Posted by Rich DeBell on 04 1, 2010

iTOT – The Innovative Time-Out Timer

Categories: Lifestyle, | 2 comments | |

If you’re the parent of a toddler or young child you may be struggling through the problem of how to discipline them. Many parents today choose to go the route of time-outs. This is what my wife and I are currently doing with out 2 year old boy. Time-outs provide a great way to teach your child consequences without the use of physical or emotional force. They can be difficult to do however because it requires a lot of time and patience from the parents. Kids are going to try to run away during timeout and will most likely throw huge tantrums. This has been my experience so far with it, and is the reason why I was immediatly drawn to a new app I came across designed to assist parents with time-outs.

Developed by Chris Kanagawa, iTOT - The Innovative Time-Out Timeris an exciting new app for all parents. I give Chris Kanagawa big props for coming up with another useful way in which to utilize the high tech features of the iPhone. It implements patent pending technology to eliminate the frustrations associated with placing a child in a time-out. No longer do you have to be the “bad parent” when it comes to a time-out. iTOT actually encourages children to remain quiet during a time-out, giving them time to calm down. When the countdown timer reaches zero, the child hears the sound of a crowd cheering for further positive reinforcement. If the child decides to make too much noise (e.g., yell, cry, etc.) or moves the iPhone during the time-out, the timer will automatically reset. Depending on the circumstances, you may decide to use one or both sensors and have the ability to set the sensitivity level of both. In essence the child will learn that their good behavior will give them a positive result and bad behavior will only extend their punishment. iTOT uses both the built in microphone and accelerator to measure a child’s volume and movement to ensure they are being good. It’s a novel idea and really quite genius to utilize in this way.

As high as I am on iTOT - the Innovative Time-Out Timer, I still do have some negative comments on it. First this app will not work if you have very young children. They have to be old enough to understand what the interface is displaying and that holding the iPhone still and being quite are associated with a time-out. So if you have a toddler you’ll have to wait a while to employ this. My only other negative comment is more of a warning. There is some level of risk involved with handing your precious iPhone over to a child as a discipline tool. Needless to say make sure it’s got some solid protective gear around it and I would recommend placing the child in a padded location versus over a hard floor.

Other features of iTOT include:

Ability to set custom time-out length
Ability to lock the countdown timer screen
Ability to save the countdown statistics for different children (with photos)
If the application is terminated (e.g., phone call, etc.), the countdown time resumes from where it left off