The people in the queue for the cashpoint smiled indulgently as my four-year-old slotted his new debit card into the ATM, tapped in his pin number and grabbed the 10 note that came out.
A second later, their smiles froze. As his older sister Isobel reached out to take Christian's receipt from the machine, he leapt on her in a fury and wrestled her to the ground.
You see, using a debit card with his very own name embossed on it to withdraw money from a hole-in-the-wall machine is the most grown-up thing he has ever done. And his sister, justly reasoning that even on tiptoes he was too short to reach for the receipt, had ruined his moment.
Proof, perhaps, that he's not quite ready for this giant leap into the adult world.
Christian, eight-year-old Isobel and my 11-year-old son Daniel are among the first children in the country to apply for and be issued with debit cards, launched by Visa and the payment service PKTMNY (an abbreviation of 'pocket money').
The scheme, devised by a group of mothers and fathers who met at the school gates, has been set up so parents can take control, albeit remotely, of their children's spending habits.
My children's accounts are in my name: I pay money into them from my current account as an occasional lump sum or a weekly pocket money allowance.
Then I set limits on how much they are allowed to withdraw from a cashpoint or spend in shops and online each week.
The launch of the card last month, with a target market of eight to 16-year-olds, sparked controversy. Critics, among them Justin Modray, founder of the advice website Candid Money, argued that such cards could lead to children getting hooked on credit.
He warned: 'Parents might not want their children to get used to spending on plastic, in case they migrate to credit cards when they are older.
'And while cards will allow children to shop online, most parents want to keep a tight rein on what their children are up to on the internet.'
aily Mail 
