[entwisi]

Hmmm. I see it a different way, that art of writing stories etc is in the mind, the person/child knows what they want to write. The tool that they use is secondary. By sticking with just one option you are re-enforcing that one at the expense of flexibility in your childs mind. what will happen that day that they dont have Office 2010 in front of them, look at the number of people who struggled hugely when MS brought in the "Ribbon" interface... by encouraging use of different tools you bring a natural ability of being flexible into the mind of the person. Word processors are never " a million miles " different. the button might have a slightly different icon, or the option is on a different menu drop down, its 99% likely to be called the same and lets be honest 90% of people dont even know how to use Paragraph formatting properly and that was in the first versions of Word.

in my case my core skill is in IBM WebSphere Application server, yet when asked to work on WebLogic/Oracle application Server/JBOSS etc I'm comfortable in doing so as they do the "same job", config might be stored in a different way, the consoles will be set up differently but thats just fluff around the side, I know what options I want, I just need to find it which might take a couple of seconds to do. Some others I know would run a mile rather than even try and use the alternatives. I want my children to have that "get on and do it" mentality and that comes by not being phased by the tool in front of them.

YMMV of course and we are all entitled to our own opinion and choice, mine happens to be one of encouraging the flexibility and core skill not the fluffy bits of the toolset involved.