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?

Fennel, we had the coldest and wettest winter in yrs too! I know how hard those gloomy winter afternoons spent indoors with a very active 7.5 yr old boy are!

In fact I think I'll send ds to the Duchesse family to learn some inner calm (and brush up his english!)

Very welcome to Franca- we have had positively years of experience welcoming children from France and Spain. A little Italianglish boy would be lovely! Never had one that young before though... Mostly 10+

Yes, I too think he is too young to be parted from his mamma . I'll let you know in a few yrs... I can see from your profile that we used to be "neighbours"

I think you used to live over near Oakhampton though didn't you? I seem to remember from the mists of time...

"And to all those who think that their children will use the internet responsibly when they are 12/13 and will no longer need monitoring- well, maybe they will, but you cannot guarantee that everyone in their network will as well."

Duchesse I don't think anyone is saying that we do beleive our children will no longer need supervising,just that as parents we will have much less control at that age as they will have much freer access to the internet at school and in libraries or internet cafes. Hence it is importnat to try and build the foundations now.

Our situation is very much the same as Ellokitty describes, one work computer located in a tucked away office. Laptops with very high parental settings (the new ones on Vista are really really good) used in a main part of the house are much the safest option.

We were in the "big" city... with the cathedral

We are a little outside that same big city, but in the countryside. My children all go to school in big cathedral city.

We used to live a stone thrown away from said cathedral

DD2 got a netbook for her 7th birthday. She is very advanced literacy wise, writes songs Nd poems and was always wanting to go on word on my PC Important to me that she didn't mess it up - I work in IT.
She was also using DHs. MacBook quite a lot, and we thought it better fir her to learn windows, as that is what will be covered more at school.
Not used as much as we thought once the no elty had worn off, it has had positive effect on he maths, and she is always asking for help to find on- liner maths games
in contrast. DD1(12) keeps nagging for one but we have resisted so far. It would just encourage her to spend too much time on-ine chatting. She does have her own PC, mainly used for homework. Conveniently the WI-FI connection on it is very slow, so that discourages too much social Internet use.