parenting [spugbrap’s blog]

We received an ad in the mail, recently, which immediately disturbed Lacey and I. It’s a service that lets you create real, usable postage stamps with a picture of your choice. Sounds kinda cool, right? But take a look at the ad, and see if you can find what’s wrong with this picture:

It seems like a cool concept, at first, to put whatever picture you want (as long as it’s yours/legal/etc) on stamps. But this ad is proudly showing a picture of a cute little kid, on a stamp. That would be cool if you’re just sending mail to your friends and family, and nobody was going to handle that mail in between.

But the reality is that several people are going to handle each piece of mail, and you’re probably going to send some to billers/rebate warehouses/misc. companies as well, and multiple people will probably handle the mail within those companies. If any of those people happens to like little kids, in a NAMBLA sort of way, then you’ve just given them your cute kid’s home address via the return address on the other corner of the envelope.

In other words, you’re announcing, “Hey, pedophiles! Here’s a picture of my cute kid, and here’s where to come get him/her!”

I remember Lacey talking about some online moms’ group forums where there was some controversy, a while back, when people posted their addresses (for swaps/co-ops/etc) publicly and had cute pics of their kids in their signature blocks. These stamps aren’t quite as bad, I think, because at least their exposure is limited to a few people handling snail mail, whereas the online message boards are googleable.

But, still, stamps.com might want to consider this before enabling proud, naïve parents to advertise their children this way. Art would be fine. Maybe even the family pet. But not children.

Fisher Price Sounds ’n Lights Baby monitors can be useful, but most have their issues. Of course, I’m saying this based on our experience with some monitors we tried about 7 years ago, so I suppose they may have improved in some ways. We tried a few, which had problems like excessive interference, lack of AC adapter or rechargeable batteries, reception range much less than advertised, etc.

We settled on one, which we’ve been reasonably happy with ever since (enough so that we used it for all 3 of our kids, and in 4 different houses [our old and new houses, and two friends’ houses]): Fisher Price Sounds ’n Lights (pictured at right).

However, the range was not always good enough. Sometimes we’d be a little bit too far from the transmitter, and we’d hear an awful lot of static. If we were just barely too far, then we could just turn down the volume to quiet the static, and still hear if/when the baby cried. But, for those times when the baby monitor was not adequate, I figured out a trick:

I could call my cell phone from the house phone, put the house phone outside the baby’s door, and carry my cell phone with me. Then, periodically, I’d pick up my cell phone and make sure the baby wasn’t crying. Since it was usually night time or weekends when I used this, I didn’t waste my cellular plan minutes.

Over the years, I made a few little tweaks to this procedure, and learned a few lessons. Here are a few tips, from my experience:

- Call mobile to mobile. If your cellular plan, and your spouse’s, both have unlimited mobile-to-mobile minutes, then leave one of your phones by the door, and carry the other one with you.

- Call FROM landline TO cell phone. If you’re doing landline to cell phone, always make the call from the landline, so if the call gets disconnected for any reason, the phone does not end up making that loud, evil, phone-off-the-hook sound.

- Make some noise. If you have some kind of noise in the house, like a TV/radio on somewhere, then it’s easier to verify that your connection is still valid. If the house is completely quiet, and you listen through your cell phone, you’ll just hear quiet, and may question whether you’d actually hear the baby crying.

- Use speakerphone. If possible, put your cell phone on speakerphone. If not, at least turn up the volume all the way, so you’re more likely to hear the baby crying/smoke detector/etc., without having to repeatedly hold the phone to your ear.

- Mute your cell phone. The point is to be able to listen for your baby, not communicate both ways.

- Lock the keypad. You don’t want to accidentally hang up the call or anything. If the connection does get dropped, you have to run back and call from phone to phone again.

MOST IMPORTANTLY:

- Don’t go too far away! This tip is to enable you to go beyond the reach of your baby monitor, but not to the grocery store!

Never leave your child(ren) alone in the house, without at least being nearby. The point is so you can go to the opposite corner of a big house, out in the back yard, or maybe to your closest neighbor’s house, for a limited time. In these situations, you can run to your baby’s aid if the need should arise, within seconds.

If you decide to make a late-night beer run… well, isn’t it a well-known fact that most accidents happen within a mile or two of your home? What if the one time you leave your baby alone in the house, some moron doesn’t stop at the stop sign a few blocks down? Or if, somehow, the house catches on fire? Or if someone gains unauthorized entry to the house (burglar, kidnapper, etc. likelihood may vary depending on your neighborhood, but the risk is there, particularly if you are not in the house). These are the scenarios that always went through my mind, and always kept me close to home.

I’m not sure what actually constitutes criminally neglecting your children, but I don’t believe what I’ve described here is it. I think driving away seems like a logical place to draw the line, if one needs to be drawn in this regard, and that is something I have not done.

spugbrap’s blog

July 18th, 2007

Create your own pedophile bait!

March 18th, 2007

Using cell phones as a baby monitor

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