As families enter a new season of remote work and school, the dishes will continue to pile up. Now, parents can have virtual assistants and apps sync with smart appliances to remind the kids to unload the dishwasher.
Photo: Getty Images
Reminding kids to make their beds, unload the dishwasher and feed the cat is getting really old as the months of quarantine drag on. If only there was a way to outsource all that nagging…
Instead of telling your kids to unload the dishwasher for the millionth time, why not program virtual assistants to do it for you, without any twinge of exasperation? And if you have high-end smart appliances, they can notify the kids when the dishes are clean.
BSH Home Appliances, maker of appliances from brands including Bosch and Thermador, recently began integrating its smart appliances with S’moresUp, a family-management app that can notify the kids when the dishes are ready to be unloaded or the laundry is dry. You can even assign the kids to make you coffee. Some of BSH’s luxury coffee makers can notify the app when the drip tray needs emptying or the bean container needs refilling. The appliances can also communicate with Amazon AMZN 3.10% and Google’s virtual assistants.
If you don’t have fancy appliances, that’s OK—there are other ways to unload the mental burden of being your kids’ constant reminder.
When Tiffany Lewis, a mother of three in Leland, N.C., pulls into her driveway with groceries, she opens her phone’s Alexa app and commands the virtual assistant to announce that she is back and needs help carrying in the food. Echo Dots in the kids’ bedrooms and the Facebook Portal in the kitchen trumpet her command.
“They can’t back-talk Alexa,” she said. “When she says something, that’s it.”
Parents can assign, track and reward weekly chores through a chore chart on Amazon’s Alexa skill blueprints.
Photo: AmazonShe also has Alexa announce when it’s time to help set the table for dinner and for the kids to bring her their laundry. For a while she was using Alexa to remind her 9-year-old son to feed the dog every morning. To make sure he actually did it, she installed a motion sensor in the dog’s food bin that she connected to Alexa through IFTTT (which stands for “if this then that”) so she would hear an announcement when the dog had been fed.
“Kids are notorious for saying, ‘Yeah, I did that.’ It gives me peace of mind to know there’s data to back it up,” said Ms. Lewis. “After about a month, he got to a point where he would just do it before Alexa told him to, so we were able to taper off the reminders, which is something I did not expect.”
Still, the apps and assistants are one more thing to manage. Is it easier to just yell out reminders than to program software to do it?
Reeves Xavier, co-founder of S’moresUp, said some app users with teens have complained about having to remind their kids to go on the app to see their chores. Families that have had a consistent chore routine, starting when children were younger, have had better success with it, said Priya Rajendran, the other co-founder.
S’moresUp allows kids to earn virtual s’mores for doing chores. When the kids have enough saved up, they can cash them in for rewards chosen by the family. Most features of the app, such as chore assignments (including those dishwasher alerts) are free. But parents who pay $4.99 a month get access to extra features such as the ability to create penalties for tardiness. There are no ads in the app, which currently has 150,000 registered families.
SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS
How do you handle chores in your house? Do you think technology can help kids learn responsibility? Join the conversation below.
Ms. Rajendran said they are in talks with other appliance makers about syncing the app with more smart appliances.
Several parents told me that chore apps are great except when their kids have lost phone privileges or when they’re trying to keep kids off their devices. That’s why many parents prefer using virtual assistants to verbally prod their kids.
“Taking a little time to set up reminders helps save a ton of time later,” said Melissa Griffin, a Texas mom who runs a popular Facebook page where she offers parenting tips.
Ms. Griffin became an Alexa evangelist after she received an Echo smart speaker as a housewarming gift two years ago. Now she has Alexa-enabled devices throughout her house and relies on the assistant for everything from making grocery lists to reminding her kids to take medicine.
Most Alexa reminders can be set with your voice. “I’ll say, ‘Alexa, set a reminder to take out the trash,’ and Alexa will ask how often,” she said.
Parents can also assign, track and reward weekly chores through a chore chart on Alexa’s skill blueprints.
Ms. Griffin has her three children create many of their own reminders because she wants them to take ownership of their tasks. “Nagging and reminding isn’t something I do anymore. They have the reminders set up and if it fails, they have a problem to solve,” she said.
Her 12-year-old son didn’t get the recycling out to the curb in time recently and realized he was actually setting his reminder too early. When Alexa told him to take out the recycling at 6 p.m., he was often eating dinner or doing other things and he would forget. Now that he reset the reminder for 9 p.m., he remembers to take it out right before he heads to bed.
Google’s “assignable reminders” function on devices that run Google Assistant—such as certain Android phones and tablets, Google smart speakers, Nest Hubs and more—works similarly, giving parents the ability to set task notifications.
Google recently added new features to Google Assistant, including the ability to broadcast a reminder to a specific room or device. Another feature, “family bell,” allows parents to create custom announcements on smart displays and speakers, accompanied by a chime, when it’s time to begin a new task, such as unloading the dishwasher or logging in for a virtual class.
The larger question is, are all these electronic chore charts and digital reminders a crutch? Do they prevent kids from becoming self-reliant?
Advocates of virtual helpers say they simply take the place of parental reminders, helping kids learn, through the development of routines, what to do on their own. “It helps create positive reinforcement around habit-building for kids and helps them manage their own time versus the parents having to manage their time,” said Amazon Kids and Family spokeswoman Dawn Brun.
Ms. Lewis said relying on a virtual assistant is as much about saving her own sanity as it is about teaching her kids responsibility. “It makes me feel like I’m an adult and I have life figured out,” she said.
For more WSJ Technology analysis, reviews, advice and headlines, sign up for our weekly newsletter.
Write to Julie Jargon at julie.jargon@wsj.com
Copyright ©2020 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
"smart" - Google News
August 18, 2020 at 07:00PM
https://ift.tt/2CGDABm
Kids’ Chores Starting to Bore? New Apps, Assistants and Smart Appliances Can Motivate Them - The Wall Street Journal
"smart" - Google News
https://ift.tt/2P2kUhG
https://ift.tt/3febf3M
Bagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "Kids’ Chores Starting to Bore? New Apps, Assistants and Smart Appliances Can Motivate Them - The Wall Street Journal"
Post a Comment