My nephew is 2.5 years.... but he has a tremendous understanding of things around him.. watches movies with me, speaks fluently. makes strategies to get his things done (in normal activities). recognizes faces & names ( (celebs,cartoons,movie charachters)..not only he watches movies with me.. after i explain him the movie while watching.. he picks it up and enjoys it and even goes to the extent of explaining the movie to his mom....
I do speed cubing and i have bought a cube for him to play..he plays with the rubic cube and knows the 6 color of 6 faces of the cube. and solves it (if its very simple to solve,(like one or two turns of a side)..
his memory, ability to learn & attention span made me think why not introduce chess to him.. he has a board and pieces now.. every day we spend 5 mins after i come back from office..he opens the box. takes out 1 piece at a time and gives it to me and i put it on the board. while I take it from him, i call the name of the piece aloud.. he repeats with me.. now, after a week i can tell him to show me the black rook or some other piece of a color, he will pick that up from the board and put it back at the right square.
we do this with the chess 5 mins everyday.. he really enjoys it.. exp when he picks up the knight.. (he says Maximus , everytime he picks the knight (maximus is the horse from the movie Tangled...)
so, i guess ther is nothing wrong if he is 2.5 yrs... i dont want to force him to play chess while he grows up... but I want his brain to have some headstart being comfortable with chess... and incase he likes playing chess going ahead i can bet he is going to be one of a young GM from my country.
I guess, there is nothing right or wrong with the age.. kids can start training at a much later a age and do just fine if this is what they really like & want to get into. but as guarians we have to be carefull not to do anything wrong/inappropriate..both->not training kid with when you should & tranining the kid when you should not can be wrong depending on the KID.
I had a few friends who were speed cubers. The trick is a well greased cube (actually, they used some kind of powder), and the ability to turn the back face of the cube without have to reorient it. I think my fastest time was just under 5 minutes, which isn't very fast at all.
I remember when the Rubiks cube first came out (or at least when it was first sold in stores). I spent months trying to solve it, but could only figure out moves to solve 2 layers. Several of my friends solved the cube right away; of course, they had taken group theory in math, and I hadn't. Eventually, i broke down and asked them for their solution. It turns out that most of them solved the corners first and then the sides (versus my layer by layer approach), and they had each come up with slightly different moves. I didn't really like their approach and found that I tended to get confused using their methods. Eventually, I broke down and bought a book on how to solve the Rubiks cube and just copied the moves from the book.
Nowadays, all of my kids are faster than me at solving the cube. Even my youngest, who is now 12, was faster than me when he was 8 or 9. I blame it on my arthritic fingers. :-) I'm still a bit faster than my wife. Of course, she always reminds me that she is better at most other activities than me. :-O
So I say as soon as they are ready to enjoy the game, let them play. Your never too young to have fun.
On the corollary: You're never too old to have fun either.
Does anyone know of a parent who has stopped (or at leat tried) their children from getting too involved with chess? I know for a fact that GM John Fedorowicz was sent to see the school psychologist when he said that he wanted to become a chess grandmaster when he grew up.
I guess that the psychologist failed to talk any sense into him. :-)