Do your want your kids out of your home office? Do they want to build a gaming computer of their own? The process of building a computer can teach your child some valuable skills and lessons. Choosing compatible components, assembling the computer, and setting it up is a task that children as young as 10 or 12 can manage. It will challenge them and help them to learn some valuable skills and traits. I used to find it very satisfying when I would build a PC and it would work, or fixing components inside.
Budgeting
Learning how to budget is an essential skill for life, that children of all ages can learn. Plenty of adults still struggle with budgeting. To correctly build a computer, your child will need to buy several different components, from RAM to custom keycaps, that will have to work together to complete the PC.
Whether you are giving them the money for this project or whether they are using their own money, the first step will have to be setting a budget.
With the budget set, your child will need to research the parts and components that will fit that budget. The price of building a PC can vary a lot, depending on the performance you want. A lower-end gaming PC can be built for around $400, but you can easily spend a lot more.
Learning to stay within a budget is a very important and completely necessary skill that children need for their later life. If you decide that your child needs to save their allowance or money earned from chores to pay for their computer, this can also be a good way to teach them the value of a dollar.
These budgeting skills can later be transferred to adulthood, such as budgeting for weekly groceries, or can even help them in their future careers if they end up in a job where they need to manage department or company budgets.
Problem-Solving Skills
Building a computer is not as difficult as most people think, but you can definitely run into some problems during the process of the build that will need to be solved through troubleshooting. For your child, learning how to troubleshoot like this and effectively solve problems is another important life skill.
It’s common for first-time builders to not assemble their computer properly at first. A common mistake is not pushing the components all the way into their slots. When this happens, the computer won’t turn on, and there often isn’t an easy way to know what has gone wrong.
While this can be frustrating, luckily most of these mistakes first-timers make a pretty common and have been made (and put right) by dozens of other people who have also built their own computers. Your child could end up only having to spend some time looking up the problem on Google to find out from experts who have built similar systems from scratch where they have wrong in their own build. Depending on their age, they could also join forums where they can ask questions and get advice from others who have run into similar issues. You might want to do this with them to make sure they’re safe online.
There are lots of guides available online for first-time computer builders that can help avoid problems and solve them when they do run into them.
Building their own PC is a great way for children to learn some skills in problem-solving. Learning how to solve problems effectively will teach them how to deal with adversity instead of giving up.
Patience
Buying a pre-built PC is an easy option. All you have to do is go to the store, choose the computer, pay your money, take it home, and switch it on. That’s it. There might be a start-up process that you have to go through where you configure your preferences and settings for the computer, but for the most part, they’re ready to plug in and use.
Building a computer yourself is a very different experience from just buying one. The process of building a PC takes a lot of time and effort, which will inevitably test your child’s patience, especially if they’re excited to have their PC up and running, and ready to use.
Building a computer from scratch can take hours or even days. If your child is juggling schoolwork and other activities, it could take even longer for them to complete their project. However, the reward of the final product will feel much more rewarding, knowing that they have built their ideal computer on their own.
