All 3 of the DCs new Tablet PCs have now been smashed.......

[TeenTwinsToddlerandTiaras]

I mean ffs can't they make them bloody bounce. One bigtiny fall on wooden floor and they are buggered.

DD's lasted about 3 days until the toddler threw it. DS2's lasted about a week longer until it was sat on and DS1 is now in tears as his has just smashed on the floor when I grabbed it out of his hand cos he was'nt listening to me as usual.

I bought them so they would'nt keep arguing over the laptop. SHIT!

Pah! It is real, wish I had time to make it up .

The jury is still out on whether the DS3 broke DD's tablet. She has previous and I did'nt hear anything fall while he was in her room with her (he likes to sit and listen to music with her). I did'nt see what happened to DS2's, he told me it was on the chair in their room and 'someone' must have sat on it.

DD has an iphone (flame away) and she can use that for internet access for now. DS2's tablet still actually works as the smash is along the side of the screen so they can share that for the foreseeable future.

My parenting is fine btw. We are no more chaotic than any home with 4 feisty DC in it. My main point about them being so delicate and easy to break stands, they should'nt be!

Oh and the cinema was £4.50 in total for all 5 of us as it was Movies for Juniors (Madagascar 3) which we all enjoyed and is the only cinema trip we can afford. We stopped for a KFC as that was the much cheaper trade off for me not spending thousands of £s on popcorn and coke at 10.00am in the morning although why that was picked up on I have no idea!

Whether or not they shouldn't be, they are. If they are too delicate for your kids to have without smashing them up in no time, then they can't have them.
It's pretty simple really.

Unless you have more money than sense of course.

They aren't that delicate and easy to break, its just clear that your DC break everything. You think it a coincidence that all 3 tablets, the phone and the laptop all got smashed so fast? I have four kids here too, they haven't broken any of those things.
Your kids didn't use the protective cases and left them lying around and carelessly dropped them. They don't care, and you don't encourage any responsibility in them by calling it bad luck

OP -
at your inability to accept that gadget makers have to make a compromise between price and build. Yes they can build a gadget that can withstand your family but it would be prohibitively expensive.

I don't agree with posters on here saying that all tablets are the work of the devil, and they should be out getting exercise and fresh air and not let modern technology touch their innocent minds. It's the 21st century, kids can do both.

What I don't understand is your blase attitude to the breakages.
After the first incident, you knew the consequences, so then you make sure it never happens again, surely?

My ds has all sorts of stuff, I do too. We've been lucky enough that we've never had any accidents, and if we'd had just one, I'd have been utterly paranoid about making sure that it would never happen again.
You are careless Op.

My toddler plays on my iPhone, but even he has worked out that if he doesn't sit down to use it, and keep the case on, it will be taken away!

He is only 23 months old and can understand that principle - no nursery rhymes or Duplo game if he can't sit down and leave the case on - despite having SN's and a year's speech and understanding delay.

How are your DC's meant to learn how to care for their things if there isn't a consequence to them not caring for them?

My 9yo with SN's can understand that we don't leave books or Nintendo ds's in the front room if we want them to stay in one piece.

Your DC's tablets would have been far less likely to have been broken (the one you grabbed and dropped aside) had you taken them away for a week each time you saw the tablet without its case. Would soon have sharpened their minds and made them understand that no case = no tablet!

And I'm thinking about getting DD and DS1 cheap tablets for their birthdays (they will be 15 and 11), because when it gets to the point where your 10yo and your 15yo are fighting you for the laptop as they both have projects to do, you are trying to Skype talk to relatives in America at the only mutually convenient time, it becomes a bit of a nightmare.

And when your 10yo says "Don't worry about the printer, I put my homework as an email attachment and emailed it to Miss X's VLE email so I don't need to waste paper", you know you have to stop being such a Luddite and drag your family kicking and screaming into the 21st Century...

My DC's have iPods and PS2's and two of them have mobile phones too - flame away!

DD had a brand new iPod nano for her 12th birthday - almost 3 years ago. Her mobile is a Samsung Galaxy and was her main Christmas present in 2011. Her PS2 was a pre owned one bought when she was 7 years old. She has had her ds for seven years.

