Three year old buys car?

[tater03]

Did anyone else happen to see this story where the three year old got the winning bid on a car on ebay? I couldn't believe this when I seen it. That must be one smart child. I know adults that don't know how to use ebay.
http://news.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,70131-13544104,00.html?f=rss

[Plumley]

My first thought when I saw the story was buyer's remorse. I've heard about the "my child did this without my knowledge" excuse before. But if this little boy is precocious enough to say, "I've bought a car" then maybe he is a computer whiz and pushed all the right buttons. My cockatiel was walking on my keyboard once and accidentally stepped on the right combination of keys to log onto CompuServe, so who knows.

[capitalist_junkie]

If I were a parent, I'd be sooo upset. fortunately, I can simply find the story amusing.

This is why I would never allow my toddler to be on a computer unsupervised.

[dong]

Oh I've seen cases like this before- and I did see the article, but I honestly wouldn't know. He did appear to say that he wasn't really intending to by the car ^_^; but I've done similar things (not like that, we didn't have teh internetz back then) on computers before.

It wouldn't be unlike how a so-called genius discovers a new law or an old school alchemist discovered a new element...by accident. But to draw upon a more relevant example, I recall a story of a friend who formatted his father's work computer HDD because he liked to see the pretty red and green lights flashing while the computer systematically erased every last part of his father's data. Personally, I remember trying to operate a computer on a 'monkey see monkey do' basis before I could read, write or comprehend language, with similar results (no I didn't kill any computers though).

[harleysneak]

I'm not sure how believable this one is and even so, who leaves their toddler alone on the internet, you never know what else they could get into.

[kelkat]

Three year old? I can't believe it. The parents need to be fined or slapped or something to let a child that young be alone that long ESPECIALLY on the computer.

As a parent myself, that's just beyond comprehension!

[dong]

They come in all different shapes and sizes and measures of precociousness...one might think that the kid might need to be left alone for a long time on the computer for that to happen...but really I don't think it'd really make that much of a difference. As a kid who used to do similarly dastardly things (but...not quite so expensive), not only will I say it's completely possible, but I could explain how in detail...if you want.