My wife has had some great entrepeneurial ideas for new products based on her experiences in child-rearing. Here are a few:
1)Sound-proof glass between the children’s area and the front seats in a minivan.
This first idea is inspired by the 200-decible screaming that goes on in our minivan on a regular basis as our two young boys go about their daily routines. And this is WITHOUT friends. When the friends are there, raise it to 300 decibles. A nice sound-proof barrier would keep parent sanity and allow us to maintain the serenity of Nicholeen Peck (the M* writer and World’s Strictest Parent), not to mention help us keep our hearing into our 50s.
2)Individual cones of silence in the minivan. Otherwise known as the “stop touching me” divider. Couldn’t something like this be made out of plastic and come as an option in all good minivans?
3)Better diaper bag backpacks. My wife has serious problems finding good bags for carrying diapers and the other assorted baby-related minutae. Most of them are over-the-shoulder models, but they are difficult to carry if you have small children. The over-the-shoulder models are always falling off and whacking your kids in the face if you reach down to pick them up. But if you pick up the kid first, then you have to reach down and put on the over-the-shoulder diaper bag while carrying the kid. Basically, it’s a mess.
Meanwhile, most backpacks don’t have the dividers and compartments you need for holding baby formula, juice boxes, diapers and wipes, etc. They are just big holes. So, my wife believes there is a market for a good diaper bag backpack. She also adds that diaper bags do NOT need to have yellow ducks and teddy bears on them. She would prefer a style for grown-ups, who are, after all, wearing them.
4)Some kind of product for kids to convert your standard toilet into a urinal. Anybody trying to potty-train young boys will understand.
My wife has plenty of other ideas, but they primarily have to do with toddler shock collars and toddler tranquilizer guns, which are probably not good items to discuss here. Those who have raised little boys may understand my wife’s perspective.
Seeing that our DS is 14 months old, I think I may want to talk to your wife soon about some of her toddler ideas. 🙂
I would say also, you need one of those divider things for Course 17 Sunday school for the laurels fighting over the only active priest in the class. I’d also go for the shock collar for the 17 year olds as well to get them to participate better….
Joyce, on a side note, I have a teenaged daughter and also am in Young Men’s, so I’ve been interested to watch teenage behavior. One of the things I’ve noticed is that young women spend something like 90 percent of their time talking about young men, but young men spend about 1 percent of their time talking about young women. I think that discrepancy explains a lot. If I had known the thought processes of young women when I was a teenager, I could have had a lot more fun.
For me. bar none, the TV in the car is the best invention ever. It is pure joy to glance back and see their mouths hanging slack, while staring at the boob tube, as sweet silence permeates the air. I always wanted a diaper changing helper. Picture if you will, a bar to hold down the smelly toddler. Attach legs to to some kind of apparatus to hold their legs apart and in the air with the butt slightly elevated. NO more twisting around getting guck everywhere. I don’t even care if they would scream. Fast and clean would be the desired result. But wait, maybe they could attach a TV to the apparatus. Perfect.
As for little boys and toilets; have the kid sit backwards on the toilet. It works somewhat better.
How do the first two ideas help one better rear children?
There are backpacks like the one described here. We got on at Babies R Us before our oldest was born. Catini is the brand name, and it has three large compartments of varying size, plastic pouches inside the central compartment for holding small hygiene items, another small pocket on the outside, and two external mesh bottle holders on both sides. It also comes in an attractive monkey-vomit green color, to show how much serious it is about business. It has served us and our two kids for almost three years now with no signs of wear, though what I really look forward to is when we won’t need it anymore.
@Kim Siever–If the kids survive they are better raised than if they don’t!
Cosby: “Parents are not quite interested in justice, they are interested in quiet.”
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