Being a parent certainly isn’t easy. The messy home, the heartbreaking tantrums, and the underlying fear that you’ll never get a good night’s sleep again are enough to make some parents a little nuts.
That’s why parents are always looking for some help. A grandparent, a babysitter, even a couple of Bluey episodes played back-to-back can provide a bit of calm in an otherwise hectic life.
When grandparents, babysitters, and Bluey aren’t available, though, you can turn to Google Home.
The smart home experience offers a surprising amount of helpful parenting tricks that can make life just a little bit easier when you’re dealing with your little one.
Night Mode for volume caps all day
Silence is golden for parents
At a certain age, your child has seen you use your Google Home-enabled devices so often that they get the hang of it themselves pretty quickly.
Granted, their adorable little voices can rarely activate Google Assistant on their own, but if the smart speaker or smart display is within reach, they can adjust the volume with very little effort.
This is an absolute nightmare scenario, with the maximum volume on most Google Home-enabled devices high enough to send any over-stimulated parent into a white-hot rage.
Fortunately, Google Home has a little trick for this one, although it does take a bit of a workaround.
In your smart speaker or smart display settings, there is a Night Mode setting that allows you to change how the device operates during certain times of the day, including what the maximum volume can be during those times.
However, if you set nighttime to “10 pm to 9:59 pm,” for example, you’ll be able to ensure that your device never gets above a certain volume, and your sanity will remain intact for the entirety of the day.
Smart lights as time-to-rise indicators
Stop toddlers from ruining your beauty rest
Parents of toddlers know that sleep is a valuable commodity, and any Google Home tricks that can add a few hours to their nightly snooze are more than welcome.
The problem is, many kids wake up at or even before the crack of dawn with no clear indication of when they can leave their room to wake up their slumbering parents.
That’s where time-to-rise indicators come in handy. These smart lights illuminate in certain colors to show your child when they can leave their room and when they need to stay put.
However, if you have a Google Home-enabled device and some multicolored smart lights, who needs one?
We’ve been able to set up some automations that change our child’s bedroom light to a dull yellow when it’s 30 minutes to wake-up time and a dull green when she’s allowed to leave her room.
This automation can get parents back on track when it comes to sleep and provide a bit of colorful whimsy to the morning routine.
Dance party whenever you want
When the mood strikes, get your groove on
After all the botched bedtimes and sleepy mornings, sometimes you just want to dance with your kids to get it all out.
It’s vitally important to remember how fun it can be at that age to let loose, especially if your parents have some patented moves that make you giggle.
Still, parents know that kids can be pretty particular about the environmental requirements for a dance party, from playlist to lighting, and getting it set up can sometimes allow the mood to pass.
If you want to avoid the inevitable tantrum that emerges when it takes too long to get a dance party going, Google Home is your savior.
With just a few small automations, you can simply say “Hey Google, start a dance party,” and your lights will change colors, create light effects, and play a toddler-approved playlist that everyone under the age of five can enjoy.
Google Home tricks for any age
It’s not just for toddlers, that’s just what I’ve got
Yes, the majority of these Google Home tricks are specifically geared towards toddlers, because that’s how old my child is. However, the reality is that Google Home offers a wide range of tricks and automations that can improve the lives of parents of any age child.
From helpful screen time limits to time-consuming trivia games, devices like the Nest Audio can be geared towards kids in more ways than you know.
All you have to do is crack open that automations tab at the bottom of the Google Home app and get started.
Google Home is filled to the rafters with these kinds of tools
Whether you’ve been a smart home enthusiast for the last decade or just started adding these devices to your home, it’s safe to assume that you haven’t discovered everything that Google Home has to offer.
As the former, I’m still learning new tips and tricks on a regular basis.
To keep learning more, start poking around the app to explore how these automations can make your life a little bit easier.
Google Nest Audio
