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Advice needed re: 3 year old & trash obsession

C

cdinca

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jun 13, 2007
365
0
my daughter has had a g4 since she was 1.5 years old. She's always just played on the pbs kids website or played in photoshop or did slideshows in iphoto...all the safe and easy stuff.

Suddenly, at almost 3 years old, she discovered that if you drag things into the trash...click and hold the trash, that an "empty trash" prompt comes up (I did not know about this). Then, of course, she gets the rewarding swish sound.

I am looking for a simple way to keep her from being able to throw everything away...like a require password for trash setting.

she needs to have write access to the drive because she loads her digital photos from her camera into iphoto.

anyone have any thoughts...she's addicted to throwing stuff away.
 
cdinca said:
my daughter has had a g4 since she was 1.5 years old. She's always just played on the pbs kids website or played in photoshop or did slideshows in iphoto...all the safe and easy stuff.

Suddenly, at almost 3 years old, she discovered that if you drag things into the trash...click and hold the trash, that an "empty trash" prompt comes up (I did not know about this). Then, of course, she gets the rewarding swish sound.

I am looking for a simple way to keep her from being able to throw everything away...like a require password for trash setting.

she needs to have write access to the drive because she loads her digital photos from her camera into iphoto.

anyone have any thoughts...she's addicted to throwing stuff away.
Click to expand...

i believe is a setting about this in the system preferences@ lol under parental controls

correct me if im wrong

edit: you need 2 accounts then!
 
Eric Lewis said:
i believe is a setting about this in the system preferences@ lol under parental controls

correct me if im wrong

edit: you need 2 accounts then!
Click to expand...

I guess I should have mentioned that her machine is running 10.3

I don't have parental control tab in "users" prefs

if the solution was to ceate a new, more restrictive account for her, I assume I would have to reimport her iphoto and itunes libraries?

I have no experience with multiple accounts.
 
cdinca said:
Suddenly, at almost 3 years old, she discovered that if you drag things into the trash...click and hold the trash, that an "empty trash" prompt comes up (I did not know about this). Then, of course, she gets the rewarding swish sound.
Click to expand...

Turn the sound down and threaten her favorite toy???
Seriously, your 2-and-a-bit year old can work your Mac? Clever stuff.

In Finder, got to Finder Menu/Preferences/Advanced and at least you can get a dialog box 'are you sure'?

Failing that, Time Machine.
 
Fuzzy14 said:
Turn the sound down and threaten her favorite toy???
Seriously, your 2-and-a-bit year old can work your Mac? Clever stuff.

In Finder, got to Finder Menu/Preferences/Advanced and at least you can get a dialog box 'are you sure'?

Failing that, Time Machine.
Click to expand...

as soon as she could stand, she stole my clamshell. I thought nothing of it.

once she could climb on a chair, she tried to steal my office system...I wasn't havin' that! so I got one of my old g4s and gave her her own desk in our home office. I would say, more than anything, pbskids.com taught her how to use a computer.

but to your suggestion...while that works if I go to the menu and empty trash, it does not give the warning if I click and hold on the trash and select empty trash (which is her method).
 
picture1av6.jpg



Not that it will stop her.. but it DOES come up if you Hold-click > Empty Trash
 
Get her a separate user name and password. I believe you can import into it; I recall being on Panther and there was some way this was done through cross accounts.
 
You could let her play the file to her heart's content.

Right click (or control click) /System/Library/Components/CoreAudio.component and open the package's contents. Inside, go to Contents/Resources/SystemSounds/finder/ and inside you'll find the empty trash audio file. This is all on Leopard, but hopefully you'll be able to find it on Panther the same way.

Copy the file to the desktop and she can play it to her little heart's content!
-Chasen
 
sinistersai4d said:
picture1av6.jpg



Not that it will stop her.. but it DOES come up if you Hold-click > Empty Trash
Click to expand...

I agree that it probably would not stop her, but on her 10.3 Hold-click > Empty Trash does not give this prompt. It just swishes and empties. only the menu gives this warning.
 
What is she deleting?
Create her a new account, make it a "Simple Finder" and hide the macintosh HD from the desktop and put everything she needs in the 3 folders int eh bottom.
 
lilstewart said:
What is she deleting?
Create her a new account, make it a "Simple Finder" and hide the macintosh HD from the desktop and put everything she needs in the 3 folders int eh bottom.
Click to expand...

OK...hiding the HD sounds like a good solution.

I'll play with some new account settings after we eat the bird.

if I can find a way that she can still add photos to iphoto, but not see a hard drive on the desktop, that would work.

Thank You.
 
Fuzzy14 said:
I don't trust Big Bird from Sesame Street, I've been scared of him since I was a kid.

My wee boy is 2 1/2 and is just starting to use the touchpad on my MacBook, he likes In The Night Garden on bbc.co.uk/cbeebies
Click to expand...

yeah...the cbeebies pages are my daughter's other favorite.

I think anyone who has given a kid a laptop notices that they pick up on the touchpad alot easier than adults. But a 2 button mouse still pisses my girl off.
 
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