First computer for kids

[five.five-six]

So, if they already have tablets, what they are going to want to do at those ages or very soon is play roblocks and Minecraft. Both of which require a surprising amount of GPU horsepower for what they are. Not that you need to buy a liquid cooled dedicated gaming box or a $500-$2,500 GPU but most repurposed workstations will fall flat on their faces with these simple games.

[Dragunov]

We raised 4 kids in the computer age.
Started with a shared desktop, migrated to shared laptops, then eventually personal laptops.
Some things we did right:
1) establish the usage rules up front, so there's less push-back when you impose limits or perception of you unfairly moving the goalposts or indiscriminately making up rules.
2) establish public computing space and a rule against computers in bedrooms or private areas. We also told them up front that the screens had to be visible to the room, but that rule was loosely applied on an as-appropriate basis.
3) have an open conversation about inviting 7 billion people into your house, including thieves and other unscrupulous types.
4) converse about privacy, illustrated by anecdotes, and followed-up by frequent conversations to stay abreast of their progress and activity. For example, my youngest (gentle, sweet, loving girl who loved reaching out to new students) once told us about her new friend who had contacted her out of the blue online, and who happened to attend the same school, and had been asking where she lived. Of course, this was a phishing expedition - there was no such student.
5) buy a router that allow establishment of parental controls (white-listing/black-listing, time-limits - that sort of thing).
6) anticipate broken keys, gummed up keyboards, etc. - we racked it up to educational cost.
7) virtual machines or, first thing, recovery drive. Kids ~will~ pervert the OS.

That's off the top of my head, and I hope others chime in to supplement with their experience. I'm sure there's threads dedicated to this type of topic, but I rarely surf this sub-forum - apologies if my tips are redundant or offend.

This, is some of the best advice in this thread. Get handy with minor repairs, and replacing keyboards, and screens. Learn the parental controls, Manage their usage.

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