Have any of your 6 yr olds got their own laptop?

[LucyJones]

Or is it me who thinks it's completely unnecessary

and where do we stand on 6 yr olds and ds lites?

Clary - The outlay was worth it to keep her entertained on a long international flight.

And for such journeys it is used. But at home she is more interested in running around outside, going to dance class, doing crafts etc. Which is how it should be, so I don't have an issue with it. I am sure she will use it more frequently at home in years to come.

Thanks for that link fabhead, it looks like fun, I'm sure DS will love it

I use a computer every day of my life for work. So does my husband. Neither of us touched a computer until we were in our late teens/early 20s. I don't buy the contention that you need to learn IT skills early, and I laugh in the face of the early years IT programme. In fact we chose our children's place of education because it had NO IT (in order to avoid the flagship primary in our village due to what we view as its unhealthy focus on IT and ending up paying fees to avoid it (Microsoft gateway school, school of the future etc etc) only a healthy sense of adventure, encouraging them to climb trees and be physical.

Like someone else further downthread, we don't own any games consoles either. We do however have two powerful family computers in public areas of the house. Our 16 yr old has had his own laptop since last summer (just before he started his A levels). I say "has had" in the loosest sense of the word since he has had it confiscated since January due to spending more time and attention on an online game he has a thing about than on his A level work and his grades were suffering accordingly. This addictive trait is part of his personality, I knew this by the time he was 7, which is why we've never had any games consoles. He would never just play for half an hour or an hour, he'd be on it 18 hours out of 24.

A very long-winded reply to your question, but in short, I agree that most 6 yr olds absolutely do not need their own laptop and imo should not ever be unsupervised on the internet. They may be a likely recipient for a parent's old laptop, but only in very carefully controlled circumstances. That's what I think anyway.

"I think it needs to be a shared one in a public room."

But we don't have a shared computer, so that is not an option.

I agree totally with Hula.

Allowing the children to use our office computer is NOT an option, even if it was passworded it in in the office where they are not allowed as a general rule.

Having their own laptops does not mean unrestricted access. Most of the time when not charging they live on top of the display unit out of reach.

The netbooks my Dad bought them have really good parental controls. Before our spare desktop ds used to love watching home made Thomas the Tank videos on Youtube and I was always scared that he cwould come across inappropriate content. I have set the filters up on his netbook and tested them out and it is great.

He uses it to play Club Penguin and watch Thomas stuff and play onthe Thomas website.

Dd uses hers for Club Penguin to mess around on paint and pretending to make her own website and various Disney Tv show related websites.

Neither of them will be allowed on facebook for many years yet. As I said before I could not have afforded them myself but see no harm in them having them seeing as my Dad was so generous.

sodor, your children sound as though they are still quite young. I do wonder how you will feel about them having access to the internet on their own machines when they are 12/13.

i havent needed it yet and wont for some time I dont think but what are the best parental controls to set up - do you use third party software?

I might as well do it when we get our new computer shortly.

DD got a laptop last Xmas (she was 6).

It was free (from DH's work) so we didn't have to shell out £££ for it.

She uses it most days, for playing "teachers", creating slideshows, posters, thank you cards and loads of other stuff.

To be fair, DH works in IT so knows all about the relevant parental controls, etc. but I think it is a great resource for her.

My 5 year old uses my laptop to play a dora game and a lego game we have. She also has my old DS (its one of the bigger old ones) she has a few games on there. To be honest I just let her play whenever she wants, sometimes she plays on it for a long time but most of the time she is bored after 15 mins anyway so I just treat it like any other toy. We have a wii but the children dont play it, we wouldnt stop them but they just dont enjoy it yet.
When she is older and able to use a computer for more than just 2 games I will get her a computer of her own although probably a desktop one because its less likely to get broken (we are a very computery household my husband and I have our own there would be murder if we had to share). No idea what age this will be yet - when ever she seems old enough to look after it and use it properly.

By the age of 12/13 they will have internet access anyway at school or at the library, at least at home I will be able to check on or control what they have access to.

duchesse you sound uncannily similar to our family AND values

our sons addictive nature led to our desire for a more screen free family - are you on fb?

would love to 'talk' do you have CAT?

laptop for a 6 year old is going too far IMO, however my DS1 is 6 and got a DS lite from Santa. He is restricted though to playing it for one hour after he has done his homework monday to friday and at the weekend he can have it for one hour but needs to take at least a two break and do something else.

DD 7 has one . Uses it for homework and reaserching projects.
Has some drawing programmes that she enjoys.
School has given all the children email accts so they email each other.
Computer time is monitored.
DS lite - yes since xmas but seems a peer pressure toy & hardly ever uses it.
was allowed for weekends but hasnt been out of the box this month.

Just out of curiosity, those with children under 8 who say their children need their own computers to do research for homework projects, how often are these homework projects being given, and how do you teach you kids about reliability of information available on the web? This is a genuine question because DS1 is quite bright and his school is quite academic, but he isn't given many projects to do as homework which require intensive external research and I was just surprised to read that children under 8 were given so many to require their own computers.

