Group Therapy: Should you ever give in to your child's desire to look "cool"?

My friend Catrina has a daughter, Elly who is 13, preparing to go to a school that has a Bring Your Own Device policy – known as BYOD to the cool kids (a group Elly certainly wants to be part of).

Catrina asked me what she should do. I’ve jumped through these particular hoops recently – my son needed his own device when he started high school this year. I get the dilemma – do you make your kid happy by buying them exactly what they want (possibly crippling the family budget) or go for the bare minimum and risk it being not quite what they need and outdated within a term?

The answer, as with most such problems, is somewhere in the middle.

Now, unlike many parents, I don’t have a problem with a school implementing a BYOD policy, especially in high school. The world demands our kids know how to use technology, and the way computers can engage reluctant learners or kids with a learning disability is dazzling.

One device per kid offers them freedom to learn and create at their own pace – and it saves barneys at home when they try to bump mum off Facebook.

 Just as an FYI, you should know that this post is sponsored by Intel Australia. But all opinions expressed by the author are 100 per cent authentic and written in their own words.

So although I’m a writer with a love of the paper page, my opinion is we need not only be open to technology, but we should embrace it – work out what’s best for our kids, our families and our budget.

But what do we do when kids like Elly see their school’s BYOD policy as a permission to hit up mum for the swishest, coolest, most spec-ed up device on the market? It’s a bit of a minefield – when schools leave it up to us, how do we know what’s needed as opposed to what’s wanted?

Personally, I couldn’t care less if my kids are embarrassed about the computer I provide them. (I did consider handing over my first laptop – beige in colour, the size of a large atlas with an external battery pack. LOL.)

But happily for my son, I do care about his education, if not his standing in the playground pecking order.

In the end, we went for a middle of the range lightweight laptop for our son – the battery has never needed recharging at school and he finds it fast and easy to use. With luck and regular software updates, it should last him a couple of years. Then I can horrify his little sister by suggesting he hand it down to her.

But where does this leave Catrina? I’m lucky in that my boy cares a lot more about things other than the computer he uses at school – footy, for example. He’s not a gamer and his YouTube addiction is comparatively mild. Catrina’s daughter is making a BIG THING out of this computer purchase. Elly says she’s happy to go without other things (Katy Perry tickets, for example) to bankroll the Rolls Royce of devices. My advice to Catrina is to ignore Elly’s pleas and focus on what she needs, but Catrina is torn because Elly is a really great student who feels she deserves ‘the best’ and she doesn’t want her to be discouraged.

What’s your opinion when it comes to buying technology for school-age kids? Do you go for something basic or encourage them by letting them have what they want, especially when it’s for their education?

At the end of the day, what really matters in a device is whats in the inside – not whats on the outside…