Top 5 Ways Your Smart Home Can Help Take Care of Your Kids

By Rafi Zauer, Head of Marketing at Essence

No matter how well you organize yourself, life happens: it is not possible for any parent to watch their kids 24 hours a day. When they are young, even if you are at home you can’t keep your eyes on them all the time, and of course, at some point, when they get older, they will have to stay home alone. But fear not, smart homes are here to help you on the adventure of raising a family. Here are 5 ways a smart home can help you take better care of your kids at all life stages, providing some much needed peace of mind:

1. Baby monitoring
A connected home system equipped with a smart camera can double as a baby monitoring solution. Thanks to motion detection technologies, the camera will start recording the moment the baby begins to stir in the crib, sending real-time video straight to your smartphone. You will also be able to proactively request live images and see what the baby is up to at any time.

2. No more lost keys
In case your children come home from school while you are still at work, you can be reassured, knowing that they won’t need to be carrying around the house keys anymore, with the risk of losing them —again — and save you the security risk and the hazard in changing the lock. With the help of a smart lock, all they will need to enter the house is a security code. And even if they forget the code, you will be able to grant them access to the house from your smartphone, unlocking the door for them.

3. Keeping strangers away
As much as we warn our kids to never open the door for strangers, we all know that children can be too innocent and trusting. With a smart home solution you can receive an immediate alert every time the door opens and use your camera to check who came in. In case you see a stranger in the house and feel your children are in danger, you can act immediately by contacting them, coming home or calling the police when necessary.

4. Being in the know
We want our children to feel we trust them and give them a sense of independence as they grow up, but we can’t help it- we are just worried about them! With a smart home solution, you can allow your children relative freedom, but still know at all times what is going on at home. For example, you will always know at what time your kids come home from school and make sure that they are safe, even if they forget to give you a call when they arrive, as they were supposed to. Also, you can use your camera to see what your children are doing when they are alone at home- Are they doing their homework? Are they doing anything dangerous like playing with fire? Are your precious teenagers having a house party while you are on vacation?

With a smart home you will be in the know of what your children are doing at all times and keep everything under control, without nagging them too much.

5. Protect them from themselves
A person’s home is considered the safest place for him to be in, but it can also hold danger for our kids who don’t understand the consequences of their actions and tend to stretch the boundaries. Ever went on a weekend trip and on your return found the liquor cabinet suspiciously short of stock? As parents, sometimes we have to protect our children from themselves. With a smart home solution, you can install magnets and motion detectors on all the doors and drawers from which you want to protect your kids, like a gun room or a medical cabinet. You can create a rule to get a real-time alert when someone opens the door, creating a log in your phone app. If you combine the sensors with a camera, you’ll even be able to see who it was.

These are just some ideas of how a smart home solution can help you take care of your kids, but thanks to smart rules you can create many different scenarios to suit your family’s needs. For example, you can turn the lights on for your little one if he got up at night to go to the bathroom or for your teenage daughter when she comes home late at night without having to get out of bed, and even turn them off for them if they forgot to do so. Also, by installing a motion detector in the room, you’ll be able to know if they are awake in the morning, making sure they are not late for school. As you see, the possibilities are endless!

Rafi Zauer is Head of Marketing at Essence, providers of intelligent end-to-end IoT platforms for service providers offering home security, automation and senior care services.