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RESOLVED: Geez...my spoiled daughter was disappointed when I gave her a new 11" MBA!

I don't care how smart or mature kid is for their age. 7 year old should not be allowed to be access whatever they want on internet at their age unsupervised at all hours.

I don't care this is the age of the internet. Majority of the kids(majority of the people for that matter) use internet to access useless stuff majority of the time anyway. They are not running the country or company. They don't have to be on internet 24/7.

This is the time parents should be influencing the kid and be the lead figure. Not internet and not someone from facebook or stranger be the lead figure in their life. There's plenty of time after they grow up for that. This is your time.
 
My son was disappointed when starting college and "all the other freshmen" had brand new shiny computers but his was old and had lots of scrap parts. (This was 1995). But he perked up when I pointed out that these other students were getting computers for the first time and he had the advantage of having a computer in the house since he was 2.

He quickly got the job doing computer support in the dorm (which got him a free private dorm room) and went on to an IT career. Nothing wrong with being exposed to computers early, but I'd say a new computer every year is a bit much!
 
It's great that she regularly visits the library, since they're a vastly under-appreciated resource within many communities. It doesn't hurt that she's saving you money by getting her movies and stuff for free.

Obviously you can't rip the library's films and music (apart from piracy being illegal, you don't want to teach your kid that a burner or internet connection means she's entitled to copies of any media she can find), though, which means a disc drive really is necessary for her computer.
 
OP, catch a grip. Kids need a computer when they get to high school, to do their homework. Not before. Even then it should be a £300 wonder from the local supermarket, not a £1000 Mac.

She should be outside playing with mud, the way I did when I was 7. Then again when I was 7 the Commodore 64 just came out...
 
Darth.Titan said:
A seven year old has no business with a $1000 laptop, or any other laptop for that matter.
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Disagree with the ANY laptop part. My 5 and 7 year old have effectively been given my old clunker Toshiba laptop. They've PROVEN with actions that they can be trusted to respect that it is not to be abused however and they do not use it unsupervised. I haven't had to actually lock it down yet from an internet perspective because my oldest is only interested in going to her school's website and playing educational games and the younger one only wants to play Big Fish games like Dora's Carnival.

My kids use MacBooks in school starting in Kindergarten so I don't really see the point in denying supplementing that at home.
 
Self-Absorbed Little Brat!!

I can't believe, as her Dad, that you actually praise her for this behaviour!
I'm 62 and you typify everything that went wrong with our generation and the subsequent generation in terms of parenting...producing narcissistic, self-centred, spoiled, unfocussed (i.e., for any length of time), unempathic jerks. The pattern seems to already be set in your whining daughter at 7!

Even at my age, I would leap for joy and be VERY APPRECIATIVE if any member of my family gave me a MBA! You may want to re-think your parenting?
 
Innes said:
I can't believe, as her Dad, that you actually praise her for this behaviour!
I'm 62 and you typify everything that went wrong with our generation and the subsequent generation in terms of parenting...producing narcissistic, self-centred, spoiled, unfocussed (i.e., for any length of time), unempathic jerks. The pattern seems to already be set in your whining daughter at 7!

Even at my age, I would leap for joy and be VERY APPRECIATIVE if any member of my family gave me a MBA! You may want to re-think your parenting?
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Oh please, spare us the Alzheimer's rant old fellow. LOL
 
I'm honestly curious if anyone in the history of the earth has EVER let lose on someone about their parenting and had the person say "you know what, you're right, I'm totally a bad parent."

Honestly there isn't one one billionth of the amount of information in this thread that you would need to assess the OPs parenting skills. Every single person with kids has made a bad parenting move (most parents make at least one, every single day). Sharing the story and recognizing that their kid has a flaw that maybe they need to work on (maybe they DON'T) doesn't make them a bad parent.

Plus kids are grateful/ungrateful about pretty random ****. My 5 year old goes nuts about getting a POS toy out of a crane/claw machine but is pretty meh about much nicer gifts. Its NOT because she's a brat, its because she's FIVE!!!!

Also as a general rule, for those who are socially oblivious... when people complain about their wife, kids, etc. their mostly joking and they sure as hell aren't inviting you to bag on their wife and kids... apparently that's not clear to many people on the internet, even though there is no way in hell they would do it in real life.
 
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Get a superdrive, an external cd drive costs like 70$ also its a gift from her father I too believe she should be greatful, if theres a reason why it doesnt fit her needs then she should bring it up and see if theres a solution as opposed to complaining.
 
dmk1974 said:
Also, and I didn't mean to leave this out, she came home from the local library about 10 minutes after I got home from work to show it to her. She had 3 discs (1 was a movie) that she wanted to play on her white MacBook. Probably part of why she wasn't happy at that time (since I was already in the middle of migrating her settings over).

