In this digital age of parenting, baby monitors and apps for smartphones are the norm. As with anything connected to wi-fi, they’re not perfectly safe though. We’ve all read stories where hackers have yelled at babies or turned on the camera to watch what’s happening in the nursery. Breastfeeding moms, sleeping babies and families going about their day have had their privacy invaded by online predators. Here are some simple things you can do to ensure security and Baby Monitor App Safety.
Baby Monitors
The main concern with anything wireless is that the signal can be found if users have default or easy to figure out passwords. When this happens, the signal can be hijacked. Hackers can then view all the traffic on the network. They can then easily communicate with your baby, or see what’s happening on camera. As a dad whose monitor was hacked in his young daughter’s room said, “I felt like somebody broke into our house.”
Baby Monitor App Safety
To avoid vulnerability to hackers:
Make sure your home WiFi network is locked down as much as possible to prevent hacking by turning on the router’s built in firewall.
Use strong alphanumeric passwords and special characters. If your password is difficult to guess, most hackers won’t even bother.
Change the default IP range to WPA2
Create a new admin account on the WiFi router (no “admin” or “administrator” usernames) and disable/delete the default admin account .
Although nothing is foolproof, using the steps above makes your smartphone baby apps less vulnerable. This helps create a secure environment for your baby. Another option is to use an app that triggers a warning if it senses illegal entry. And of course, you can always go old-school with he walkie-talkie style monitors that don’t require internet!
One last thing – when your child is old enough to use a smartphone remember to keep *it* secure too!
Subscription boxes can be used to count down to baby’s arrival or help new moms and dads in the first few months of baby’s life. Our round-up of unique subscription boxes for new & expecting parents is below!
Subscription Boxes for Parents
Expecting and new parents usually have everything they need for baby. Travel apparel, diapers, nursery decor and fun onesies fill their homes! But many parents forget about themselves! We researched subscription boxes just for new moms and dads because they’re more than a gift, they’re a reminder for parents to care for themselves. For families that are spread out and parents who put self-care last on their list, a subscription box might be the perfect gift.
Here are a few of our favorites:
NoirePack Coffee Subscription – This box hardly needs an explanation.A collection from Washington States finest Campfires Coffee Co., a Black Owned company. For parents who love coffee and the caffeine that comes with it, this 6 month subscription is a perfect pick me up for postpartum parents. Each month’s box includes 4 different sample size coffees from local Seattle roasters.
Leggings Subscription: A unique gift after the postpartum phase these leggings of the month ensure moms are cozy and comfortable. It can be hard for moms to find time to shop for themselves after baby is born. Receiving these cute leggings and the thoughtfulness behind them may be just what a mom needs.
Date Night in a Box: Couples can reconnect without having to leave the house or hiring a babysitter! The inventors of Crated with Love are a family therapist and her husband, and together they’ve designed activities that aim to “inspire laughter and create quality one-on-one time” at home.
TheraBox: TheraBox is the #1 selling self-care box. With the tagline of “Happiness in a Box” we can see why! TheraBox includes aromatherapy, mindfulness activities, organic bath products and more. They promise over $100 in retail value per month. Subscriptions can last as long or as short as you’d like.
Don’t Forget to Eat!
And Snacks, Snacks, Snacks: Nutritious foods parents can eat with one hand are not only thoughtful but completely necessary! From international fare to traditional snacks, there is a subscription box for every new and expecting parent.
Eat2Explore boasts a new country to explore through cuisine every month! With kid friendly recipes this subscription box will be a hit with your older kids while making dinner time a little easier
Whether your loved one is pregnant or expecting, a subscription box can show you’re thinking of them even when you can’t be there. You can see our full list of subscription box picks on our Amazon shop!
In the United States, a child dies about every 11 days when a TV, furniture, or appliance falls on them. 14,000 children are injured every year. About 70 percent of tip-over fatalities involve children ages 1 1/2 to 3 years old and these incidents are preventable. The Consumer Product Safety Commission’s (CPSC) Anchor It!Campaign educates parents and caregivers that anchoring is simple, inexpensive and important. These tips and resources from the campaign show how to prevent tip-overs to help you create a home and child-care space that is babyproofed from furniture being pulled over.