DS1 has my old iPod nano, a £20 mobile that he got at the start of Y6, he has had just £10 credit since September, and it was mostly to get him used to how to use it before he goes to Secondary, possibly an hour away by bus and with the possibility of missed buses after school or broken down buses etc. His PS2 was also pre owned, and is dying a painful death after 5 years of use. His ds he has had for six years.

DS2 has an iPod shuffle that he has had for 5 years. His PS2 was pre owned and is around two years old, because the laser broke in his first pre owned one after three years. His ds is five years old. He doesn't have a phone, and won't until he starts Y6.

Flame me for the technology, I don't care! They play football most of the time, read voraciously, do Lego, puzzles, are board game obsessed (I have more board games than a flipping toy shop!), they climb trees in the country park, love to mess about in the park - they are by no means all about technology, but they still like their gadgets.

Ipod touches are notoriously fragile, dd has had hers for over a year, it is very cracked in the corners and somewhat cracked in the screen, it still works though so I haven't replaced it. She did actually get a tablet for xmas, but that seems to be ignored in favour of the cracked old ipod I have claimed it for myself .

Tablets are pretty fragile so these things happen, I wouldn't be in any kind of rush to replace.

Ds1 used and then stood on my cheapo tablet, I was very sad. That was quite a while ago though.

My ds1's tablet is pretty robust though, he has dropped it a few times, the only consequence is that you have to wiggle the charger to charge it, not a bother as it charges via usb too.

Wow! And to think I thought I was being overly indulgent and ambitious giving 5year old dd a $50 cd player for Christmas (which is still working)

lol @ janey68 High five girl! You are soooooo right!

My little ones also use DH's tablet and my android phone without smashing them to bits and my eldest is only 7! Your children clearly aren't careful enough / or you haven't taught them to be careful. If they've already gone through a high-spec mobile and a laptop they already know Mummy will replace them, don't they? With a flash tablet.

Broken three... I still can't quite believe it. You really should have bought a better cover. They are expensive pieces of technology, NOT BOUNCY BALLS.

You just have to get them to use the cases and maybe check out the reviews for the ones you're buying.

I wouldn't buy an iPad for a kid - too expensive - but my 2.5 DS uses mine all the time without incident, albeit always with a case on and usually supervised unless I'm dashing out the room for something. He sits down with it, but I don't let him run around holding it.

Similarly he has used my iPhone from a very young age (yes, I know, I know) and I have bought a massive case for that (expensive but worth it) and it's been dropped several times without problem, although I know they can shatter quite easily.

I come from a tech heavy household.

The only gadget I can ever think of that got broken was my last laptop which I inadvertently tipped a bottle of wine onto. It recovered partially but the track pad never worked again so I had to use a portable one....

My iphone has been dropped several times but has always survive because it is in a protective case.

i look after my stuff because as a child it wan't replaced. I have a good friend who had a very different childhood where broken things were automatically replaced and she is much more careless with her posessions. It used to drive me potty when we were flatmates but bothers me less now it isn't my things she is banging around!

I do think there's something to be said about knowing the value of things.
My parents weren't well off and we learned quickly that if we were lucky enough to get something, it had to be treasured because there wouldn't be another.

It's the same for us now. My ds1 who is 11 has a laptop, which he saved up his monthly pocket money for over a year to pay for half of, while we paid for the other half. He's had it for two years...no breakages.
We bought him a touchscreen smart phone for his birthday in October there, along with a case and a padded pouch to keep it in. He looks after it. He knows if he breaks it he has no phone for two years as it's on a contract.

If he had broken those things within three weeks we would assume he was too immature to have them and they would not be replaced. The privilege of having them has to be earned and respected. Part of that is keeping them out of the way of our 3 and 5 yr old.

OP - sorry to say it, but that's too many breakages in such a short time. The gadgets aren't at fault - the kids are.

They could make the glass thicker so it would be less fragile. Might even be a bit cheaper as very thin glass is expensive to manufacture.

The downside is that the touchscreen would lose a lot of accuracy and sensitivity.

The more expensive tablets and phones have Gorilla glass screens. It's a special toughened glass made by an American company. So it doesn't have to be thick in order to be less fragile.

Gorilla glass is made by Corning. It's slightly stronger but still very brittle. In fact not all the most expensive devices use it. Both Apple and Samsung make some devices with and without it and you will never notice which is which.
It's entirely possible to use very much stronger glass, but manufacturers won't because lightness and thinness are major selling points.