All parents want to keep their children safe, but are some going too far? You may think so when you hear about these five new gadgets parents use to keep tabs on their children.
1. What do you think about a monitoring system tracks the baby’s breathing rhythms and relays infrared images from the nursery? Too much? Some parents don’t think so, despite the fact that the electronics have caused the strangling deaths of two infants. When you trade off one danger for another, what benefit do you really get? Several steps above the old baby monitors, the new ones shouldn’t take the place of actual supervision and should not be relied on to take care of any emergency. Like all technology, it has its limits.
2. How about a nanny cam, to keep watch on the child and the child’s hired caregivers? I know you can’t always be home, but doesn’t this strike you as a little overprotective? Turning your own house into a Big Brother set is not my idea of safety. A lack of trust is certainly implied here, also. But I guess it’s like the traffic cams; better to catch it on tape for the lawyers.
3. Toddlers and grade-schoolers can be equipped with GPS devices enabling a parent to know their location should something go awry. Okay, let’s look at this one logically. Sounds like a good idea. One company, Brick House Security, offers a GPS child locater for $200 that functions as a digital watch and can be locked into the child’s wrist. If forcibly removed, an alert is sent to the parent’s cell phone and email. Why, exactly, do I want my child strapped up like a convict? Oh, yeah… safety.
Let’s take it one step further. A satellite-enabled tracking device could be implanted in the child – a technology now expanding in Mexico among people distressed by a kidnapping epidemic there. I understand that idea, really. Micro-chipping children and dogs… However, a child who ran away from home or a noncustodial parent who abducted a child might make a….gruesome attempt to remove the device. Road-side surgery is not recommended.
4. You can take a step down and go for the simple alarm attached to the child. If you are separated from your child, just hit the handy panic switch and an alarm attached to them will sound. Or they can hit the button and notify you that they are lost or in trouble. Of course, shouting for help would probably work better.
5. Worried about their internet and cell phone use? Try Safe Text – a system enabling parents, for $5 a month, to monitor their children’s text-messaging. The system sends alerts when it detects potentially dangerous or inappropriate text messages, so the parents don’t have to review vast numbers of messages themselves. Similar things are out there for the home computer. Why bother teaching them internet safety? Just watch everything they do.
Ah, the joys of the information age. So many tools, so little time. It seems strange to me that parents need all these things. Whatever happened to talking with your children? Forming a relationship? Fostering good morals and ethics? Or have those fallen to the wayside as parents scramble to keep their children safe through money and things? Save your cash and take the time to be with your kids. You’ll all be better off in the long run.
Author Bio:
This is a guest post from Laura Backes, she enjoys writing about all kinds of subjects and also topics related to internet service in my area. You can reach her at: laurabackes8 @ gmail.com
image credit https://www.lapetite.com/blog/2015/07/top-tech-that-keeps-kids-safe-wearables-apps-sites-devices/
I think “alarm” system is best for the security purpose rest all are just interfering the privacy of a child. I think we need to give some space to a child to build up his own mind-set.
As a parent, I’ll do most anything to keep my child safe. I probably wouldn’t implant a microchip though as that’s a bit extreme.
Every scientific invention has its pros and cons… take an example of cars, there is always a chance of an accident. But its not the invention but the usage which is wrong. Anything in excess is wrong. So its upto people to understand how to use these things. No one can stop people from using these, even the parents, as you mentioned.
I agree that growing children needs careful monitoring from parents and the devices as mentioned above are quite useful. Thanks for sharing these.
It is very important to keep a check on children in this modern era when crime rates are always on the high. I have used the channel lock system on my home television to prevent my child from watching inappropriate stuff.
Seems like kids could easily figure out some slang or code words to use to bypass that text-monitoring system. They probably already do anyway.
Quite a handy gadgets to keep kids safe.Nice share.
I agree with you technology can’t replace real parenting, talks and bonds formed.
In this world this is very important . You shared some handy tools .Thanks for sharing these .
To my mind some parents are too crazy about their children’s safety, I can’t understand it sometimes.
Now a days technology are growing really fast. Having a tracking device in mobile phones to your children can help you out track your children where they go and to make sure they are safe.
Nice stuff!I really need it.Lately my kids have been handful, so I had to give the safest gadgets.Thank you for sharing.
Online security and child protection are becoming more and more serious matters, if you ask me.
One solution if your kid spends too much time online could be to point him towards playing games rather than browsing strange websites.
