Jason’s Fresh Produce

There is a technique for training infants (not toddlers) to participate in the potty training process. Infant potty training is a communication/cooperation between the parent and the child, who cannot yet take itself to the bathroom.

Two of the major factors in this wonderful technique are observation and assocation. Namely, you observe the timing (with respect to feeding) and associated expressions of your child’s eliminations. You then begin to associate elimination with a sound like “ssss.” This way you can get the child to go when you want it to go by making the “ssss” sound when it is over the toilet.

Machines are very good at observation. We already put baby monitors in the room to observe the child. If we could come up with a good technology–facial recognition? pulse measurement?–to tell us when a child is going to eliminate, then we could greatly facilitate this training process.

It seems to me that childcare technology is remarkably underdeveloped. I guess people will say that they don’t want robots raising their kids, but when we have kids, I sure wouldn’t mind a little help. I definitely wouldn’t object to some sort of pulse/breathing monitoring device that would prevent my child of dying from SIDS or something.

And if I could save hundreds of hours of messy diaper cleanup and thousands of pounds of diapers in landfills, that would be tremendous!