What Would You Do If Your Kid Ordered 70,000 Dum-Dums? Here’s How to Keep It From Happening to You

Parenthood is full of surprises – and sometimes, one of those surprises is 70,000 Dum-Dum lollipops showing up on your doorstep. At least, that was the surprise for one mom in Kentucky. Holly LaFavers, mom of 8-year-old Liam, found herself in a sticky situation when she realized Liam had ordered 70,000 lollipops off of Amazon while playing on her phone. All because he wanted to throw a carnival and share the candy with his friends.

The bad news? The order cost LaFavers $4,000. The good news is that she was eventually able to get a refund from Amazon, but not before 22 cases of Dum-Dums showed up at her door. LaFavers claimed that she was planning on changing the settings in her phone to prevent this from happening again. As sweet as Liam's intentions were, you might be wondering how you can avoid this exact situation from happening to you. Here are a few tricks to prevent your kid from ordering large amounts of candy (or other items) from your phone.

It seems like Liam had permission to play with his mom's phone, but she probably wasn't expecting him to go on a shopping spree. If you don't allow your kid to play with your phone, the easiest way to keep them out of it is to keep it locked when you're not using it.

Amazon has a feature in their app known as one-click purchasing. When you need to order something right away, it makes it simple to make the purchase with just one click. It also makes it easier for kids to buy something on your phone with the click of a button – even if they didn't mean to. In the One-Click Manager page on Amazon, you can disable this feature.

Amazon knows that these kinds of things happen, which is why they have a parental controls function in their app. If you go to your account, click on settings, and then click on parental controls, it allows you to activate parental controls for your account. This requires you to verify your account before making any purchases in the app.

If you're an Alexa family, your child might know how to give all kinds of commands to Alexa. But if you want to keep your child from being able to say, "Alexa, order 70,000 Dum-Dums," and having boxes of candy show up at your house, disable voice purchasing in the Alexa app.

Saving your debit or credit card information in your Amazon account makes it simple to order what you need. However, if your kiddo gets a hold of your phone, it also makes it easy for them to order stuff off Amazon. Consider removing your saved payment methods if you're concerned about your child getting past any other privacy settings.

If your child has their own phone or tablet, you might be equally concerned that they may start buying things on their device without your permission. Amazon Family is a great way to keep your kids' account separated from yours and allows you to manage your services, subscriptions, and digital content in one place.

If you do have Amazon Family, you're able to create up to four child accounts that you can manage with your other subscriptions. No shopping is allowed with a child account, so your child can sign into Amazon to stream videos or music without being able to purchase anything.

This may seem like a given, but to keep your child from doing things on your phone that they're not supposed to, supervise their screen time. They're far less likely to go on apps they're not supposed to or buy things they're not allowed to if they're using your phone while you're in the same room.

Considering most of us use debit cards, credit cards, or even our smartphones to buy things nowadays, most kids don't actually understand how money works. Especially if they're younger, they may not understand what's involved when they make a purchase. Teach your children the value of money, and it will help them understand the consequences of buying thousands of dollars' worth of candy.