Grasshopper New Media Presents...

I am honored to offer you this guest post, written by Jeremiah of Z Recommends. Hopefully it will be the first of many!
———————————————————–

Kids grasp the concept of time on many levels and at many different stages. One of the earliest levels of comprehension parents care about is helping children recognize how time governs some activities, especially as kids head towards two and three and really start negotiating how long they have to do what they want before they do what you need them to.

We’ve found that one of the keys to minimizing conflict is to recognize and respect the way our daughter focuses on activities, and have our actions reflect that we don’t expect to have her at our beck and call. We try to allow her “wrap-up” time before requiring her to stop doing something. We learned a while ago that she would transition much better when we let her help us set the oven timer and discussed how long she had to do something before we were going to leave the house / get ready for bed / etc.

Then we discovered the Time Tracker, a kid-friendly timer that counts down time in a way toddlers can easily understand. Complete with three-phase lighting (green, yellow, and red) and customizable sound effects (some of them actually quite annoying) you can set the timer to shift automatically through phases when given an initial start time, or can set the timing and sounds associated with each phase for total control of the timing experience. The only curious feature of this in-depth customization is that the time period is also one of these many variables, and you actually have to set at least some of them every time you want to change the time period. There are two memory settings, so that means you can store two times.

Since this device is all about helping to maintain rituals, however, it is not too hard to establish timings that we are most likely to want, and tend to confine our use of the Time Tracker to these times. So far one of the best uses we’ve found has been to put some parameters on “reading time” which we now allow our daughter in bed before the lights go out. Since she is just now getting to use her toddler bed with no fourth wall, meeting her halfway is a big part of helping her feel she can wind down and keep from getting up as soon as she gets the urge.

Below is a demo run of the timer set to the shortest time interval I thought would allow you to get a real sense of how useful the sound and light changes are. I set it up to run for a minute and a half. Surely it’s not the most exciting video you will ever watch, but it does give you an idea of how it works and what it offers beyond a simple oven or digital timer.

If the timer’s $34 price tag doesn’t scare you off, we recommend it.

Enjoy the convenience of having The Guide delivered to your email! Click HERE to subscribe - no charge and 100% spam-free!