- How much should a INTP kid be on the computer?
- What are the best INTP childhood activities?
- How did you spend your childhood?
Answer #1: As much as possible. Seriously. The more time a person spends on the computer during their childhood, the better. Being connected to the Internet provides children with a learning tool unrivaled by anything schools can offer.
Wikipedia alone is an endless fountain of knowledge.
On LiveMocha.com, your child can learn a foreign language at his own pace for free.
Games like World of Warcraft often enhance English skills, increase team building ability, teach players how to make plans involving others and then successfully execute them, and it even offers a safe environment for a child to organically experience a purely cerebral microcosm of life. In such a place, your child can actually get some valuable life experience while safely on his room.
Since he's INTP like us, it's an even better idea, as many (most?) INTPs find it much easier to socialize online than we do away from the computer. I think that we probably learn better in such a setting as well.
Answer #2: Video Games. Listening to music we like as well as music we've never heard. Reading books we like. Having and enjoying pets. Watching movies and television shows that we find interesting. Playing Dungeons & Dragons if we're lucky enough to have other people to play with. Surfing the internet. Writing fiction. Drawing, painting, or sculpting. Archery...
...
..Martial Arts (especially the more meditative ones; Look into T'ai chi ch'uan.) If you live near a city, you can probably find a school nearby. If not, just use the internet and practice the techniques that you like from the discipline.
I would also suggest swimming, coin collecting, exploring with a metal detector, trampolines, learning to cook (marvelous fun, actually), buying and reading second-hand college level coursebooks the INTP finds interesting, and most importantly... any INTP needs to focus on doing the things that make them happiest. In my experience, limits should only be enforced when enjoyment of one favored activity severely retards exposure to and exploration of novel experiences.
Answer #3: I spent my childhood in the middle of the rural bible belt. I was a biracial child from New York surrounded by bigoted religious fundamentalists, but houses were far apart and I was mostly isolated by distance from most other people. My mom knew that there would be trouble eventually, because she had grown up there and she knew the people.
She was already an LPN, but she wanted more money to provide the best childhood that she could for me. So, she went back to college for two bachelor's degrees: Nursing and Psychology. She also had to drive 50 miles each way to get to her college campus, and then she also had to work. As a result, her pay grade went up, she got more hours, and I got to be raised by my senile, racist, pot-growing grandma.
She didn't even know it was pot. Neither did I back then. She'd dry the buds and grind them up with her tobacco snuff. She never smoked them, but I think that the smell of cannabis imprinted as "nostalgic" in my brain. I love that aroma.
Anyway, she didn't like that I was biracial, but she loved me. So she'd complain all the time. When I was young, I learned to tune her out quite well so that I could watch my cartoons in the living room while she ranted. Later, when I got the internet, I would leave the room, go into my bedroom, get online for a couple of hours, go into the kitchen for a drink and... I'd still hear her ranting about exactly the same thing.
When storms would arise, my paranoid evangelical aunt would drive over and collect my grandmother while forcing me to come along as well. Nights at her house were spent in misery, as she is nothing more than a defeated rebel who has so relented in the fight that she becomes a complete tool of her church as well as the Faux News Network and the 700 Club. I heard the "N" word at least 50 times a night, though it was never directed at me. I heard rants about how much she hated democrats, gays, blacks, and women wearing pants to the church.
She was terrified of the New Age Movement, Heavy Metal, Occultism and the like.
Naturally, my reaction was to shoplift a Satanic Bible from the mall on our next outing. I realized at once that the Church of Satan was perfectly in line with my gifted preteen mind. I was jaded and angry, but also knew that I was right and justified in all of the rage I held in my heart for people like my aunt. That fueled me, and I began to explore everything that she was afraid of... because it was what had been kept from me for so long. I discovered Marilyn Manson just before he released Antichrist Svperstar. I found D&D at my local bookstore and began my life-long love affair with RPGs. I dabbled in the occult and performed dozens of ceremonies, said hundreds of incantations, spoke numerous prayers, and burned countless candles. I kept note of each apparent success as well as each apparent failure. In this, I continued until I could conclusively establish that there were no gods. I had invoked them all and not a single god had tipped the scales in my favor.
When my aunt was disgusted enough by my behavior to hesitate in taking me with her one stormy evening, I went to the trailer and ignored her knocking. She became very angry, indeed. She pounded on the door once and left, spinning her wheels in our driveway before speeding and swerving down the muddy road as my grandmother held on for dear life.
My growth and maturing (or as my aunt would call it, my "descent into hell") intensified and continued from that point forward. When next I answered the door on a stormy evening, I did so naked. I wanted to drive home a point that I was in my domain and I would do as I pleased. I also wanted to show off the baphomet sigil temporary tattoos that I got at Hot Topic. I applied one to my left buttock.
My aunt did not return to my doorstep for several years thereafter, and then, it was only to yell at me for "dragging [my] mother down to hell with [me]."
I absolutely hated my school and developed stress ulcers from having to go. I went to a Christian school in 6th grade, and it was even worse. My childhood didn't really start until I was 13. I had just finished 6th grade and I decided to homeschool thereafter. I finished 7th and 8th at a regular pace, barely bothering to think of school and instead living my life the way I wanted to.
But then I got sick of having to stop and study, so I crammed for a few months, did nothing but school, and I tested out of 9th, 10th, 11th, and 12th grade.
Anyway, since the time when I was 13, I experienced nothing more than a bittersweet blur of video games, music, sleep, great food, relaxation, fun, happiness, joy... and then the everyday drudgery and torment that is life around other people.
Hope those answers help!
