Ipod touch for 9 year old birthday

[moid]

DS1 wants a Nintendo DS for his birthday but we don't want to get him one because of the cost of the games on top.

We are thinking of an IPOD touch instead as all the games are just a couple of pounds. He loves DH's Iphone.

It is expensive but his uncle is going to contribute.

Any thoughts?

What about unlimited access to the internet - are none of you worried about the lack of safety features there?

Aww, shame... it turned out the wifi doesn't quite reach into my son's room, and hubby 'hasn't gotten around' to finding a solution to boost it yet.

And my DD can't read yet, so I'd be astonished if she could find anything dubious.

Although there is a large part of me that says wouldn't it be better if they came across some internet porn now, when they would just find it ridiculously funny and sniggerworthy and we could all have a good chat about it to put it in perspective? (DS at 10 and still finds it perfectly natural to ask me the strangest questions about part of his body that I don't personally possess.) Why wait until one of their teenage classmates gives them a URL and it all becomes grubby and furtive?

After all, the porn itself won't harm them - only the response of those around them/ the effect it has on their future view of relationships is the issue.

Unless you're talking about chatrooms and the risks there, perhaps? Not really an issue for me - one of the benefits of schooling overseas is that my son has no idea things like Facebook and MSN even exist. Kids here still meet in real life.

There are parental controls on the touch. I have them set on ds1's

I don't like too much screen time on the Touch because it's a tiny device that forces you to sit crouched over it - I know it makes my eyes go funny after a while, particularly when reading a book on it. And it is just such a passive activity plus I think it shortens children's attention span etc (it definitely shortens mine!). I don't have a problem with listening to audiobooks and/or music and my kids have a dock in their bedroom on which they use my iTouch. I save playing games on it for long car journeys etc. But then, I do think that computer games are in general a waste of time.

However, I do see your point of view Kokosan and I think it's a bit of a grey area ie, many people of our generation havea gut instinct that it can't be right for kids to spend so much time looking at a screen, because we didn't as children. But times have changed and perhaps our instincts are wrong on this. My 20 month old can operate my iTouch to a certain extent FFS, I think this generation are jsut influenced by computers etc in a way that's not possible for us to imagine.

I still wouldn't let my DD have one, they're too expensive and too fragile, she has no idea what £100 is worth really, never mind £300.