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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?
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)
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.
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.)
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
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.
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 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.