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?

Comments

No

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:No

[sumdumass]

An infant and 2 year old aren't exactly capable of taking care of themselves. If the person supervising them is in a position where due to medical reasons, they might not be able to supervise them, some busybody can complain they are in harms way which will get CPS involved and they like taking kids until you jump through hoops of fire backwards with your eyes closed while reciting some latin poem.

No, seriously. You would not believe how much trouble CPS or your local equivilant can be. Hell, there have been stories of CPS getting involved because 4 and 5 year old were playing in a fenced in bavk yard and the parent was watching them through a window from inside the house. Called it neglect.

Re:No

[BarbaraHudson]

Better to put them into daycare, or find someone else with similar-age kids and both people baby-sit all the kids at the same time. Also, you really don't want to put that sort of responsibility on a two-year-old. Better to get a service dog that can alert others by doing exactly what you want.

Service Dogs

They make great pets and loyal companions, but did you know dogs can also be trained to help people with epilepsy? While service dogs are often associated with people who have visual impairments, seizure alert dogs are becoming more and more popular around the world. Their calm demeanour and safety training gives people the confidence to live independently.

Some common tasks that trainers can teach the dog include:

staying close to the person with epilepsy to prevent injury
fetching medication or a telephone
alerting a caretaker
activating an emergency call system (e.g. pushing a Lifeline button)
“blocking” a wandering person (usually during absence seizures and complex partial seizures) from walking into dangerous areas (Keep in mind that dogs cannot tell whether an action, like walking onto a street or down the stairs, is intentional or not.)

The button isn't the problem

[Shoten]

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.

Re:The button isn't the problem

[King_TJ]

Yeah, except all he's *really* asking for here is an additional way to get notified if something's wrong, so he could take a look for himself via an internet connected camera.

This wouldn't (shouldn't) be about trying to use a 2 year old as a caretaker. The way I'm reading this, he just wants an extra fail-safe in place. (I think even a 2 year old is mentally functional enough to realize something's wrong with mom if she suddenly falls to the floor, flails around and acts generally unresponsive. It would probably make the kid feel better, not worse, if he or she knew simply pressing a button would be a way to communicate "help!".)

One of our kids used to have seizures (he's been free of them for a couple of years now while taking medication), and his younger sister, around age 2-3, was able to come tell us when it happened to him, if he was up in his room and we didn't notice it immediately.

Re:The button isn't the problem

[DRJlaw]

You're asking for a kind of button that will make it possible to rely upon a 2-year-old child as a caretaker.

That's funny. I thought he was asking for a kind of button that would make it possible for his child to communicate with him as a backup measure, given the video surveillance and all.

Of course you're free to argue that epileptics cannot be left unsupervised. Good luck with that.

You're also free to argue that epileptic parents should not be allowed to be alone with their children since their children might be required to be "caretakers," whether via a button, a telephone capable of 911, or merely living within distance to run to a neighbor. Because we'd all support that.

After all, this isn't an attempt to marginally improve a circumstance. This is an attempt to shift all responsibility for the parent's care onto the child. Not.

Re:The button isn't the problem

[NicBenjamin]

Epilepsy isn't some debilitating condition that requires 24/7 care. Epileptics are fine most of the time, particularly if they control their seizures with medication. Most of them actually have productive lives, with stressful jobs, and manage to hold shit down. As a stay-at-home mom of very small children this guy's wife can control her risk factors (particularly her amount of sleep, when she takes medication, etc.) much better then somebody whose work-schedule changes every week, has lots of deadlines, etc.

But if she does have a seizure it would be really bad because a) she'd be alone with nobody to call for help, and b) the kids would be alone.

A two-year-old can easily understand when something's wrong with Mommy. Most two-year-olds will know something is wrong with Mommy before Mommy knows something is wrong with Mommy, particularly if she's a home-maker. If you're two, and you've got a stay-at-home-mom, she is your entire world. A two-year-old can understand "press this button." If the kid decides pressing the button is a good game there's no harm because the police haven't been called.

Re:Not sure why this is on Slashdot

[OrangeTide]

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.

Re:Chill out

[xlsior]

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)

Re:Arduino Panic Button

[hondo77]

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).

Re:Arduino Panic Button

[NicBenjamin]

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."

Re:Arduino Panic Button

[ShanghaiBill]

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?

Re:wait, what the hell?

[hawguy]

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.

Re:Arduino Panic Button

[werepants]

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.