Contending with an avalanche of email between parents in her East York neighbourhood about coordinating summer-camp registration, Jen Levy had an idea to rein in the chaos.
“I decided to create this spreadsheet. It just has the weeks of the summer across the top and the kids’ names down the side. It was literally the simplest thing to do,” Levy says.
But the Google sheet was quickly shared through the neighbourhood, parents adding their children and noting — by colour — the camps they were considering or for which they had already registered their kids.
“We were all interested in coordinating so our children would have at least one friend at camp,” says Levy. That makes a big difference, especially to nervous camp newbies, such as the mostly Kindergarten-aged kids whose camp plans are coming together on Levy’s spreadsheet. The plan has worked so well that in some cases as many of five little friends will be rocking up to camp together this summer.
While we hear a lot about technology’s negative impacts on families — parents constantly tethered to the office by their smart phones, toddlers addicted to their iPads — there are countless ways it benefits us, too.
Sure, we may extol the virtues of things like FaceTime to bridge the distance with far-off grandparents or in shared custody situations, but there are plenty of less-celebrated ways the job of being a parent is made easier by tracking and sharing data in efficient ways.
On the more elaborate end of data tracking for parenting purposes, Tyler Lund, a software development manager from New Jersey, used A/B testing and machine learning to hack his newborn twins’ sleep. The baby boys are identical, making them ideal test subjects.
“We actually started right in the hospital. I think it was one best things they got us in the practice of doing, at least every feeding and diaper change, recording that and the times and the amounts,” Lund says. “With the two of them we found that we kind of had to because it was really hard to remember who we had fed when, who was up next, how much they needed and if they were doing the right bathroom things each day.”
His wife took the paper version of that and pulled it into an Excel spreadsheet that became the couple’s “master data list” from which they did calculations and testing to see how things like timing and portions of food impacted duration of sleep.
Their most notable finding? “We found that Gripe water . . . worked fairly well, would give us a little bit less agitation going to bed and a little bit more solid sleep throughout the night.”
And like many parents before them, they also concluded that “nothing consistently worked.” As soon as a pattern would begin to emerge, “a day or two later there would be a growth spurt or something and it would be less effective,” Lund says.
Even still, the process of tracking the data has brought a measure of comfort and security during the topsy-turvy experience of being a new parent, he says, and that’s held value, too.
Up next? Lund has moved on to testing which teething toys are most helpful to his babies; the iconic giraffe, Sophie, is currently winning the gum-soothing game.
He also wants to increase the sample size of his research using other babies’ data to see if “there are larger things we can find that are helpful and effective for other parents to use.” People are able to reach Tyler through his blog to inquire about this while he’s busy getting an open-source tool developed for doing so.
But you don’t need to be savvy with spreadsheets to put technology to use in your family.
With a big family and a busy rotation of family dinners, baby showers, holidays and birthdays to organize, Natalie Rea of Ancaster, Ont., found organizing family events cumbersome.
“We attempted to plan get-togethers using email and reply-alls, or Facebook chats,” says Rea. “Deciding on a date for get-togethers in a big family and who was bringing what could take weeks. Not to mention, in an email format, feelings could get hurt if you chose to go ahead with a date that worked best for the majority.”
Then a cousin introduced her to Doodle, an online scheduling tool that uses polling.
“The process has improved tenfold,” Rae says. “The event host simply inputs a bunch of dates and emails the Doodle link out to potential attendees. We check our calendars and then select our preference of date in the poll. The date that receives the most votes wins — clean, simple, fast and no hurt feelings.” The family is using it to create sign-ups for potluck menu items, too, she says.
Brandie Weikle is a parenting expert and the host of The New Family Podcast and editor of thenewfamily.com
Brandie Weikle is a parenting expert and the host of The New Family Podcast and editor of thenewfamily.com
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