Priscilla Chan reveals Mark Zuckerberg began teaching their kids to code from age three

The wife of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has revealed the unusual bedtime routine he does with his two young daughters.

Priscilla Chan has revealed Facebook chief executive officer Mark Zuckerberg is teaching their three-year-old to code and has shared the obscure coding joke that drew the couple together.

In a rare interview with The Sunday Times Magazine, the mother-of-two and co-chief executive officer of the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI) said she shared a similar sense of humour when she met the Facebook founder and he was impressed by the fact she got his coding jokes.

“I remember he had these beer glasses that said ‘pound include beer dot H’. It’s a tag for C++. It’s like college humour but with a nerdy, computer-science appeal,” Ms Chan said.

C++ is a coding language and the couple also seem to be sharing their nerdy interests with the daughters Maxima, 5, and August, 4.

The 36-year-old said Mr Zuckerberg often codes with their daughters while doing their bedtime routine.

“Sometimes they will read books together. Sometimes they’ll code together,” Ms Chan said, explaining there were great, visual ways to teach kids how to code.

“Mark has been doing that with August since she turned three.”

Ms Chan also reveals they have a weekly scheduled one-on-one meeting every Thursday afternoon for “technical work decisions that need to happen” and a weekly date night.

“We are very organised,” she said.

Priscilla Chan with her husband Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Picture: John Macdougall/AFP

A 2017 photo of the couple with their daughter August, left, and Maxima, right. Picture: Charles Ommanney/Facebook via AP

As a “straitlaced” student, Ms Chan says she thought of Mr Zuckerberg, who also went on a second date with her instead of studying for a test, as a bit of a rebel.

“I’m not a rule breaker … I had literally clawed my way to Harvard and there was this kid getting thrown out,” she said.

At the time the couple met, Mr Zuckerberg, who was a year above Ms Chan at Harvard, was facing disciplinary action for creating Facemash – a site that rated female undergraduates as ‘hot or not’ – for breaking the university’s privacy rules.

Mr Zuckerberg later dropped out of Harvard to set up the social networking site Facebook but the two maintained their relationship and were married in 2012.

Ms Chan worked as a teacher before completing her medical studies and becoming a paediatrician. She quit to become the full-time CEO of CZI, with the couple saying they plan to give away 99 per cent of their wealth.

Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg on their wedding day. Picture: Allyson Magda Photography/AP/Facebook

The interview comes as Facebook announced it is changing its name to Meta, to better reflect the company’s focus on developing the metaverse.

It has been a difficult few months for the social media giant, with ex-Facebook employee Frances Haugen accusing the company of putting “profits before people” and knowingly harming users in testimony to the US Congress, which has prompted a push to regulate the tech giants.

Ms Haugen told politicians last week that Facebook fuels division, harms children and urgently needs to be regulated.

Mr Zuckerberg denied all the claims in a note to Facebook employees that he posted on his account, saying her claim the company prioritises profit over safety was “just not true”.

Australia is also considering reforms that could make social media platforms responsible for comments posted on their sites.

Mark Zuckerberg adjusts an avatar of himself during a virtual Facebook Connect event on October 28. Picture: Michael Nagle/Bloomberg via Getty Images

In the interview, Ms Chan steers away from being drawn into Facebook’s issues but as a woman of Chinese heritage whose parents were refugees from Vietnam, the allegations that Facebook amplifies ethnic hatred appear to be deeply upsetting.

“We’ve grown up talking about these issues for a long time,” she told The Times.

“There’s no simple cure for racism. This is something complex and we have to grapple with it collectively. I know on the Facebook side, for Mark, they’re working on that. And I trust that every day they’re grappling with hard and meaty questions.”