Here’s how to Prevent Tip-Overs
Anchor all furniture, dressers, armoires, and bookshelves to the wall.
Secure TVs to the wall or base/TV stand and recycle older, unused TVs
Check for and act on recalls of products that present tip-over hazards
Watch this video demonstration to learn more about how tip-overs happen as well as how to easily install anti-tip devices (also known as anchors).
Be sure to anchor before your baby arrives or before s/he becomes mobile. Babies begin to crawl as early as 6 months and they may be “grabbing” well before then. “The to-do list when a new baby arrives can feel overwhelming. It doesn’t matter whether you anchor furniture and TVs before baby arrives or once they start to sit up and become mobile – the important thing is getting it done. Anchoring furniture and TVs is fairly inexpensive and simple to do – even when you’re sleep-deprived. Anchoring only takes about five minutes, and it could save your child’s life.”
Meghan DeLong’s 2-year-old son passed away on Mother’s Day 2017 when his dresser tipped over on him. Meghan is now the Founder and President of Conner’s Legacy Foundation, Inc. The mission of the organization is to promote education, advocacy, and resources for the awareness of furniture tip-over prevention at the community level and the national level by sharing Conner’s story, providing community outreach and education, and encouraging mandatory regulation standards for furniture.
Keep your child, and those in your care, safe by following the guidelines laid out by the CPSC and the suggestions of Connor’s Legacy Foundation. You can click the graphic to print out your own Anchor It poster. For more babyproofing info please visit our blog about How to Create a Safe Nursery.
Updated November 19, 2023 – If you’re expecting your second, it’s normal to worry about how you’ll manage your time with a newborn and older child. How will you keep everyone happy and occupied? What if the toddler is (unintentionally) too rough with baby? And what about twins…how will you handle 2 babies and then 2 toddlers? Our night nanny and postpartum doula team have a few suggestion to help your days go smoothly in this blog, Toys Siblings Can Play with Together!
Toys Siblings Can Play with Together – Our Faves
We’ve got a full list of toys siblings can play with together on Amazon, but here are our favorites:
The Aqua Magic Mat is a 40″ x 60″ is colorful and meant to be drawn on, so the baby can have tummy time alongside older kids. There are pens and small parts that come with this toy so supervision is of course a must. You can always add a separate playmat for baby on the side too.
Step 2’s Walk-In Play Kitchen is big enough for 2 or 3 kids to cook and create together and looks like a modern kitchen! It’s all wood, includes 15 play pieces and has moveable parts at all levels so even babies who aren’t standing yet can parallel play and watch.
Jumbo Foam Blocksare basically giant soft Legos! They’re sturdy and have endless possibilities for safe play.
For toddlers, the 40 piece cardboard block set with 3 different sized blocks means even more building! While you’ll probably have these for many years, parents should know that each of the 40 pieces must be put together individually.
The full set of Elephant & Piggie books. Go ahead and do yourself a favor and just buy all 25 books. We PROMISE your reading age child will adore reading these aloud to their baby brother or sister. And if you want to read aloud to the kids, Elephant & Piggie stories are warm, hilarious and often have a funny twist at the end.
4-in-1 Activity Center – This toy is not to be used without adult supervision but we love it because for less than $150 you’ll have a toy that occupies several kids at a time for years! Your baby will learn somuch just from being held while watching the older kids slide, climb and shoot hoops! see the next section for more on this!
What the Experts Say About The Power of Play
Sibling Bonding and Play
While fostering good sibling relationships is ultimately up to the kids themselves, we parents can help the process along! A Georgetown study notes that “Infants with siblings imitated more behaviour without explicit instruction than did infants without siblings.” That means your little ones do learn from their older brothers and sisters. In addition to nurturing your infant with baby-age activities yourself, it’s great to encourage cooperation, bonding and good old laughter with toys kids can explore together.
You Are Your Child’s Favorite Toy
As the Zero to Three foundation says, whether you have 2 or more children or are a one and done family, you are your child’s favorite toy. You don’t need fancy or expensive items to nurture your newborn, infant or toddler. Understanding what your baby will respond to at each age makes development fun and educational for the whole family.
