was i foolish letting my 9 year old use the cash machine?

[vicki2010]

we went to tesco yesterday and there is a coffee shop upstairs,whilst enjoying a coffee my 9yr ds asked if he could get some football cards and not wanting to use my debit card for 50p transaction i thought i would let him go to the cash machine,just outside the store....he is very responsible for his age and his face lit up at the thought of such responsibility etc so off he went,waved at me from the door and re appeared within 3 minutes. Anyway,dh thinks i was very irresponsable to let him do this as anyone could have got hold of him and demanded pin number etc...what do you think aibu??

Bloody hell, times have changed. I was withdrawing money for my mum and paying her bills at that age !

:) I know my mum gave me my child benefit book at 13. was only about a fiver a week though.

I can remember being sent to the Post Office (20 minute walk each way) with the Family Allowance book at that age. I think that is far more risky than a 3 minute trip to the cash machine during the day.

LisasCat- your right i trusted the area and ds..i also didnt worry about security too much as its directly cctv monitered so thanks for the kind post.

Apocalypse-i agree and think that the world has gone slightly mad and that if we spent our time worrying about the 'what if's' in 30yrs time our kids will be walking around like zombies with no common sense at all!!

Can you imagine aibu in the 80's :)

aibu to let my kids age 9 and 11 go off all day with my family allowence book, to buy chip butties and spend all day in the park and not see them until 5pm.

I wouldn't let my 9 yo do this.
Too vulnerable to a mugger, seeing a child with cash / card
Not a good example for the future: keep your PIN secret
Too much responsibility - suppose they had made a mistake, taken out way too much money, didn't know how to stop the transaction etc.
Not necessary.

I did the weekly shop too quite often because mum was a single parent who worked long hours, the responsiblity was good for me, we're going to be raising a generation of kids who won't have a clue about managing money and paying bills the rate we're going !

I to remember going for the family allowance also getting my dads cigarettes with a note.We also disappeared at breakfast and came back at dinnertime.As long as we where home by lights coming on it was ok.
I got slated by my sister for letting DD1 [19] get the bus to school at 5 despite me putting her on one end and janitor meeting it.

When I had flu before Xmas dd went shopping, paid on her card obv I paid her back and more. She cooked her own dinner for 4 days, did her own lunches and bless her popped in the doctors to see if I should go in. That last bit brought tears to my eyes as I didn't even ask her to do that.

After braving a supermarket one week before Xmas I truely believe she is capable of handling most situations. We don't give our children enough creit sometimes.

Yep, made my own way to school 2 miles away aged 7, used to go to Butlins every year and we'd bugger off in the morning and with a couple of pound and be back for tea, was about 6 or 7 then. Had a great time, there was a big crowd of us, got locked out when we came back from swimming once tho and resorted to wrapping ourselves in towels off the washing line

If that happened these days all the poor kids would be rounded up and dumped in the nursery !

But there is absolutely no need to raise a generation who can't manage money! Give your children a sensible amount of pocket money from an early age. Open a savings account with them. Get them a debit card at age 12, and teach them the responsibility of their pin number, budgeting etc

Or, if you choose, let them have your pin number, and you have theirs! But don't pretend that unless you all share numbers, your children will grow up innumerate and clueless about money- it just isn't true

surely the issue here is that you put him at risk of being mugged, nver mind what it did to your insurance?

Think you might have put him at risk because he is vulnerable. Would have been better had you snook behind him and watched from a distance so that you could have protected him from muggers. He would still have had the experience but would have been safe. Think it was a good idea letting him have a go, it's a life skill. Good on ya.

..and what onedge said!

I feel really sorry for those who think OP is being unreasonable.

It must be hard living in a world where you fear danger lurks at every corner.

Get a grip. Child went to cash till and got some money. Full stop.

My dd has had her own bank card from the age of 11. My GF knows my pin and uses it when she needs to.

I always trust until given a reason not to.

I suppose.....until she's mugged by a passing drug user [hmmm]

So we keep our children with us every second of everyday just in case do we? Just in case.

No, we just avoid allowing them to use cashpoints alone where possible...

My mum gave my brother her PIN number when he was 13. For two years it worked fine, he would pay bills for her when in town.

Then at 15 he became very quickly addicted to fruit machines and she discovered a very large red hole in her account where money used to be.

Her financial situation was not the best as it was and the unexpected debt created a spiral effect with overdrawn letters that carried a cost each adding to the downward swirl.

It created a very negative dynamic in my family, because trust once broken, (even if perhaps proffered too soon and to an extent where the fall out of breakage was too serious to warrant proffering it in the first place) can be almost impossible to repair.

In some way I think it contributed to what became a longer standing gambling addiction, by providing temptation an opportunity at an age where impulse control is not necessarily the best.

So no, I wouldn't give my son access to my bank account, because I don't want to risk him having to pay the price in terms of loss of trust and resultant damage to his self image if he should screw up. As we are all wont to do, particularly when we are not all that grown up yet.

My god, heaven forbid they use a cash machine outside a busy supermarket.....

Maybe the op lives in a relatively safe area where there isn't a druggy on every corner, I know I do !

But if dd wants to go and by a crappy magazine or something I don't want to have to accompany her everytime, she walks to the shop and either gets some money out or pays on chip and pin (she prefers the last option I think).

It's broad daylight in a reasonably busy street, it's about weighing up risk, she is more likely not to get mugged than to be, she also knows if she is mugged to hand everything over no questions asked.

lol

The issue of trust works both ways. If you can trust a 9 yr old to have your pin number, surely you can also trust them to understand that there are very good reasons why banks instruct customers to keep their personal number, well.. personal?

There was a bit of a risk I suppose because your 9 year old might not have hidden the pin no he/she keyed in, but if you told them to be careful I think it was OK as a one-off.

" i just feel that society has gone bonkers and kids cant breath these days,i remember being far more street wise at his age and did far worse"

Were you able to access your parents bank account and withdraw funds ?

Or were they capable of allowing you the kind of freedom you crave for you son without bringing PIN numbers in the equation.

I'm leery of teaching a child that the concept that sharing a PIN number is a mechanism to make a declaration trust. I would hate for my son to get the message that if he trusts somebody the proof of the pudding is in letting them access his bank account.

For a young person moving towards their first experiences of highly charged romantic attractions, that is potentially a less than fantastic idea to have planted in their not yet fully mature head and one that could easily land him in hot water.

"I love her, I trust her, with my LIFE !! I will be with her forever (even though I barely know her) I'm swelling with strong feelings, how can I make a grand gesture to adequately express these feelings ? Oh I know, I'll give her my PIN number."

It would be bad enough if Son of Thor did that with his own bank account, if he had access to mine and that felt like the bigger gesture was "I even trust you my parent's money !!!".....can't see that ending well.