Sharing my Laptop with a Toddler - Part 1

UPDATE: I no longer recommend Kido'z. Evidently the "free" version was only for a limited time. I recently discovered that while they offer an updated version of the pay version, they did not update the free version. Furthermore, they no longer offer any support for the free version. I was matter-of-factly informed by the support team that many new additions to the menus (websites, games, videos, etc.) will not work as time goes on unless I install and subscribe to the premium service. Obviously, this made me angry. I quickly found a replacement: Kidzui. It isn't as simple as Kido'z, but is better in many ways. It is not walled in, so it is much easier to add favorite websites, games, etc. As my son grows, he will be able to add websites on his own, and the filters are excellent. It can be operated through a stand-alone browser or as a Firefox add-on. Honestly, Kido'z had some technical problems, and would occasionally glitch and freeze. Plus, it was so drastically different from normal browsers in design, that I think a transition to Firefox, etc. would prove difficult. Kidzui is much similar to your average browser, and doesn't have the social and email features we weren't using anyway. And, best of all, Kidzui is really free. There is a premium service offered, but it's for access to more security/parental settings and not a different browser. So forget about Kido'z, they're greedy bastards who don't care about internet safety nearly as much as fleecing worried parents. 
END OF UPDATE

I haven’t been very creative lately. I don’t really have much of any excuse for not writing. I keep finding myself occupied with other projects and situations in day to day life. I find that I am never short of methods of procrastination, being the mom of a 2 ½ year old. My latest kid-oriented project has been setting up a user account on the laptop for him. I decided to write a blog post about it, since I have no new writing to share.

Mo really likes the computer, possibly because he’s usually forbidden from touching it. He’s been introduced to YouTube, on which he demands to watch Adam West as Batman, and always wants to go to the toddler TV websites (Disney Playhouse, PBSKids, Nick, Jr., etc.). So I decided to take advantage of the hot desert summer to teach him computer skills. I’m told he’ll take to it like a fish to water, and thought it would make for a good alternative indoor activity. I need an arsenal of indoor activities because, once the temps reach triple digits, we can’t go outside to play till early evening. Last summer, Mo was content to sit and play with wooden blocks and Megabloks for hours on end. I don’t think that will work this year. So the plan is to alternate between indoor play, educational TV, snacks, a little preschool prep, potty training (fingers crossed on that one), and computer time.

This decision led me down the unfortunate path towards setting up the computer. My first goal was to keep Mo from completely destroying the laptop that has become mine by default. Due to our current living arrangement, I do not have access to my beloved pc tower with Vista, so I’m using Mike’s old work laptop, which has XP. The first thing I discovered was that unlike Vista (and the new Windows7), XP does not have built in parental controls for user accounts. Bah. I set up a limited user account (as opposed to administrator) for Kurt so that he couldn’t randomly download or change crucial settings. I then proceeded to customize the user settings to what I thought would be most pleasing to an almost 3 year old. I made Firefox the default browser (more on this choice momentarily), changed the desktop picture to the picture of fish (I’ll find a better picture later), made the type big, chose the biggest cursor I could find and slowed down the cursor speed considerably. I then added short cuts to Paint and WordPad to the desktop. I made the desktop picture “center” instead of “stretch” so that there was a border where I could put shortcut icons. I thought this would make it easier for Mo to see them.

Further research led to the discovery that IE has built in parental controls to filter content. That’s great, except that the settings applied to all users. Any, we prefer Firefox to IE. Since this feature is standard on IE and other browsers, it surely must be on Firefox, right? You would think, wouldn’t you? Turns out I needed to find an add-on. Okay, fine. So the first one I find and download is “FoxFilter,” an effective enough filter, but lacks a crucial feature. The free version is not password protected, so your children could simply disable it anytime they want. Of course, you could always subscribe to the premium service for $10/year. Right. I disabled this when I found ProCon LatteFirefox without my supervision, so I did not add a shortcut to the desktop.

I began to think that perhaps a simpler browser might be good for a toddler’s use. Firefox is great for older kids, but I thought perhaps all the buttons and options would be too overwhelming for a beginner. So I started looking for a streamlined program with fewer choices and specifically designed with the little ones in mind. I came across a kid browser called “Kido’z” and decided to try it out. The child doesn’t need to know how to read to use it, and it is a very, very simple browser. It is so simple, in fact, that it does not feature a “refresh” button. Mo took to it immediately, as he can choose between thumbnails of his favorite websites. This helps me, because he calls every website “PBS Kids” for some reason. At this age, he’s too young to “surf,” and really just wants access to the same familiar sites. Unlike some other options I saw, Kido’z allows the parent to add sites in addition to the ones that are already featured. It automatically filters for content as well as age appropriateness. There is a premium service offered at around $40 that gives you more control options, but for us this is not necessary. There are a couple websites that are not supported by the browser, and those can only be viewed on “grown up” browsers such as FireFox. Otherwise, I feel confident that Mo can operate this browser on his own once he has computer skills. There is also a social networking and email feature where Kido’z users can befriend each other, but I don’t think we’ll be using that for a while. I also want to mention that the browser keeps Mo from accidentally exiting the program. You can’t even pull up the task bar while in the program. I added the shortcut to the desktop so that Mo could find it easily.

I had one more problem to solve, but the solution was obvious. I mentioned before that this is a laptop, and I wish to protect it as much as I can until I can get my PC tower back. Also, the keyboard is small and has the little red button “mouse” in the middle of the keyboard. I sometimes use a trackball instead of a mouse, but that does not keep Mo from being distracted by the bright red dot as well as all the other extraneous buttons in close proximity to the keys I’d prefer him to focus on. So we decided to buy Mo his own keyboard and mouse. There are numerous brightly-colored, expensive toddler keyboards out there, the least pricey being Crayola. Since Mo will seldom, if ever, be out of my sight while using the computer (mostly he’ll be sitting on my lap, I think), we decided instead to purchase a cheap keyboard and mouse that he can trash. The less options the better. Mo is attracted to the computer partially because it doesn’t look like a toy, so I don’t think he will mind a plain, black keyboard and mouse. I can always add stickers, etc. to help him learn certain functions later on. For instance, I think I might add a sticker to the right mouse button so that it’s easier for him to remember which one to click. P A smaller mouse is preferable for smaller hands, but Mo grabs his dad’s relatively large mouse with little problem. We have yet to purchase these yet, but I found some good candidates on Walmart.com. For all its faults, Walmart is a good source for disposable merchandise.

The next step was to research and preload websites and activities for Mo to use, but that is another post entirely.