"Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn."

Were becoming increasingly aware of how important it is to help Seth understand how to use a  computer. His occupational therapist and physio are always telling us it would benefit him, which we know so we let him go on regularly and explain how things work. Seth has been learning recently about 'Money' at school and this has spurred on many inquisitive questions about 'Shopping online', Seth asks questions like "how do they give you change if you pay to much?" and "what happens if you want to take it back, how do you get your money back?". As we do a lot of shopping online the best way to show Seth how it works was to let him buy something himself so after i explained bank cards and Paypal to him we got to it and he was very excited.

Seth had the option of picking something to buy and going through the checkout etc. One of Seth's first questions was "what's the password to your Paypal?" was this going to be a very bad idea??

After receiving our Pirate dress up set a couple of weeks ago we had been mooching through The Toadstool.co.uk at what other things we liked. Seth had the budget of £10 to spend so i showed him how to search for items by price (starting with the cheapest) and left him to his own devices. Innevitably there was a few "i don't know how to get back on that page" which you would expect from an overzealous happy clicking child but over all Seth was confident with what he was doing.

Seth went through every page between the prices of 0-£10 about 6 times before deciding what he wanted and when he finally made his decision Seth did his usual loving and very thoughtful thing and told us that the reason he had picked this item was because he thought Opeie would really like it (He's so selfless). Seth chose the Haba play food fish as he has told us he would like lots of play food so that he can do some kitchen role play with Opeie (he loves helping us cook and bake and wants his brother included).

We explained the cost of the item against the budget but i think its harder to explain the concept of money to a child without having the coins and notes in front of them. There are some great online pocket money sites such as Virtual Piggy which is great for safe purchasing and pocket money saving online. Although i think this is a great concept i don't think that we as a family would benefit from it. Seth is saving up his pocket money for something very important (which you will find out about soon) and we have been giving him 50p every day for quite sometime if he finishes small tasks off before bedtime which he always does. I think from a saving point of view this works out better for us and Seth has a better understanding of money and its value because of it.

Seth found the checkout part interesting but said it would be better if you could just stick your card or cash in the side of the computer like at the Asda self service checkouts.

I think in the next few years Seth will become more interested in Online shopping, its great to have the things you want at your fingertips and the fact that there is so much more variety available to you as a shopper is what draws people in. I'm sure that in the meantime there will be plenty of Seth's time spent window shopping through his favourite toy shops but i wont be giving him my Paypal password just yet.