This of course rises the question about how you make sure your kid doesn’t get addicted, but I played a lot of games when I was young and turned out just fine 🙂
I want to point out the fact there’s another kind of protection you might need if your kids use gadgets a lot. It’s the protection for the actual gadget (cases, pouches,sleeves, backpacks and so on), so that your investment (if you can call that) is safe from the clumsy hands of our children.
I know it doesn’t protect their privacy, or innocence, like the tools for online protection for example, but it surely helps when it comes to saving money, don’t you think?
It’s very important to keep you kids save while you travel, that’s why I always recommend planning ahead and give your kids some kind of gadgets that allow them to contact you faster in case you get lost from each other and you need to communicate.
Walkie talkies are good for short range, but a pre-paid cellular (you don’t want to pay too much for roaming) is a must when you travel, if you ask me.
The latest gadget i heard parents using against their kids were keyloggers! Now that’s getting extreme! As you mention, it should be about forming genuine relationships as opposed to becoming a secret detective!
For me,nothing beat personal care from a parent but I do understand the concept of “work”. The best protection for them is the camera. This thing enables me to know what my children’s activity in our home when I’m out and of course to know if my nanny is doing her job properly. I would try some of the others in your list, thanks for sharing.
Child safety is an ever pressing issue. First people have to acknowledge the risks and then act to prevent them
Now that every child has access to a mobile device is very important to protect their innocence online by limiting access to compromising materials.
And we all know there are lots of websites out there not meant for children…
I think part of the process of protection your children is also educating them about the dangers they face. Don’t you think that?
All the above gadgets are useful. I found the one for finding inappropriate text messages is the most useful as busy parents have no time to go through the whole lot of messages. This is quite interesting that the gadget catches inappropriate terminology 🙂
I think that these gadgets are good with the exception of number 5. While it is debatable, I think that in a way, it really does not keep your children safe. I prefer to relay the message on to them while not “invading” their own privacy
Hi Laura,
Kids are very precious for their parents. We have a 17 month old at home who had a bad infection and was sick all the time. Although he is sleeping tight you just wonder what if they are sick in their sleep and they choke. So a monitor is a great solution.
Hooking up gps to your kid is one thing but then again, if you live in a unsafe neighbourhood I can fully understand why parents have these things.
Monitoring text and computers is maybe not the right thing, if you educate and are involved with your children they should talk about what they do. But then again I can understand that some kids got in trouble with sexting (sexy text messages) so parents want to know and see if their kids are breaking the law.
Nik
It’s obvious that growing children’s should be mentored every time.
The babysitter or maids are not trustworthy now a days.you have to monitor them to if you are working somewhere else.
your devices to monitor them are good and truly useful.
We love our kids more than anything in this world and of course we would do anything or just literally everything to make this as easy and less complicated as possible. Like my daughter who is now six. I am so very afraid of here going to one location and another since she loves to roam around so i guess the GPS kind a thing might help for me.
thanks for sharing this useful topic about kids protection. keep up the right and great work.
I like Try Safe Text, this could solving my problems regarding internet if it used by my kids. I’m not affraid with the “good ” site but the “bad ” site i’m really scared coz it can effect my kids instanly
Special monitoring from parents are very neccessary for kids in order to save them from illegal contents in internet
Hi Laura,
What about the resent news about ISP’s allowing new users to block adult content through their services? I thought that was a good more forward in the right direction.
Quite good tools . Children really need monitoring .
This blog is really very helpful and informative too. Great post by Lawmacs. It would definitely help parents to choose the right gadgets for their kids in order to keep them safe and secure. Thanks for sharing such a useful post with us. Greatly helped!
For our child to be more safer, we should buy some of the latest gadget nowadays, for example I-pod for our kids to listen to music plus games, laptop for them to learn, at least we know that they are still inside the house doing something, its not bad to expose them in true nature but make sure with parents supervision. am I right?
You also should have mentioned something related to Internet. It’s extremely important to monitor your kid’s internet access and prevent it for getting on harmful sites, with violent images or pornography.
And luckily, it’s not that complicated to do that, there are a bunch of programs you can install on your computer jut for that and they are usually quite cheap.
Attaching a GPS device in the bag won’t be a bad idea,but in countries like India, I don’t think it will help.
Amazing answer Bishwajeet, its a really good idea to use GPS, but why you mentioned that it wont help in India ?
I think that most of these things are way too much!
I wouldn’t have learned ANYTHING about how life really works if my parents were over my head the whole time. Don’t tell me that the times are more dangerous now because I was growing up in a country that was struck by a war at the time. It doesn’t get any more dangerous than that.
