Yup, Windows 7. I don’t need to set his hours - he can’t sneak it. I’m concerned he’ll click on junk he shouldn’t. I have it so that he can’t install apps but that can’t be good enough, right? Is it? Can he get icky stuff even if needs a password to install anything? I feel like computer viruses are smarter than that. 
You will face situations where you are stuck with the fallout of other people’s parenting decisions that go against your personal values.
Imagine your fifteen year old comes home upset, because her best friend is getting a boob job for her sixteenth birthday and she doesn’t understand why you won’t let her even save for one.
Or your seventeen year old is sulking because she has to come home after prom night, while his best friend’s parents rented him a room at the Hilton for him and his girlfriend to party in.
And he can’t understand why he has to save money from his part time job to buy a car with, when his friend’s parents just bought their son a brand new ________ (hulking gas guzzling SUV/overpriced Prius/dangerous sportcar/douchey Beemer/whatever-car-you-disapprove-of) for his sixteenth birthday AND are paying his insurance.
Hopefully you are classy enough not to post stuff on Facebook (but hey, what is Facebook for other than posting stuff you regret?) But there will be times when you think your kid’s friends are getting things that are too extravagant/not age appropriate/etc.
Frankly, this sounds like a class issue to me, with judgey-ness on both sides. If I had to guess, you are a pretty practical parent who (going through this thread) thinks Apple products are an overpriced waste for people with too much money on their hands, and that being anti-WalMart is snobbery disguised as yuppie pseudo-concern. I imagine you both think, in your hearts, that your respective parenting philosophy is the better one. Isn’t that how everyone rolls?
Ledzepkid (13 yo) has had hand-me-down laptops since he was around 5. He had access to the family desktop since he was old enough to sit in a chair and bang on they keyboard. When he was 11 he received his first brand new laptop for Christmas.
One of my kids took over one of my Kaypros when he was about 7 and started learning the code (whatever it was). When he was 11 he built himself a computer, and he has been making a fairly good living in the technology industry since he was 17.
Of course this is the same kid who read Elmore Leonard’s Glitz when he was also about 7:eek: and I didn’t stop him because I didn’t want to censor his reading and I figured he’d stop reading it because it would get too hard for him, only it didn’t and he didn’t. He pretty much didn’t think he was a kid.
The other kids have been happy enough to share computer time with each other/parents. My son has a PC in his room and has since he was 12 or so, but it’s not connected to a printer (and the wireless printer thing completely failed) so he bitches that he has to put his homework on a thumb drive and take it to the PC that’s connected to the printer. Poor baby. (At his age I had to type on a TYPEWRITER it wasn’t even ELECTRIC and sometimes I had FOOTNOTES and it was uphill in both directions and snowing all the time.)
The parent of the other kid is an idiot. It’s not your fault that their kid wants things they apparently can’t have.
I wouldn’t give them internet access, but the computer itself is fine as soon as they’re old enough not to break it.
The Kidlet doesn’t have “his own” computer, but he uses:
- his father’s laptop to play online games,
- his father’s tablet to play movies and youtube videos (specifically bought for this),
- his uncle’s iPad to play online games and youtube videos,
- and his grandma’s PC to play locally-installed educational games (his grandma is also having the greatest time with tuxtype; my brother has asked me for links to the games I installed)
Always under adult supervision.
He’s 6yo, in 1st grade, and “in charge of the keys”: if his 3yo sister also wants to watch a movie, they have to agree on what to watch and he is the one who actually uses the controls. Personally I much prefer his computer time to his TV time: the computer time is much more active.
My Dad bought my daughter a notebook for Xmas last year when she was 4. Nearly a year on she can use the thing to play games on the websites I have added to the approved list and can look for stuff on google (safe search most definitely on strictly). It has helped her reading and spelling, and the educational games online are great.
I’ll echo others who say to each their own. We’re more of an analog family for Beta-chan, but she’s still only three.
If their family has to resort to publicly criticizing you because they haven’t learned how to tell their kids to go piss up a rope then it’s their fault and not yours.
My kids got theirs when they were nine. I got tired of sharing mine with them and my husband and although hubby and I still share, they each got their own. Too much too young? Maybe, but in my mind, they’d already spent their whole life so far sharing a room, sharing toys, sharing clothes, sharing friends and having really very little that was their own, so I decided figuring out how to get them to share one computer was one battle I didn’t have the energy to fight.
As for how much money is appropriate to spend on kids that age, we also spend a lot of time explaining to them that just because we can afford to buy something, it doesn’t mean that we should so again, the computer was the exception. I agree absolutely computers and phones and whatnot are a luxury and a privilege to own but more and more, they are simply becoming ordinary tools of modern life and I tend not to attach any more value than that to them.
Just joining the bandwagon: You sound like a cool dad and the other guy can go fuck himself.
<–Girl.
But I really appreciate the responses in this thread. I can be hypersensitive about parenting, I guess. I’d do anything for my son and I am extremely devoted to him. Putting down my parenting or my teaching gets me rather irked.
Yeah well you still sound like a cooler guy than that other douchebag. 
It’s tasteless to post judgmental comments about people who you know will probably read them. He’s entitled to his opinion, but it would have been two-facey for him to talk shit about you on the internet while smiling in your face.
Save your hurt feelings for someone who’s worth it. This guy ain’t worth it.