5 Ways to Make Your Smart Home More Child-Friendly

Smart home technology has enhanced the functionality of our houses. For many homeowners, it’s an opportunity to go all out to meet their needs. However, having kids means you have a higher priority in your life.

Any parent living with children understands that the safety and comfort of their kids come first. As a result, you need to consider yours kids' needs when creating your smart home. And there are various ways to do that...

1. Help Your Kids Sleep Better at Night

Sleep is very important to a child’s development. The amount of sleep kids get affects their physical, emotional, and mental wellbeing. It’s the responsibility of parents and caregivers to ensure that children in their care get adequate sleep.

The National Sleep Foundation (NSF) recommends the following hours of sleep for kids: infants (12-15 hours), toddlers (11-14 hours), preschool (10-13 hours), and school-age (9-11 hours).

The lighting in a room affects a child’s sleep. Many kids are scared of the dark, and can’t sleep well in dark rooms. Smart lighting can be of great help in such a situation. It is one of the smart home devices worth spending extra on. Instead of turning the lights completely off at bedtime, you can automate the lights to get dimmer, creating the perfect mood for kids to fall asleep.

Young children occasionally wake up at night, especially when they need to use the bathroom. Waking up in a completely dark room is terrifying to a lot of kids.

You can help them feel more comfortable by using a smart lighting system with motion sensors to light up the hallway leading to the bathroom. That way, they can move around safely without bumping into objects.

2. Limit Screen Time With Electronic Devices

Electronic devices make any home more fun for kids. As far as kids are concerned, they can watch their favorite shows or play their favorite games all day long, neglecting every other thing. The onus is on parents to ensure that kids do not consume entertainment content excessively.

Manually controlling kids’ access to electronics such as TV and games consoles is almost impossible as you may not always be around. They can play a fast one on you by turning on the TV in your absence and turning it back off before you return.

With smart electronics, you don’t have to worry about keeping kids away from the devices. Instead, you can schedule specific times when kids can have access to them. If for any reason you want the systems to be turned off in your absence, you can do that remotely.

Are you worried about your kids viewing inappropriate content on some channels? A smart TV offers content control settings that allow you to restrict access to such channels.

3. Monitor Kids’ Movements for Their Own Safety

Anyone who has ever had to babysit children will agree that it is one of the most difficult things to do. Kids aren’t wired to stay in one spot for long. They want to move around, doing what they know how to do best... playing (or playing up).

One sure thing is that you can’t stop kids from playing around the house. And manually keeping an eye on young children isn’t always enough. Besides getting exhausted from the constant shouting and running after them, you might get distracted by other things demanding your attention.

A smart home security feature like Geofencing will give you some much-needed help. Geofencing is a GPS-enabled technology that allows you to create virtual boundaries within your premises. You can set the system to notify you when kids step out of the virtual boundaries created, so you can run to them immediately.

Geofencing also works with other home security systems like smart home locks. Having installed your smart home lock, you can automate the system to prevent kids from going out when you're busy doing something else.

4. Regulate Your Home's Air Quality

Physical safety often takes center stage in discussions about home safety, but there are other safety concerns such as environmental pollution.

Contaminated air can lead to illnesses and even death in some cases. So keeping the air in your home clean at all times is important.

When the air in your home is contaminated with carbon monoxide and bacteria, for instance, it is not safe for you and your kids. You have more cause to worry if you or your kids have underlying respiratory conditions such as Asthma.

Air purifiers will do an effective job of removing germs and bacteria from the air in your home. Effective air purifiers are designed with multiple filters to neutralize the tiniest contaminants in the air, releasing quality air into your home.

As long as you maintain the air purifier and replace the filters regularly as recommended, the air in your home will be safe for breathing.

5. Facilitate a Daily Routine

A lot of kids live by routines—they are required to do certain things at certain times to keep their lives in order. For many parents, keeping up with these routines is challenging especially as they have other commitments to deal with as well.

For instance, you have to go to work in the morning. But first, you have to get the kids ready for school. Upon their return back from school, you have to ensure that they do all that is required of them from then until their bedtime.

You surely need some assistance, don’t you? Smart assistants are readily available and can help you plan your day.

If you are tired of waking your kids up every morning to get ready for school, you can use voice assistants to get the job done by automating the alarm to go off at a scheduled wake-up time and guide the kids through their school preparations.

Smart assistants can also help with routine tasks when kids return from school. You can set the system to remind your kids to do their homework and/or to take a nap at scheduled times.

Getting kids ready for bed is another routine task that your smart assistant can help you with. It reminds them once it's time to go to bed and can also be set to play your kids’ favorite bedtime stories or soothing music to help them fall asleep.