Just a comment also about the post way upthread about someone's husband who spend loads of time on computers and went on to go into IT, I remember in my youth (oh sooo long ago) during the era of the Apple 2E (pre mac), when being on the computer mean that one could program the computer. I remember having to take computer at my school and learning how to code a ping-pong game. Playing on computers extensively back then meant learning how to code, today it means playing games. I agree that computer literacy is essential, but I don't think many 6-9 year olds are learning how to build websites and learning general programming. THose that are have my utmost awe and respect.

My dd was about 9 when she first got a laptop. True, she doesn't use it for computer programming; she wanted it to write stories (mildly disabled, so finds it difficult to write much). She has never played games on it.

You can have a laptop without games and indeed without internet connection. People do different things with their computers even in these days.

My children know perfectly well that they have to ask me before they go on the internet, just as they have to ask permission to turn on the television . It is possible to have a laptop and still enforce rules.

I'm surprised, reading a MN thread has actually made me change my views somewhat!

From reading about what your DCs are doing, I've realised how much learning can come from computers in addition to more traditional methods, and not instead of them. I'll encourage this more as DCs get older rather than automatically being against it.

My problem is DSDs' school; they have to use ICT for everything and barely need to open a book anymore. You have to get a balance and that's dependent on the home environment. I don't think we'll have a problem there!

I'm not changing my mind on a 6yo having their own though. My DSDs share the family computer with their mum and big bro (who only just got a netbook aged 18) and they manage, so our 2 can share with us. Negotiating for turns on it is important IMHO - I suppose I don't like the image of us all sitting in silence on our individual laptops!

Sofa, I think it's a shame kids aren't learning how computers really work or how to program or design websites. For programming, I recommend Microsoft SmallBasic. You can download it free, along with a child-friendly manual and it leads into Microsoft Visual Basic so is a great step to 'proper' programming - and it even does all the LOGO/turtle stuff from the old days!

There's loads of web design apps available. Some free.

Computers do so much more than games, although I'm of the opinion that even games can teach some incredible skills including problem solving, teamwork and strategy. Even military recruitment targets gamers now. Many of their robots, weapons etc are controlled with modified XBox controllers.

SofaQueen my dd is in Year 3 and although they do get projects to research it's not on such a regular basis that they need a computer of their own. For example when they were learning about nocturnal animals (can't remember if that was in Year 2 though) they were asked to go on the Net and find out some interesting/unusual facts about any nocturnal animal of their choice and make a report out of it. I have told her that any searches on Google have to be under my supervision (as even the most innocent sounding searches produce some shocking results) but once she's on a particular site I do let her look around without me looking over her shoulder.

Also, I agree re your point about computers nowadays and progamming. I think that very, very few young children, if any, are even aware of programming. The computers of old just took you to the command prompt and you worked from there. I remember writing simple programs in BASIC at a young age, because that's the sort of thing you did on a computer, if the computers then were like the ones now who'd want to do that?

Mcbitchy, yes am on fb.

No and no!

At that age they can share a family computer where you can set parental controls and monitor their activities. Six year olds may be getting smarter but, sadly, so are internet pervs, spammers and all the other nasties out there. And how young do we want them to start shutting themselves away in their rooms and not interacting with the family...enough of that in the tweenage year!

And ditto for DS lites...they severely limit interaction. I saw a kid of about 6 with one on the bus the other day and all he could do was grunt in response to his Mum talking to him!

Duchesse said what I'd have wanted to say earlier in the thread, shame I'm not as eloquent!

My dds have had their own shared pc for years. not because they need it but because we need them not to have access to our home PCs, which we use for work. We really can't have them fiddling with our work settings on our computers, it would be too problematic.

They don't use it that much, and never need it for homework. but we are techno house and dp always has spare bits of computers hanging around, which he builds and networks in endless combinations, so it was hardly an expensive choice.

my ds(8) and dd(5) have both got a DS each and very rarely use it.

Long journeys and very rainy days are generally when they come out - unless they have a new game.

The children also have a laptop each which has full parental restrictions on. The eldest one uses it for school homework - he has a research project once a month to find out about different topics (this month he has to find out about medusa. They also are writing a class myth where he goes online to the school website where each of the class writes a couple of sentences each and every week. He can also log on to the schools website, access his school email. Email his friends and teachers if he has something to talk about or has a problem. He is 8 years old and the use of the internet is very important within the school. Outside of school work he uses a variety of educational and "fun" online websites particularly Wizard101, Nasa kids, NationalGeographic for kids, mathletics and Club Penguin. He is restricted to 5 hours a week spread over 5 days and he is not able to access facebook or youtube or anything that I deem unsuitable. We have very strong parental restrictions put on both of their laptops and they are not allowed to use them upstairs. They are also only allowed to email people on a restricted list and we have a copy of all emails sent and received.

The younger one mainly uses club penguin, wizard 101, cbeebies and switchzoo.

I dont see anything wrong with it. My dh is also in IT so the laptops are not new but they do everything mine does.

Thank you CarmenSanDiego for the programming resources! I'm going to download it and see how DS1 gets along with it (and see if I remember anything!).

Incidently, everytime I read your name, the themesong for "Where in the world is Carmen SanDiego" plays in my head!

Can I just add that my sister recently found that her 8 yo was alternating playing club penguin and googling for porn on her laptop. Just sayin'. Not a typical experience by any means but sobering nonetheless.