Back to school routines are better with Alexa and Google - The Verge
Tips and tricks for using smart home technology like Echo and Google smart speakers, video doorbells, smart locks, and an Apple Watch to make going back to school a little smoother.
This week, my kids headed back to school. For most parents, that means a weekend spent buying composition notebooks and Ticonderoga pencils and unearthing moldy lunchboxes from last year’s book bag (just me?). In my household, it also means reenabling all my back-to-school smart home routines.
I’ve been using my smart home as an extra pair of parental eyes and ears for years now, and I think all parents need some home automation in their lives. The little things the smart home does well — lights that turn on when you walk into a room, a TV you can shut down with just your voice, a doorbell that shows you who’s there — are so much more useful when you are also juggling little people and their various demands.
(A caveat to all this: I use these gadgets, routines, and automations to help our household run smoothly and give us back some time, not as an alternative to actually parenting.)
My children are now 11 and 14, going into middle school and high school, so instead of finding fun ways to encourage my children to stay in bed until it’s time to get up (the green light for go, which you can easily set up on the Echo Glow light, is a classic), I’ve had to devise systems that help me get them out of bed.
For me, the morning routine is the key one. Getting everyone up and out the door in a one-hour time window is a serious challenge. Having a couple of digital assistants helping us keep track of time cuts down on the potential for raised voices and helps them be a bit more autonomous with their morning ablutions. (You could do this with just one, but I like different aspects of Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant’s routines and alarms, so I have both going).
Rating: 5