Can a smartwatch help parents stop a child’s temper tantrum before it starts? A new study that shows real promise.
Mayo Clinic researchers developed a smartwatch-based alert system that detects stress signals like a child’s rising heart rate. It then sends a message to the parent’s smartphone, so they can intervene before the tantrum takes off.
Dr. Arjun Athrey serves on the engineering faculty at Mayo's Department of Molecular Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics. He also co-led the study.
"We found that the duration of their tempered outbursts of the temper tantrums reduced quite significantly compared to those families that did not get these real time alerts."
Athrey says these aren’t your typical tantrums, which are a normal occurrence in childhood, "But when they are lasting more than 15 to 20 minutes and then they occur two to three times a day, then they get broadly classified under the symptoms that we see in disruptive behavior disorders."
Half of the participants, who ranged in age from 3 to 7, wore the smartwatch; the other half continued with standard therapy.
"And because they wore the watch, often our algorithm was able to identify moments of these tempered outbursts and then send a message to their parents."
And those parents were able to step in before the tantrum escalated, shortening it, on average, by 11 minutes.
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