Randee Fenner: Babysitting in a Smart Home

When Randee Fenner decided to babysit, figuring out the smart devices in the home proved to be more challenging than expected.

We were delighted, if somewhat apprehensive, when our son and daughter-in-law asked us to babysit their 7-month-old daughter for the weekend. Our apprehension, however, had nothing to do with basic survival skills. We figured we could manage those. We were wrong.

Welcome to the Millennial “smart home,” where grandparents go to die – of embarrassment anyway.

The weekend before the scheduled sit, we received a few instructions for the smart home devices, none of which were intuitive.  For example, the car seat had a hidden lock-in-place mechanism; the front door opened with an app, with no key in sight; the TV had sleek remotes with nothing but indecipherable symbols to suggest how the various buttons functioned.  And that was only the beginning.

 A week later, we were on duty, bumbling our way through daily life tasks that we thought we had mastered years before. We had so many questions. How do you turn on the lights? How does the stroller fit together with the car seat? How do you turn on the heat? How do you start the shower? How does the baby’s night light operate? How do the TV remotes work again? And what time is it? We couldn’t even find the clocks.

We are not complete technophobes. Every day, we manage to use our smart phones, laptops, and a smart TV.  We even use those scissors that come apart for washing, and we have a passing familiarity with the metric system. But none of these skills were enough to prepare us for the weekend.

When it was all over, and we were debriefing, they asked us how things went. We were too humiliated to admit our failures.  But they knew.  The smart mattress had registered no signs of life, let alone our sleep stats. It sensed weakness.

Fortunately for us, the only thing that mattered—the baby—was low-tech. Our granddaughter accepted us with all our flaws and fumbles. At least we think she did. Her first words may very well be: “My parents have entrusted me to clowns.”

With a Perspective, I’m Randee Fenner.

Randee Fenner teaches written and oral advocacy skills at a Bay Area law school.