We love the Amazon Echos. We what feels like a slew of them in the house. My husband bought one before they were generally available way back when they were in beta testing mode. At that time the children's voices weren't understood by Alexa. It would infuriate them as they tried, again and again, to get her to understand them in their tiny, little voices only to have her ignore everything they said after her name. My husband and I would say the exact same thing and she would understand us on the first try.
Today, we've upgraded models multiple times, relocating the older versions to other, less-used locations in the house. At this point, most spots we spend time in, including the bedrooms, have their own Alexa communication device and Alexa not only understands the children, but she can also figure out what we're saying when more than one person is talking over you.
The technology can be very useful. And annoying.
You can reach someone by connecting to their location using, "drop in" which starts an open conversation with those two Echos just like double-ended speakerphone call. You can also send a message to all the Echos in the house. This is also nice when my husband wants to let us know dinner is ready. It's definitely useful when someone is hurt and we need to know. But it is also a way to pester parents when we don't want to be pestered.
Typical messages are along the lines of, "Mom (or Dad) can you come here?" We're starting to crack down on this, letting them know we're not going to even consider coming unless they let us know why—because it's usually something like, "she's touching me" or some other equally important situation only we can handle.
Tonight my son announced, "Mom and dad, you need to come up here NOW!" My husband and I looked at each other and I responded, "Why?" My daughter was in my son's room and he didn't want her there. So we needed to come up "NOW" to handle it. We didn't budge. The number of additional interruptive messages we got after telling them we were sure they could work it out themselves was annoying, but hopefully, they'll start to get the message that we're not interested in being paged for trivial reasons.
The Big Boy Update: My son wanted to go outside with his socks on today. I told him not to. Twice. Firmly. I found the socks on the floor at dinner wrong-side out. I turned them out and found them caked with leaves and dead grass. My son had to clean them off. If he wants to do that in the future, he can use his own money to buy socks and then throw them away, because they're not going in the laundry, I told him, so they can get leaves all over our clothes.
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: My daughter has taken down swings on the play set on multiple occasions to stop other children (whom she feels don't like her or won't let her play with them) multiple times. This is happening when there are children in our back yard when our children aren't outside, something we've allowed as our neighbor's children need to get out and not go crazy inside too. But my daughter has been around in other areas when this has been happening and she's not being nice because I think she's afraid of not being accepted—so she's making sure she's not accepted by dropping the swings. She is not allowed to do it again or all the swings will be put away, I told her. She was horrified because then she couldn't use the swings. Good, I told her. So don't remove the swings from the set and leave them on the ground anymore.
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