Bloody Kids!

rchddap1

Well done to you. What a great opportunity to teach them about spending money they don't have and the future consequences that it can hold. This will certainly be a lesson that they're not going to forget in a hurry. Particularly as you're going to make them stick to it.

skylight

Just the right thing to do.

A combination of lots of things, and hopefully the kids will learn a valuable lesson early on.



I looked at the Habbo hotel yesterday and I too was horrified. Horrified that someone had come up with a simple and brilliant way of making lots of money and horrified that exploitation didn't seem to concern them at all.

grimelda

I think your response was level-headed, fair and appropriate. Well done for turning a bad situation into a positive learning experience.

katrina_8

perhaps worse than my fourteen year old son somehow "finding" the key to his parents bedroom and "accidently" borrowing some particular videos! and hiring them out to his mates at school!!!!! Maybe he thought we wouldnt notice!! after all anybody over 40 is of course " stupid!!"

I think the ebay idea is great but maybe you should place the culprit themselves on e bay offering chores or similar, make them work thats what I say!!! It may be painful to extract them from whichever screen they are glued to at the time...

Sorry to be cynical especially as this is my first post but I am having a negative day !!!

ZTD

Toto wrote:

There is a habbo hierarchy, if you don't have the expensive furniture you are bullied and given a lower position in the hotel. The website encourages this. Actually I could write a book on what's wrong with the whole thing.

So, although I hold the website partially responsible, my kids had a role to play too and there are life lessons to learn here. They knew what they were doing was wrong and therefore there are stiff punishments.

This is like a microcosm on real life. You keep up with the Joneses, but eventually you have to pay.

Rather different to when I was playing the on-line games. At that time, they were all free and you earned 'money' in the game by giving large dragons grief with a small sword.

ZTD

katrina_8 wrote:

perhaps worse than my fourteen year old son somehow "finding" the key to his parents bedroom and "accidently" borrowing some particular videos! and hiring them out to his mates at school!!!!!

"Particular videos"? Alice goes Spanking? :rotfl: :eek:

katrina_8 wrote:

Maybe he thought we wouldnt notice!! after all anybody over 40 is of course " stupid!!"

It's a well known fact, a fact that will hold until I too turn 40. :whistle:

katrina_8 wrote:

I think the ebay idea is great but maybe you should place the culprit themselves on e bay offering chores or similar, make them work thats what I say!!! It may be painful to extract them from whichever screen they are glued to at the time...

The other alternative is to sell cubic centimetre parts of their buttocks for medical research. You don't get much in the grand scheme of things, but I'm sure it'll add up.

katrina_8 wrote:

Sorry to be cynical especially as this is my first post but I am having a negative day !!!

A negative day? The day has barely started. It must be bad.

rubix_76

katrina_8 wrote:

perhaps worse than my fourteen year old son somehow "finding" the key to his parents bedroom and "accidently" borrowing some particular videos! and hiring them out to his mates at school!!!!! Maybe he thought we wouldnt notice!! after all anybody over 40 is of course " stupid!!"

Sorry, but I couldn't help but laugh at this, he shows great entreupenuerial (ya know Alan Sugar-esque) skills, he will go far I think.

I used to sell my own packed lunnch when I was at school to buy chocolate. When my Mum found out she went balistic, but I said "Mum everyone likes your home-made bread rolls" She then forgave me. But I am no Alan Sugar.

To OP, you seem to have sorted out the issue, and I think your punishment is appropriate for the situation, good luck in following therough with it.

Toto

Thank you all, yes I will follow through with it. My kids know if I say I will do something I will.

Talking of entreupenuerial skills. My brother and I were no angels (hush now don't tell my kids) When we were about 18 my mum went away on holiday and left us in the house. We spent all of the housekeeping money she left on day 1 in the pub. So we needed to feed ourselves for the next 2 weeks. So, we put an ad in the paper and put posters around town advertising a rave in the garage. We sold tickets at £5 each (hangs head in shame). We ended up with 250 people in my mum's garage, which was big enough for 4 cars. We had a BBQ, very loud music, bottles of beer at £1 each. The neighbours went nuts, police closed us down at 4 am. Mum came home and my brother and I dissapeared for a couple of days while she calmed down. She was chasing us all over town trying to find us.

When she did find us she ended up asking exactly how much cash we had left, she then charging hire costs for the venue at the exact amount we had left. We had to repaint the garage, redo the gardens and do loads of odd jobs for the neighbours to say sorry. It wasn't a good idea to cross my mother LOL

CosmoCat

@ OP, well done for being level headed and for using this as a positive (though they won't yet see this side of it for a while) learning experience for your two. it's great that you're using that 'Bank of Mum' mentality with them. letting them know there are penalties, charges and overall consequences for abusing their priveledges. maybe you should draw up a terms and conditions contract for them to sign...just make sure that your charges are fair (or else they'll come reclaiming later on in life )

how are you monitoring the access to these sites on the computer. have you put the sites you don't want them on on a restricted list on the computer itself...just saying, if they're addicted to the site, they might be sneaky....

well done!:T

Toto

Well at the moment they have no leads on the computer, so no power. I have put parent controls on so they can't access anything without having me add it to a list of approved websites. I have also changed the password on the network so I have to log them on. It would be hard for them to get past that lot. If they did, there would be no computer at all, it would be sold, and they know it.