Anyway, there are the extreme situations where you need to monitor your child all the time – in case of some severe illness, but I can’t wait the moment when they’ll invent some gadget to protect children from over protection.
I think GPS is the best solution. GPS with intelligent alarm system can help parents keep their kids safe.
I think to keep your kids safe, you must be keep where your kids activity, but it’s no problem if you will make your kids safe with above stuff.
Quite a handy gadgets to keep kids safe hmm great very helpful post.
All 5 Gadgets are awesome. But in my view ‘simple alarm’ is good one. I hope it work from distance range.
All the gadgets are really handy but I liked the idea of strapping a GPS device on the wrist of the child. Thanks for sharing buddy
If you could guide children well them you don’t need this gadgets.
Thanks for share by the way and great write up. Cheers!
As for the baby monitors, I see their use and purpose, but I don’t think they are at all necessary especially if you are going to be around your child. Nothing can compare to actual parent or a person’s watching of a child.
well not everyone trusted anyone including my parents. I can’t help not to object when they installed nanny cams for my brother. But I guess prevention is better than cure, right?
A very handy gadget for child’s protection. The most priority of a parents is to keep their children safe and protected especially when they are away! This is a one of a kind device that will surely hit to the market for protection purposes.
If you’re responsible parents, gadgets is not needed but due to work load time is a issue. A surveillance cam is a helpful tool to monitor you kids in that way your confident that you kids are safe.
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Thank you for sharing buddy..It’s a good reminder for parents to safety their child with these gadgets.
Somehow our parents never had these gadgets and we turned out ok 🙂
Its really a great post I have ever seen. Its an amazing experience. I would like to visit it again and again. because I need some more information. Now a days people are in to the habit of making posts. I think it would be a good inspiration for them.This kind of post should go on.
I am single right now however these points are very useful for married Moms to keep their child safe. the alarm tip is very useful and very beneficial for all of us.
Those are some great gadgets to keep the kids safe. Nanny cams can be quite useful.
The safety of our children is our number one priority. I’m glad there are available gadgets out there to keep track of our children’s activity.
I am also a parent, i only allowed my kids to use cp. When it comes to using internet,
I make it sure that I know what they are searching.
I always strive to be a good parent and to keep my kids safe, but implanting microchip seems kind of too muck for me. May be a littel bit more communication won’t be bad to improve the relation between kids and parents.
What a wonderful thought.really very impressive.The gadgets are very new and quite interesting.
Thank you for the in formation. This is so much useful for a single mom like me. I cant afford to hire a nanny to take care of her while im away at work so i decided to stop. Hopefully next year i can go back to work. My lovely kid is turning 7year old and has a Check this out also, it might help you if you want to get a boost out of your life..thing for gadgets. So it will not be hard for me to contact hr from time to time. Visit ZMAboost.com
Now technology is too advance and child care system is also available in IT world.
Thanks for the information. I have a son and I could definitely use some of this technology to lower my stress. I also agree with one of th other commenters that is does not replace real parenting. Thanks again
Its nice to know that our children are safe. Thanks for this information.
with busy schedule and regular task, sometimes it is impossible to keep an eye on child 24*7 hours. These are the excellent gadgets, especially one with Nany cam which helps to keep the child safe and give notification when something goes wrong.
Great Post, I think this is a big alarm for all those parents who handover the gadgets to their kids at a very infant age. this might aware them of the threats caused by electrical gadgets
I am not a parent but I can imagine how scary it would be to imagine losing a child. Some of these gadgets seem like an invasion of privacy and some seem pretty reasonable. The gadgets like monitoring text messages and the baby monitoring system might be a little too much. The camera in the house is pretty scary too unless you are a parent who’s child has accused the babysitter of doing something against the rules and you put a secret camera to check if it’s true. It also depends on how old your child is. I would only use these while the child is too young to know right from wrong. If I was a parent of a young child, I might use the gps bracelet if it was desecrate like a real bracelet just because they are too young to have a phone. Although you do make a good point about talking your children and forming relationships, at the same time, there are some children who just like to explore and wonder off. I believe in safety first because you can’t always be there to protect your child 24/7.
Some things I do believe in and some I think are just invading your child’s privacy. The text message monitoring is totally inappropriate if you teach your children what the should not be saying. The cameras could be useful to catch an alleged bad babysitter, but not on the daily.
