#1 is going to be getting a new laptop to help with school work. It’s going to be “his” computer; he’s pretty sensible and shortly to be 11 years old. Win10, Office, light gaming (it’s not got dedicated gfx card), maybe a bit of design/drawing work (it has a stylus). It’s an HP and I’ll be taking off any bloatware I can find on it and setting it up for him initially. (Maybe I should do it with him?)

I’ve been reading up about parent/child MS accounts but my gut feel is that he’ll be OK with an account for himself; maybe with my email as recovery for it; maybe not.

As there are quite a few on here with kids of a similar age I’m sure there’re stories of wisdom and woe when setting things up – any pointers as to what works or what doesn’t would be appreciated.

He has other devices too and we work on an open access basis – he doesn’t change PINs and we (well, my wife) occasionally checks what he’s been doing and there’s nothing to note. Apart from 400+ whatsapps per day and burning 10gb of data in a week on video calls ;o)

So – let him have everything? Or parent/child? Restrict hours through the router or onboard the laptop?

Thoughts very welcome!

My two girls (7 and 10) have their “own” laptops for schoolwork, home school and games.

I created them both Microsoft accounts which link to my MS account.
This gives you control over a fair bit of stuff including web filters, access to chat/friends in games etc and can send you reports on screen time, website use, search terms etc.

https://account.microsoft.com/family/about

I made a point of demonstrating that I have access to this information as I think it is a good life lesson (someone is always watching what you browse whether it is parent, school, work IT or your ISP)

It’s pretty far from secure but a decent first step. And they need MS accounts anyway to work properly with Win10 and for things like Minecraft etc.

Yep, the MS family thing is pretty effective.  We’ve used it to set the start and end of day time limits to make sure they aren’t sneaking in a late night game.  With all the school hours it didn’t make much sense to restrict the screen time as well.

You can also use it to block inappropriate websites and turn on safe search so they don’t accidentally get unpleasant results / sites / etc appearing by mistake.  I don’t know if that’s 100% effective but it all helps.

I did find I had to set my sons age somewhat higher than in reality as otherwise some fairly innocuous games were getting blocked.

+1 on the family account. We have one set up for Xbox but the same rules apply across Win10 etc devices – screen time, limits, etc. We are a mainly apple household so use apple screen time as well, same approach. Generally I leave everything wide open but they know limits can be applied anytime (and from anywhere!) so if they start misbehaving, screen time disappears. We are trying to use it as a deterrent to hopefully teach them some responsibility.

You can also track/report on how much time they are spending on devices, which can be useful – eg: you’ve averaged X amount of hours on the Xbox this week, do you think this is healthy? (usual answer is yes)

Our two boys are 10 and 11.

I think consensus has been achieved! Blimey.

I think the notion that your average parent knows more about computers than your average 11-year old is really quite sweet.

Think of it as a learning opportunity Cougar, for child and parent 🙂

If my kids aren’t finding ways around it then I’d be very disappointed in them.

Yep, I’m setup as parent and can administer both our kids accounts, eldest got a laptop for her 11th birthday and I just keep an eye on the weekly summary of activities, time spent in certain apps and on what sites.

It’s been Very useful for her for school since January and LD3 so.

Outside of school work it’s main uses appear to be minecraft, Among us and watching YouTube videos about Minecraft and among us…

Sounds very familiar cookeaa. Throw in Fortnite and Roblox and that’s about 99% of their laptop use outside of home schooling (and when they think I’m not looking).

+1 for Microsoft account. Works really well and there’s an app for your phone.

Also you might want to consider openDNS as a free basic web filter.

Thanks everyone – I’ve set the account up for him and will set up the laptop next!