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Ask Slashdot: Panic Button a Very Young Child Can Use
First time accepted submitter Zotonian writes My wife is epileptic. Her seizures have been well controlled by medication until recently. My concern is that we have a toddler and infant at home. I've set up cameras so I can monitor the house, but I'm looking for a solution that my 2 year old daughter can hit a button to tell me to look at them if necessary. Most of the options I'm finding off the shelf notify first responders and I'm concerned of the number of false positives a toddler might initiate. Other solutions like cellphones or wearables for kids are too overloaded with unnecessary options like GPS, phone, games, etc. I'd rather have a simple 'push button' solution I can wire into my router that would send me a text or chat message that alerts me to check the cameras. Then if there is an actually emergency I can take the steps from there. I'm looking for cheap and simple. Any suggestions from the Slashdot community?
Nobody on these forums can offer you legal advice but what you're asking sounds like a good way to get your kid taken away.
You're asking for a kind of button that will make it possible to rely upon a 2-year-old child as a caretaker. This is not a technology problem, and unless someone finds a way to accelerate human development of children to an alarming rate, it's not a solvable one either. And I have to say, what you're proposing seems like an inherently risky situation...to your wife and child both. Your wife runs the risk of your not being alerted, and I can't even guess what it would do to a child to have that kind of responsibility, especially if she doesn't hit the button for whatever reason, and ends up haunted by that for the rest of your life.
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
I assumed he is a good man but a shitty engineer, so he asked here for help from people who are good engineers but shitty human beings.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Yeah, I have a suggestion. Chill the fuck out. Watch your 2 year old, and when he/she's asleep, don't worry about it.
While you can probably delay the situations with the highest risk factors (e.g. baby's bath time) until both parents are home, there's a lot of things that potentially could go wrong while unattended. For example, A sudden onset seizure could cause the wife to drop the baby, or hit her own head on the coffee table, or who knows what else. Having a way for the 2 year old to call for help on her own in such situations could make a tremendous difference
This was a reasonable question looking for help mitigating very real risks -- don't be a dick about it.
That said: perhaps the easiest way would be to have a very basic speaker phone set up somewhere with a one-push button to actually CALL dad in case of emergency. A benefit of that over a silent email/sms/whatever setup is that it could give the 2-year old instant feedback that help is coming if there really is a problem, and depending on the verbal skills of the kid dad can save precious time as well: "mom fell and isn't moving!" vs. wasting time to try to remotely view your cameras first and see what happened.
(Although a possible downside is that she may just start hitting it anytime she wants to talk to dad during office hours)
You're looking for the wrong thing. You want your two-year-old and a toddler to be responsible for telling you when there's an emergency?! Are you fucking nuts? The solution here is not some unreliable piece of tech based on a homebrew solution susceptible to all the failures of internet service, IP cameras, and routing equipment. The solution here is nursing care or other medical devices. You need to talk to your doctor, but a bunch of IT nerds on the internet.
-1 disagree is not a modifier for a reason. -1 troll, flaimbait, redundant, overrated are NOT acceptable substitutes.
There are technical solutions that your wife could press (if she is capable of some kind of "last action" when she feels the onset) or something that could even sensibly and automatically react to certain stimuli (like not being upright, i.e. lying on the floor, irregular heartbeat, motion sensors that can identify seizures, etc), but whatever you do, DO NOT put this burden on your kid.
You are essentially asking for something that would allow you to make your kid the caretaker of your wife. That's something you might want to consider in, say, 40 years, but most certainly NOT when the child is actually still a child! What this could lead to is what's generally known as parentification. Read the link if you want to know why that's a BAD idea.
And that's even ignoring the worst possible case: Your wife getting seriously injured and your child feeling responsible for this. I think I don't have to dig up a link for you to know why that would be damaging to your child.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Or, he could, you know ... BE A FUCKING PARENT.
I'm thinking dad is working (so he can earn, you know, a fucking paycheck to buy fucking food and keep a fucking roof over their fucking heads) while mom is at home being a parent (unless she can't because she's having a fucking seizure).
I live ze unknown. I love ze unknown. I am ze unknown.
I was not going to be the first one to say it, but the exact same thought passed through my head.
This guy has a wife with a serious illness AND a two year old child. His solution is to make it possible for his two year old to keep an eye on his wife.
What kind of long term trauma is that going to cause? "Now Sally, keep a close eye on your mom because it is on you to make sure that when she starts convulsing that you make sure daddy is aware of it." What kind of sick person puts that responsibility on a toddler?
Calm down.
His wife's eyes are on the kid. But Mom has epilepsy, so it's statistically likely that eventually she'll have a seizure while she's the only grown-up at home. The solution back when I was growing up would have been something along the lines of "go to the neighbor lady down the street, and she'll decide whether to call the police" but nowadays it could easily be "ping dad with a technological doohickey and he'll decide."
What kind of sick person puts that responsibility on a toddler?
You know nothing about him, his wife, or his situation. Some people have severe epilepsy attacks, but others have milder attacks that they quickly recover from. Just because he is trying to make a situation safer, doesn't imply that the original situation was dangerous.
What if instead of an epileptic, he was worried about his elderly mother falling or having a heart attack? Do you think it would be negligent for him to install a panic button, and teach his daughter how to use it, just in case grandma has an accident?
Your epileptic wife is having attacks, and you want a TWO year old to be not only alone in that situation, but responsible for a panic button? Dude, you are sick and need to get a frickin clue. Fast! Someone should seriously turn you in for child endangerment bordering on abuse!
Yeah, I honestly had to consider whether or not this was an early April fools gag...
You seem to have misread his situation, it's not that he *wants* that situation, it's a situation he wants to avoid. Yet, he also wants to prepare for it.
You're a complete retard. And I use that term in the nicest possible way to describe an asshole with a low IQ.
All your solutions require dependence in the kindness of strangers, or money. Money this guy may not have, and kindness he has no right to expect (eg an athiest walks into an church and asks for permanent long term health from an organization with diametrically opposed values... That'll end well).
And its "au pair" you ignorant shitbucket.
You seem to suggest that putting responsibility on a person is a psychologically damaging thing. I disagree, and I think simple responsibilities are great and healthy at any age. This is a difficult situation, but these seizures might happen at most once or twice a year - are you really saying that the child can never be alone with her mother, ever, on the off chance that a seizure hits? Seizures would be potentially traumatic and scary, but there would be no way of sheltering her from them without taking such dramatic measures.
I've got a 2-year-old at home, and she would be perfectly capable of understanding "if Mommy falls down or gets hurt, push this button and Daddy will come help". This is certainly much better than crossing your fingers and hoping it won't happen again.