The other security gadgets like the gps bracelet should only be used on children who are at a very young age; too young to have a phone. And I believe that the bracelet should actually look like a bracelet or a kidnapper would just see it and take it off.
I do agree with you about talking to your children and spending time to teach them from right an wrong, but unfortunately there are just some children who like to explore and wonder off.
I’am not a parent yet, but if ever I will become a parent someday, of course I’am looking forward for the goodness of my future kid and see to it that they are safe..thank you for the nice post..
With the rise of cyber bullying, I guess it’s no surprise parents are taking more measures to safeguard their children.
Fear, real or perceived, in our culture has been pushed to an extreme. Alarms on children? Marketing these products I’m sure will also increase fear. Posing a threat is great for this kind of business.
to keep my child under my nose,i use a software in their pc,which records every site opened,it automatically sends updates to my mail,so i dont have any tension
also,we can log into the product’s website,login,and watch the live telecast of the pc,where the softwere is installed,
try buying one- sniperspy
Keeping children safe can be tough. I think as this devices are used more often so will the price drop to make these device more affordable. Good article.
Mr MakingUsmile
it is mothers’ nature to be over protective but i don’t such gadget is enough. Base from the authors’ sighted on first gadget there is always a limitation; it is not good to use such when your child’s life at stake…
Technology relating to satellites has come on in leaps and bounds over the past few years and it really is incredible what it is possible to do these days.
The monitoring system is lil dangerous for the kids 🙁 I heard about a japan system that will made a software for 21+ years by a password. The system will detect the web sites with dangareours content and will requied the password ( by parents).
I believe in the GPS system. It can make my children safe and I can monitor where they are.
Security cameras are always nice to have to keep your family and house safe while away and you can always check up on the children while your out at the store or work, just login to a computer on check on your smart phone, thats what i do. GPS are nice too when children are older. Look around at security systems!
I do agree that technology is made for convenience and goodness of everybody and also it has its limitation. These safety gadgets can keep your baby being safe but still if you are going to teach moral lessons to your child and have time to talk to them then you can have more chances on keeping them safe. These are gadgets are just devices to help you but still if you will do your part as a parent to keep your children to be safe then they will never encounter any danger.
i personally dont think that any of it over doing it . sometimes its just needed . nanny cam? do you know how many nannys have been caught abusing our children because of nanny cams ? i say these are just all taking good precaution .
These are the excellent gadgets ,Thanks for sharing these .
Very good gadget and thanks for share with us and let us know about your second blog.
These gadgets are child friendly but parents should supervise it.
Security cameras are always nice to have to keep your family and house safe while away and you can always check up on the children while your out at the store or work, just login to a computer on check on your smart phone, thats what i do. GPS are nice too when children are older. Look around at security systems!
Those are some cool gadgets to monitor your child especially when you are too busy to check them. But for me, what matters the most is the time you spend with your children, how you handle and take good care of them by hand and in your own motherly/fatherly ways.
Nowadays kids must have mobile phones that have GPS devices. With this they will be easily located if in times that they are lost or they went on places that have a lot of people.
Security cameras are always a great device, GPS products can help provide some comfort to parents to know where their children are, well it tells you where the phone is and hopefully the phone is with them. Any products that help protect the family are going to be worthy of consideration.
Nanny cam is great especially if both the couples are working and kids are always left by their nannies or baby sitter.
Having a video camera especially when parents are out for a long time. It really need more monitring and reminders.
This is much related with the movie I watched 4 days ago entitled “The Nanny Diaries”. The mother installed a nanny cam and place it in the eyes of the teddy bear but the nanny knew it and sabotage the cam and tell the truth of what kind of mother her employer is.
I think your article has some nice concept although although the probalility of a child getting lost is still high because of loopholes that still exist in our system. The greatest safeguarding measure i will suggest is human inteligence.
I really commend you on this concepts but i do disagree with you that whatever technology that are in place, human inteligent still remain the best.
Kids nowadays don’t need those I guess. But if they do, then that would be weird.
All the gadgets are very useful. I love them. the idea of “alarm” is also very creative. Why do not we try this?
I use a tracking device with my child when we go out into large crowds since we live in a big city. It is an Atlas Companion, and it just looks like a watch. I feel that some of the apps or the phones just don’t work as well because people here in Chicago will just snatch the phone out of your hand and laugh. Also, she is too young for all that jazz.
I haven’t heard of nanny cam but this seems so effective in guiding kids. It can help you do your household chores while keeping them in sight. A way to go app for keeping your kids safe an sound.