Saturday, February 7, 2015

Parents - What if You Could Set Your Phone to: Call Me if the Liquor Cabinet Opens?



#CSTrecommendation for Parents - Apps that help you monitor your home!
Technology is amazing. There's an app for just about everything, whether useful or completely pointless but entertaining. Every once in a while, there's something I see that grabs my attention and I think, "This would be great for a client!" 


1. I came across this app, IFTTT "If This, Then That". You basically set up 'recipes' that tell the app to perform certain actions when you've put in a command. (For example, If I post a picture of my mom on Facebook, email it to her). 
2. Now, this function in combination with the Smart Things app allows you to really take it to the next level. For Smart Things, you buy a hub for your home that controls certain sensors that make your home function electronically. So you can have IFTTT perform an action based on these sensors.
3. Here's why I think it can help a parent: You can have a sensor on something like a liquor cabinet, or a bedroom door, etc, and have a command set up to call your phone when the sensor goes off! 


This can help parents dealing with behavior issues, parents with a young teen that are nervous about them staying at home by themselves finally... I can think of all kind of scenarios! 


It may sound intimidating, but it's pretty easy to set up. We tried it in our home and had it call us when a certain light switch came on (this was without the Smart Things hub; we have lights set on a wifi switch already), and it was pretty cool. The call was: "Your living room light switch turned on 2/7/14 at 10:43am". Pretty cool! 


Any tech-savvy parents out there have experience with this or plan to use technology in their home monitoring??

- written by Nakya Reeves, LMFT. I am a therapist and owner of a private practice where my main focus is working with communication issues within relationships. I also offer PhotoTherapy, which integrates photography as a therapy method. I can be contacted any time at csolutionstherapy@gmail.com - visit my website www.csolutionstherapy.com

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