I rarely ever use discs in my MBP, but I neglected that she may want to use programs or music and movies from the library (which is a building that I almost never go to).
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All the more reason to respect how she is already using her MacBook. You don't use disks, but she does and has an easily accessible supply. I applauded her before. Now I am giving her a standing ovation.

My sister would regularly do work from home and had a company provided computer as well as one she bought herself. There were always computers in the house when her kids came along, and my niece and nephew grew up watching my sister use them. As soon as they were old enough to have good eye hand coordination and a desire to learn, she would show them how to use computers, bought them little games, etc.

She treated the computer as another tool in the house, not a mysterious expensive device which they could never touch.

Cutting to the chase, by the time she was seven, my niece could put together PowerPoint presentations that were superior to many done by professionals. Except for a few spelling mistakes. Hey, nobody's perfect.

Again, sounds like a happy household. Keep encouraging your kids to use computers any way they want to use them.
 
Does that mean she actually got the Macbook when she was six then? I think I owned a pile of sticks and some rubber bands when I was six. ;)
 
OP is either

a) A Bad Father
b) A troll
c) Michael Jackson in disguise.

W/e Time to call Super nanny for bad parenting
 
dmk1974 said:
My daughter has a 2010 white MacBook (latest model...as of today) that has the warranty expiring soon. So, instead of buying the AppleCare, I thought I'd be a great Dad and surprise her with a new 11" base model MacBook Air (and then sell the MacBook).

I give it too her yesterday thinking she'd like it (since she said she thought they were cool at the local Apple Store last week), but after like 15 seconds, she says she doesn't want it because there's no disc drive in it for music and DVDs. I told her that I can rip those and just put the file on the MBA or whatever, but then still said that she needs that (despite all the other benefits of the newer and lighter MBA).

For my use, my 2011 MBP is better than an MBA, but clearly I'm not listening to the voice of the customer/user in this case! But geez...she's SEVEN! She is really smart and detailed and knows what she wants, but I see myself taking my son on weekend getaways every month starting in a few years or so from now :)
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Wow! I can't believe she would snub such a gift! I would have loved it if my parents would have got me a computer when I was 7 (but back then they were like $3k+).

I bet if you give her a clunky desktop instead of the air her tune would change quickly :p

Also I'm not sure whats with all the OP bashing simply because the OP bought their child a piece of technology which is a very smart thing to do. I wish more people would expose their kids to computers since computing skills are some of the most important skills to have in todays job market.
 
at seven she should only have access to a family computer located in a supervised environment ... you are setting yourself up for big trouble when she hits her teens.

best of luck to you
 
dmk1974 said:
My daughter has a 2010 white MacBook (latest model...as of today) that has the warranty expiring soon. So, instead of buying the AppleCare, I thought I'd be a great Dad and surprise her with a new 11" base model MacBook Air (and then sell the MacBook).

I give it too her yesterday thinking she'd like it (since she said she thought they were cool at the local Apple Store last week), but after like 15 seconds, she says she doesn't want it because there's no disc drive in it for music and DVDs. I told her that I can rip those and just put the file on the MBA or whatever, but then still said that she needs that (despite all the other benefits of the newer and lighter MBA).

For my use, my 2011 MBP is better than an MBA, but clearly I'm not listening to the voice of the customer/user in this case! But geez...she's SEVEN! She is really smart and detailed and knows what she wants, but I see myself taking my son on weekend getaways every month starting in a few years or so from now :)
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Hopefully, you also ensure your daughter has balance in her life and isn't one of those sedentary little lard-arses spending hours each day in front of a computer. When was the last time she climbed a tree, hiked in the outdoors, paddled a canoe, swam in a lake, picked wild berries, did something "low tech", expressed empathy for someone less fortunate (and better yet, acted on it!), etc.?
 
I can't believe someone would admit this. It's essentially admitting failure as a parent.
 
there might be a lesson here. just because she thinks something is cool doesnt mean she wants it. its the buildup and suspense of giving something awesome and having it bomb that really sucks. You go from she is going to be so excited this will be so cool to see her reaction to. oh. ok. bzzzzzzzt. dam.


I kinda had something similar happen to me with a wii. I thought my dad would think it was the coolest thing he ever saw. got him a cool bowling game. i explained what it was and how it worked and just looked at me and was like that is the dumbest thing i ever saw. oh well.
 
Man, I'm getting bashed! :) The point of the post wasn't really as much to say that I bought my daughter something that she didn't have and that the was too good for it. But rather that it was to replace something she had and, despite my opinion, the felt that the one she had was just fine and better.

