Please, for the love of all things holy, do not let my children read this post. Marah Carey graced Jimmy Kimmel Live with her presence the other night. While there, she told Jimmy what her (just turned) seven-year-old twins, Morroccan and Monroe, were up to. No good, according to Mariah. She said that her “technological genius” Moroccan ordered a dog and a few ($5,000 worth!) trinkets all by himself (clip below).
Mariah Carey has to be careful not to let her 7-year-old son, Moroccan, near an iPad!
“My son is like a technological genius,” the “Hero” singer insisted on Wednesday’s Jimmy Kimmel Live! “I have to control them with iPads because literally he charged $5,000 on Amazon. Yeah, he did!”
Things got even more out of control when Roc spent some time with his dad, Nick Cannon.
“The other night apparently he was with Nick and he ordered a dog,” Carey revealed. “They called him and they were like, ‘Your dog is ready.’ And he was like, ‘I didn’t order any damn dog!’”
I totally, 100% believe all of this. It is so easy for a kid to buy things online. The words “In Game Purchases” haunts me in my dreams. I’m pretty alert when it comes to my where my credit card is stored and what my kids have access to. And the reason I am so savvy? Because my friends had kids before me and I heard all the horror stories. But the dog really makes me laugh. I once caught my daughter about to email a query to a husky rescue group. Her response when grilled was, “it (the website) asked if I was interested in adopting her and I am!”
Mariah also said the kids are little singers, which makes sense given their parentage. The twins, who are adorably nicknamed Roc and Roe, have recorded a song. Mariah hasn’t released it yet because she hasn’t discussed it with their dad yet. While talking about the kids, she brought up Nick with much respect. I love that Mariah and Nick are such great co-parents. I think they genuinely like and respect each other and it shows – not only to us, but more importantly, to their kids. I do, however, hope Nick signs off on that single getting released. I’d love to hear it.
My child did what now?
Photo credit: WENN Photos and Getty Images
She’s actually really funny in this interview! I was surprised.
yes – i watched it live. she can be so charming. she looks and soundsbetter than she has in years.
Mariah looks great!
I have it so they ask for my password every time to make a purchase on my iPad, and my passwords are between me and my husband, daughter doesn’t know them
Agree. Dont presave passwords, don’t share passwords, esp if linked credit card info. Cant buy what they cant access.
same! We were just talking about this the other night with my 9 year old, he had a sleepover with his nine-year-old cousin and they spend $100 on his iPad. I said that’s why I have it ask for my password before any purchases he said his cousin knows the password! I just said that’s why you don’t know the password haha.
My daughter also has it on her 9 year old son’s tablet that she sees what he downloads when he downloads it (free or not). There are all kinds of ways to protect yourself. If I don’t have to save credit card information I don’t. She’s lucky it was only $5000.
Credit cards and online shopping are too easy to figure out, but at least she can afford to pay for her sons mischief if she doesn’t want to take his orders away from him
Her kids are so cute!
I know it’s a little cheesy, but the matching outfits they do as a family whenever they appear at events is so cute to me 😊. That and I love her red dress in that other pic!
All I gotta say about the tech purchases is that little kids are super savvy with mobile devices and more parents should monitor what their kid is doing not only with the purchases but across the board with social media profiles, accounts, websites, etc. The things I’ve seen from 8-14 year olds online lmao
I unapologetically adore her. She is my diva crush.
I believe her! My two year old daughter got a hold of my phone, got on the amazon app and somehow ordered an $89 Thomas the train contraption!! I didn’t even realize until it was delivered. I was going to return it but my cousin (her godmother) wanted to buy the kids a Christmas gift and said my daughter saved her the time and sent me the money. I still don’t know how the two year old got into my phone but kids pick up things so quickly!
That is adorable. A 2 yo ordering herself a thomas the train set. I love it! I’m sorry, I can’t help it. This really made me smile.
how do you order a dog? like fast food?
I was coming here to say the same thing.
We have disabled the iTunes app as well as the presaved passwords, and we limit how much time my 8 and 10 year olds are online. They only play games, but still. This way we know exactly what they are doing and can’t download any weird games. My daughter has a tech savvy friend that I don’t completely trust and I want to know exactly what my daughter is lol king at and her friend is recommending to her.
