The secret life of a Nine-year-old girl
Is pretty boring.
I am writing this from Big A’s computer because I have complete parental control. Do not arouse the wrath of the great and powerful Oz…er, dad.
No, nothing that dramatic at all. I just needed to do some simple maintenance and load a program on her computer. But I did do some digging around and some learning.
I feel like the mom putting clothes away in her kid’s dresser drawers…I mean, they made the mess, I am doing all the work, I own the stuff technically, so why not have an extra peek in the sock drawer of the computer.
What I have found is that she has no clue how programs work on a computer or how much she accidently downloads (all relatively harmless) and doesn’t block. She had 17 seperate copies of Explorer open and five RealTime movies, and she was wondering why her computer was slow and the battery runs out so fast. I think it’s time for THE talk. Yes, the dreaded, “How we safely deal with cache memory, pleasure and the internet.”
My little girl is getting so big.
I was seriously pleasantly surprised how well all the parental blocks and other gizmos held up, but also that she didn’t seem to trip any of them on purpose. And the ones she did trip over were all for less than five seconds advertising kid’s stuff at kids’ sites. Yawn. But in a very good way.
However, there was a part of me that realized she really does have to get computer lessons from me to realize how awesome this five-pound portible DVD player can be if she uses it correctly. Honestly, I think she just doesn’t understand it yet and she’s playing…which was the point of the starter laptop. No expectations.
But everytime I look at what she’s doing on it…I think there is a point that she has the VERY BASICS down to where we need to start taking it a little more seriously. It really isn’t a toy.
Best part…I am impressed with the computer. It should have everything ok to get her into high school for less than $700. It has no bells and whistles on the edge, but it has a bunch of bells and whistles that I don’t see changing anytime soon. The software is pretty basic Vista with all the upgrades that we can make Windows 7 if we ever need to do that. It’s thin on RAM, but it was never meant to be a gaming sysatem. Good battery life. Light and compacy. Definite A-.
P has the suped up version, so what will happen, if my plan works, Big A will get P’s for high school, and then we buy P a new one, and this one replaces the oldest bull in the coral. This will become my new junker laptop.
Overall, very thumbs up on my monthly snooping in the sock drawer. I even left cookies…just so she knows I was there.
Do not arouse the wrath of the great and powerful Oz.