If your child is a normal and healthy baby, without any sleep problems or illnesses, monitoring your little one sleep with a video camera past age 12 to 15 months “is really probably unnecessary.”
That’s according to Judith Owens, director of sleep medicine at Children’s National Medical Center in Washington, a consultant with the American Academy of Pediatrics and the sleep expert I interviewed for a post in The New York Times’ Motherlode blog on how parents are the new big brother.
But whether you choose to stop your video surveillance around a year or a few years later, you’re eventually going to be left with a video monitor that you no longer need for your little one’s nursery.
Today’s hint is one idea for what to do with it: Turn it into a playroom (or playroom space) monitor.
Julie Dodge, product manager for Summer Infant’s monitor line, says she has heard of lots of parents moving video monitors into playrooms after the bedtime and naptime monitoring days are over. “There are just parents who like to keep an eye on their kids,” she says.
Similarly, Alan Fields, co-author of baby gear review book Baby Bargains and the “Best Baby Monitors” online guide, says many parents repurpose the devices into monitors for playrooms or other areas of the house where older children hang out (think “teen caves”).
To be sure, instead of keeping the monitor, there’s always the option of selling it for some extra money or giving it away to new parents who need it for the nursery monitoring purpose.
And of course, if you continue watching your child as he or she moves beyond the preschool years, you’re probably making it even more likely that your offspring will become used to both being in the spotlight and having little privacy, the possible societal implications of video monitors I wrote about over at Motherlode.
Still, if you fall into the category of parents, described by Ms. Dodge, who simply want to keep tabs on children while they’re in a different room, a playroom repurposing may be something to consider.
What do you recommend doing with baby video and audio monitors once the sleep monitoring days are over?
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I was researching something online yesterday, and I stumbled into a number of stories about networked video baby monitors getting hacked.
Here’s one example: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/baby-monitoring-camera-hacked-taunts-family-article-1.1771399 though there are many.
We kind of missed the video monitor phenomenon. Most everything mid-range was audio when our oldest was born, so I bought one and kept using for all my kids.
We did sometimes hear the neighbors’ monitor signal (over a block away), so I assumed they could hear ours if their base was turned off. Over time I grew more uncomfortable with an open audio broadcast from our home. Ultimately, I decided that I would only use the monitor when someone was ill.
Anyone using a networked monitor needs to research the security issues particular to their camera, keep all their security software on their home network up-to-date and NEVER use default or weak passwords on their camera or monitor.
Great tip. Our monitor is from 2012 and my husband and I swear we heard another baby crying on it once, and then I checked the instructions, which actually say this can happen. I’ve heard from folks like the experts at Baby Bargains that newer designs don’t have this problem as much, but researching a model’s particular security issues is a must.