I only have to worry about cats, but one of the first things I did was to go into the Restrictions setting on the iPhone (after setting a password for that area) and just disabled in-app purchases. Many allegedly free games are doggedly trying to get you to buy stuff in the app while playing and it’s too easy to click on the wrong thing. So now when I do accidentally click on something, the game tells me sorry, you can’t do that.
When I really do want to make an in-app purchase, I just temporarily enable in-app purchases
I also have iTunes set so I have to enter my password before every purchase, even if the app is free. Never make that a timed thing (such as password required again only after X minutes).
In the case of a parent – just never ever enter your password in the presence of your kid. Hide in the bathroom if you must. It is possible to figure out a password if you watch someone type it even if you don’t see the keyboard. And make it a good password that is hard to guess. Hide any written copy of the password well and don’t actually use the real name for what it is. You also can use things only you would know as a code to reconstruct the password, rather than actually writing it down.
And for vendor sites like Amazon – do whatever you have to do to make them totally inaccessible to the kiddies. On the regular Mac, there is a way for the kiddies to only have access to their own desktop with only the apps allowed visible on it. Is there something like that for phones and tablets?
And keep your credit cards in a secure place away from the kiddies. Stealing the card from mom’s purse is an all-too common practice. Don’t use the stored credit/debit card feature on a device unless you are absolutely sure you can use it safely with kids in the house. I don’t use it myself, so I’m not sure how secure it is from that standpoint.
Obviously also keep your own iPhone, iPad, and other gadgets secure in whatever way you can. Even if you think you can trust your kids, you cannot trust their friends. It is a royal pain to have to enter a password or use the touch thing every time, but if I had kids or just human roommates in general — I probably would do that. Although I keep my phone on my person rather than in a purse or elsewhere.
I think you can make gifts to another person’s iTunes account if you want kiddies to have an app allowance, but since I don’t want to encourage the cats in gaming – I don’t know anything about that.
I learned the hard way to password protect my accounts when I let my friend’s three year old son borrow my kindle. The little sh*t bought a movie (Cars, if you’re curious) while he was using it. I doubt he knew what he was doing, BUT STILL.
The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. Hilarious! ALso, she looks gorgeous. I’d order whatever makes her that way, but I know I can’t afford it. Mariah is my girl-diva crush, too.
My nice has opened a FB account for my mother, an Instagram for her and one for herself and she is only 10. Fun fact: she doesn’t exactly remember the passwords so a closed hers. Regularly she downloads games that I delete. I haven’t saved any credit card number anywhere so the games are mostly useless after some days but still she does that even though I tell her not to. I tell everybody not to let them use their devices BUT my SIL has a “short cut” parenting method, everything to get them of her back so they spend to much time on the int. It seems to me that my family mostly ignores the dangers of Internet for the children. I mean sometimes I have found myself in difficulty with strangers or even people I know. Buying things by accident has been the last of my problems. It took me years to learn to manage the social media to my liking.
Absolute control over int usage I say for the children.
I would be extremely strict about internet access for kids myself. You’re very right about that. It’s like letting them play with knives or explosives.
Free-to-play games do not typically become useless after a few days, unless for-kids-only apps are different. I play loads of free games and don’t spend a penny on them (have in-app purchases disabled). You just have to wait for lives and energy to regenerate in some games, which can take a day in some games or just ten minutes in others. Others like town-building games are quite playable for free, even in events, you just can’t buy stuff with wild abandon (using in-game currency) unless there are ways to earn a lot of it within the game.
In The Simpson’s:Tapped Out, I earn my donuts premium currency (to buy characters and some buildings and bonus generators) by farming Kwik-E-Marts — building a bunch of them to get huge tons of experience points (XP) to level up faster and then harvesting the level-up donuts. More and more games today also let you watch short commercials to earn premium currency or other things. Many games let you get free helpful items by tapping special icons when you log in each day or every few hours. Many times I’ve just logged in to build up the freebies, without actually playing. One bingo game lets me pile up free chips this way, so I can play mindlessly any time. I get a lot of exercise from such habits, since I usually walk in place while playing games.
So deleting the game within iTunes seems like the only way if you really don’t want someone to ever play it again. If you just delete it from the device, it is stored in the cloud and can be easily downloaded again without entering any password (just like updates don’t require a password). The App Store just shows that it is in the cloud and has a download symbol to tap.
I am so glad that I only live with cats, whose interest in games and apps seems relatively minimal. Hope they never evolve to have opposable thumbs.
Mimi looks great! I would love hear her children singing