Credit Card

It was a nice Thursday. Sasha was playing on her computer. Lately, I've been limiting her to one or two hours of computer time a day, which she has to earn by doing a chore for each hour. Some of the chores Sasha can do to earn an hour of computer time are:

Pull 20 weeds from the back yard
Water all our plants
Wash Dishes
Sweep or Mop the kitchen floor
Vacuum (doesn't work well yet as it is still too heavy for her)
Clean the toilets
Clean the bathtubs

I figure even if she does a horrible job, it is better than nothing and she is getting practice at it. I stay critical of her work and I do point out the errors, which makes me feel mean. But in the long run, I think true criticism is probably best as it will teach her to be critical of her own work. She doesn't seem to have her feelings hurt when I point out that she missed a spot washing dishes or scrubbing the bathtub. I do not expect perfection from her. I actually do expect mistakes or overlooked bits. It seems to be working out well. And I expect that I might have to go over some of her work later. That said, she usually does a pretty decent job. She is a bit of a perfectionist personality.

Anyways, on this particular Thursday, Sasha was playing World of Warcraft. She thought she heard the ice cream truck outside and asked me if we had any money for ice cream. I had $3 in my wallet, and told her she could go into my wallet to grab that. A few minutes later, she still had my wallet in her hand and was acting kind of funny, but I didn't think much of it. The ice cream truck never passed our house, but I let her keep the $3 just in case, and we went to the farmer's market for about an hour.

About an hour after we returned home from the farmer's market, my husband texted me. He was alerted via email to some purchases made within the World of Warcraft store on Sasha's account. Those purchases were made with his credit card. We worried that her account had been hacked. We immediately investigated, but on a hunch I asked her about it. She immediately and sheepishly admitted she had made some purchases in the Warcraft store, but insisted, "I didn't know it was with Dad's credit card!". (She thought she was using MY credit card, not Jon's, as if that made a difference).

I had her walk me through her actions. She showed me the Warcraft online store. I simulated the purchase of an item and it took me to the checkout, where it asked me for all the credit card information. I was confused, as I had assumed that somehow the credit card info had been stored on her account, but it wasn't. I asked Sasha to tell me how she got the credit card info. She recited to me by memory the credit card number, expiration date, and even the cvv info. Holy crap! She had it memorized! This was worse than I thought! Where did she get that info, I asked her. She told me she grabbed the card and memorized it when she grabbed the ice cream money.

This child is six years old. And she was able to steal our credit card and use it to make online purchases. This was horrible and fascinating!

Fortunately, she used it to make two purchases at $15 each. They were vanity cosmetic helmets for use within the game of World of Warcraft.

I grounded her from the computer for a week. I gave her many lectures. And even worse, I retell this story to family and friend members, which irritates her greatly. Every time she overhears me tell the story, she gets upset and asks me not to tell people anymore. She is quite embarassed. And she promises she will never use our credit card again or tell people the numbers.

Today I asked Cassie to see if she could convince Sasha to buy stuff for her or tell her the numbers, and Sasha vehemently refused. Lesson learned thanfully, but wow.