We’re Amazon Associates. That means we receive a small fee from purchases made from this site. This helps finance our non-profit, Mission Sleep which gives free overnight care to families whose newborns arrive when a parent is deployed, wounded or deceased.
I originally wanted to do one simple blog post about keeping children safe online by using parental restrictions. After researching and learning about all the loopholes in common apps and websites though, it became quickly apparent that YouTube -with all of its amazing and wonderful content- needed its own in-depth post on safety. We’ll post more internet safety blogs over the next few weeks. As the mom of two 10 year olds and an 11 year old with iPads, I hope you find How to Keep Kids Safe on YouTube helpful. -Denise Stern
Let’s Start at the Beginning
Access to YouTube means kids can easily view billions of videos. Violence and pornography are prohibited but with over 400 hours of video uploaded every minuteit’s impossible for YouTube to catch and delete all the illegal or harmful content. Even with set age filters, inappropriate content still gets through.
Recent examples of inappropriate content being viewed include the many videos of the Christchurch, NZ mass shooting and popular YouTuber Logan Paul’s filming of a dead body, an apparent victim of suicide, hanging from a tree in Japan’s “suicide forest.” It’s good that YouTube removes these videos of course, but removal only happens after the fact. Paul’s 19 million subscribers are mostly young kids so you have to wonder how many saw that hanging body before it was reported, reviewed and removed?
Isn’t YouTube Kids Okay?
For these reasons YouTube Kids exists, but it’s not perfect. The Elsagate scandal, where seemingly harmless videos included sexual, bloody, suicide and other violent acts by children’s characters resulted in the deletion of over 400 channels, but it’s a bit like whack a mole and channels like this one still remain. (I don’t want to give them any more publicity but this CBS article and many others detail more disturbing videos and channels).
In addition to viewing, children need to be protected from exploitation when they themselves are the content. In March 2019 outlets such as NPR reported “tens of millions of videos that could be subject to predatory behavior,” meaning that pedophiles use comments to network and share links of videos starring children.
Again, YouTube acted on this unexpected situation by locking comment sections, but only after the fact and after predators had viewed and shared them.
Currently under investigation by the Federal Trade Commission for collecting kids’ private data, YouTube is considering major changes of moving all children’s content to YouTube Kids, and eliminating the auto-play feature which can steer kids to unsafe content. These 2 changes can help YouTube keep tighter control over content, but for now here’s what you can do to keep your kids safe:
How to Keep Kids Safe on YouTube
Be Aware of Knock off Channels– There are fake channels that appear to be the real product. The channels are able to do this by cleverly manipulating keywords to sidestep child-protective algorithms. Peppa Pigusing a lowercase “L” instead of “i” or other subtle misspellings is one example of how this can happen. Another way is for a channel to include keywords such as “learn to read” or “educational.” When in doubt look for channels titled “Official Channel” and the checkmark after the title.
Turn off Auto-Play Mode– Be sure videos don’t unintentionally keep running and eventually get to inappropriate content by turning off the auto-play option in the upper right-hand side of the screen.
Keep Restricted Mode On – Depending on your device, Restricted Mode can be found by clicking your Account, then Settings and then choosing “Restricted Mode” from the menu, or scrolling to the bottom of the page. Of course, there’s nothing stopping an older web-savvy kid from switching Restricted Mode off, so parents need to be watching over their shoulders or blocking YouTube altogether if they are concerned about inappropriate content.
4. Use the Parental Settings on YouTube Kids– Parents can choose content for kids 8 and younger or older than 8 by using their email address and then a 4 digit passcode once YouTubeKids is downloaded. Using this tool will greatly help keep YouTube kids safe.
5. Only post videos of your own children in PrivateMode– This means that only people with the link to your video can watch it. You choose who sees and comments on videos of your family.
Of course nothing can help keep our digital natives safe better than parental involvement. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends having proactive conversations with kids before they get online about what sites are allowed and each child’s screen time limits. Keeping devices in common areas of the home also helps parents keep an eye on kids’ activity. If you would like more tools to help manage media use by your children, please see the AAP’s Family Media Use Plan.
