to your kid.

The question you gotta ask yourself is this: is a skill that takes a 7 year old a day to master really going to make him more valuable than a skill that took a 6 year old 2.5 years to master?

The 6yo who can read can easily do what your kid did, but your kid can't easily do what the 6yo can.

From another PoV: how valuable of a skill do you think "prompting" is when a 7yo who hasn't mastered reading can master it?

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[1] I started a daily routine when he was 3.5 with the DISTAR alphabet. We did the routine every day, whether it was christmas, or his birthday, even on vacation. Same time, every day.