At 3, I passed to her and her brother a homebrew desktop PC to share, and then from there over the years they had their own desktops. All these are hand-me-downs since I'm the nerd that upgrades far too often (thank goodness for good deals on craigslist and ebay!).

Last year we passed a Dell laptop to her when my wife and I flipped to the dark side and got MacBook Pros. Did well selling that Dell laptop and a couple of really favorable flips on CL along the way from Blackbook, 2008 MacBook that I was able to fix and sell, to the 2010 MacBook. I think in the end, I paid zero for that 2010 MacBook (plus probably $150 profit) due to those flips. Sure, some time and effort on my part, but no big deal. She takes good care of it and does't just view it as an expensive item...but a tool and entertainment device.
 
I've got to say... it sounds like you spoil her. So it's no surprise that she would be acting this way. That said, what I'm saying... take it in good stride, as I don't mean it too negatively. It's obvious you mean well.

She's has her Macbook for one year and the warranty has just run out. It's working perfectly I presume. So you go out and buy her a new laptop just because the warranty is out? I mean come on!

I've received two laptops from my parents in the past. One was this very basic $500 laptop that overheated and ran a Pentium 4 processor with 512MB of RAM. That was I think a little over seven years ago. The other was an extravagant 12-inch laptop which was top-of-the-line when I graduated in 2007. I've got to say that I feel like I've been spoiled by them for buying me two laptops. You bought your daughter a laptop one year after having already bought her a laptop, and simply because the warranty has run out. That's like buying someone a new iPhone because they scratched their pretty surface on their old one... it's rather overzealous and unnecessary purchasing.
 
dmk1974 said:
Man, I'm getting bashed! :) The point of the post wasn't really as much to say that I bought my daughter something that she didn't have and that the was too good for it. But rather that it was to replace something she had and, despite my opinion, the felt that the one she had was just fine and better.

At 3, I passed to her and her brother a homebrew desktop PC to share, and then from there over the years they had their own desktops. All these are hand-me-downs since I'm the nerd that upgrades far too often (thank goodness for good deals on craigslist and ebay!).

Last year we passed a Dell laptop to her when my wife and I flipped to the dark side and got MacBook Pros. Did well selling that Dell laptop and a couple of really favorable flips on CL along the way from Blackbook, 2008 MacBook that I was able to fix and sell, to the 2010 MacBook. I think in the end, I paid zero for that 2010 MacBook (plus probably $150 profit) due to those flips. Sure, some time and effort on my part, but no big deal. She takes good care of it and does't just view it as an expensive item...but a tool and entertainment device.
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The people who are bashing you lack imagination. Your daughter knows what she wants and knows how to use technology well. And she is fortunate to live in a household where computers are easily available.

Despite knowing what's cool, she doesn't have a burning need to have every cool thing right away just because it is cool. Contrast that with people who have already announced that they are going to buy the next iPhone and next iPad because they absolutely must have the latest Apple gizmo, even though they just bought their pad or phone two days ago.

She very wisely uses the library for a lot of her media instead of demanding that you buy a ton of stuff for her.

Most important of all, your daughter is already strong enough to clearly state her preferences. And she is supremely fortunate to have a dad who listens to her.

It will be very interesting to see what your kids are up to ten or fifteen years from now.

In the meantime, keep up the good work.
 
PaulWog said:
I've got to say... it sounds like you spoil her. So it's no surprise that she would be acting this way. That said, what I'm saying... take it in good stride, as I don't mean it too negatively. It's obvious you mean well.

She's has her Macbook for one year and the warranty has just run out. It's working perfectly I presume. So you go out and buy her a new laptop just because the warranty is out? I mean come on!

I've received two laptops from my parents in the past. One was this very basic $500 laptop that overheated and ran a Pentium 4 processor with 512MB of RAM. That was I think a little over seven years ago. The other was an extravagant 12-inch laptop which was top-of-the-line when I graduated in 2007. I've got to say that I feel like I've been spoiled by them for buying me two laptops. You bought your daughter a laptop one year after having already bought her a laptop, and simply because the warranty has run out. That's like buying someone a new iPhone because they scratched their pretty surface on their old one... it's rather overzealous and unnecessary purchasing.
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I bought the MBA honestly on a whim at lunch yesterday since I saw it as an open box for a fantastic price at my local Best Buy. Since I am certain that I can sell her existing MacBook to completely cover the price of the MBA, my thought process was that she gets a newer laptop to use and I am then covered with a new 12-month Apple warranty. My local Apple Store Genius Bar has been great when I've had repair issues in the past. These Apple devices are not all perfect and I always prefer to have some warranty left on them.

Clearly, if I saw the same MacBook there for the same price, that would have been a better option for her...same machine, longer coverage.
 
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