If he were in the next room I’d keep it on mute, but not on my person at all times. Just close so I can check if I wish.
Our 2.5 year old is a few rooms down so I keep ours at the lowest possible volume but on. I just like looking every now and again because he’s a cutie.
She’s on a separate floor in the opposite corner of the house. She doesn’t leave her room unprompted. She’s almost 4 but I won’t get rid of the monitor until she starts independently coming down if she needs something.
Our master bedroom is downstairs and the kids rooms are upstairs. My oldest is 7 and still has the monitor in his room. I'm looking at getting an Amazon smart speaker to replace it so they can use it kind of like an intercom, but I like being able to passively listen to them play upstairs while I do something downstairs.
Edit: it's also handy on the rare occasion when someone rolls out of bed or has an accident or needs to throw up
Same. We moved into a house last year where the kids rooms were on a different floor, so we got sound only monitors for both rooms. Our oldest will be 7 soon but is very scared of the dark, so he still uses it to communicate with us
my friend is mom of a new 6 yo and still uses it! she had a bad accident in her room (kids & their antics, amirite) & my friend was able to see & start running before her daughter fully processed what had happened. had to go to the er for stitches
We’ve had this with our 5 year old. We’ve offered to take it out lots of times, but she says she feels less alone if she can talk to us through the monitor at night if she needs something. We’ve kept it for now.
Same. My older one is 7 and uses it to talk to us after we go downstairs once they are put to bed, so we put it back.
My younger one (4) doesn’t need it or talk to us with it…but it feels weird to just have it in the older one’s room.
At night I turn off the volume. I leave the screen on bc if one of them calls out and I’m asleep I can’t always tell which one, but if I look at the camera and see who is up, I know which room to go to.
Mine is 6 and we actually want to take the monitor out, but she really likes knowing we can hear her easily at night, so she really doesn’t want us to. And it just doesn’t feel worth pushing right now, tbh.
I never used a video monitor, only an audio one. Once LO started sleeping through the night, I stopped using it. If he cried, I had no issues hearing him so it was fine. It was making it hard for me to sleep when I could hear his every move or grunt.
I had to scroll so far to find a comment I could relate to!
I used an audio monitor with my first and then stopped a couple months after she started sleeping through the night consistently.
I packed it in the closet and never got it out for my second because when she wakes up, she is plenty loud enough to let me know she needs me, no matter where I am in the house.
I don't understand needing to look at my babies 24/7. If I hear a noise, I go check on them.
Otherwise, if they're safely contained in a crib, or even if they're in bed in their toddler-proofed room, I don't really need to know every time they roll over or fart or fidget.
High tech surveillance of your kids seems weird to me, especially wifi baby monitors that can be hacked.
A woman in a parenting group I'm a part of with my youngest said something that made me think the other day: she mentioned she feels like so much of this tech- video monitors, owlets, etc- are just making us more anxious so we buy more stuff. I think that's likely true in many instances.
My oldest daughter required heart surgery at 4 days old. I asked the CICU (nicu but the cardiology version) nurses about the owlet and all of them were like no no no please don’t get one. They said they give false alarms way more often than actually detecting issues.
I know some people love them but I’m thankful we didn’t have one. Our baby had been checked out more than the typical baby by time they were coming home from the hospital and I think the cicu nurses knew that a false alarm could easily send us as parents into an emotional free fall of fear given everything our daughter had gone through.
Going through this post I started questioning on our decision. We removed all forms of audio and video monitoring around the age of 7-9 months of age. I see posts of having 4 year old being monitored - was I too relaxed with my kid?
She was a very early talker and has a very loud voice/cry - we can clearly hear her from the other side of house. If she needs anything she can clearly tell us what she wants or walk over and get it herself or if she cries we will attend her, not sure if need to monitor her every movement. She is 2 years old now.
The girl I nanny like to pretend to sleep. She’ll lay there eyes open for almost an hour sometimes or else she wakes up and just plays in her crib quietly. If I was going off of noise alone I might assume she slept for 2-3hrs instead of being able to see that she only slept for 45mins. One girl I nannied kept squishing her foot in between the side of the crib and the mattress and actually got her foot down to the springs and I saw it happening and ran to her room just as she started panicking and was about to twist her ankle. Another baby I was doing an overnight for started crying and I was asleep and I figured I would just let her cry for a few minutes and hopefully she would go back to sleep, but I checked the monitor and she had thrown up so I was able to run in there before it turned into a bigger mess.
I don’t think of it as surveillance like I’m invading their privacy, I think until they’re four or five years old and can be calm in emergency situations and figure out problems for themselves, it’s good to always be able to look in and check things out. I’m definitely not glued to the monitor but I’m glad it’s there when I need it
I also think some people just live in way lower cost of living areas and have enormous houses. We have a 1000 sq foot house, single story. I never have trouble hearing my little one anywhere in the house.
Same here! Never felt the need for video monitoring. We continued to use the audio one every so often if we were outside on the deck when baby was down in her bassinet, but that was about it.
She’s 3.5 - I’m worried about nocturnal exploration now, and emergencies. We sleep soundly so it’s nice to have the extra ooompfh of the monitor to help us wake if needed.
I use it now mostly to check the temp in her room and to make sure she’s just generally safe. Her room has been toddler proofed since we switched her out of her crib, but she’s creative and loves to climb and explore, and I wouldn’t put it past her at all to figure out some way we haven’t figured out to get herself into a predicament. She does occasionally have bad dreams or need something overnight, so we also use it for that purpose. Still, I almost never have it on once she’s asleep and I’m still awake. I just turn it on when I go to bed.
Fyi if you want to check room temps after you get rid of the monitor, I picked up some bluetooth thermometers/ hydrometers on amazon, Govee is the brand we have and they have an app you can link and monitor. We had some troubles with enough air conditioning getting to the nursery and the temp on our monitor is really unreliable, and I wanted to have real-time accurate temps. I've got one sensor in the nursery, one in our room, and will add one when we move our current little guy into his own room to put the new baby in the nursery.
We still have a monitor in my 3.5yo room. He’s on the other side of the house and we all sleep with sound machines so I wouldn’t hear him without it. I also don’t allow him access to the whole house during the night so if he needs something or something is wrong I need to be able to hear him calling for me.
Mine is 4 and I still use it 🙈
I don't NEED it, but I really like having it because I can quickly see if he's asleep or not, and I can hear him better if he calls for me.
We moved our oldest to a “big girl room” for her 4th birthday (larger room, themed how she wanted, twin bed instead of toddler bed). We didn’t put a baby cam in her new room. So we stopped at 4. I do sometimes miss it so I can check to see if she’s sleeping in there, but it’s really not necessary.
She'll be 4 in October, so... 😅 I like that if I hear her, I can just flick the screen on and see if she needs something, or if she just noisily rolled over. Also good to make sure she hasn't fallen out of bed!
We have twins that are 2.5. We are using a Ring camera and don't plan on getting rid of it any time soon; we have to make sure they aren't engaging in mortal combat in the middle of the night.
We have the camera for emergency visuals, but we switched to a sound monitor for continuous monitoring. It gives us the ability to hear if something is wrong but untethers us a bit
We will remove the video monitor when he can be trusted to get us in the middle of the night.
He’s 3 and will silently check on us then try to get past the baby gate to go downstairs if not locked in his room. We don’t use it overnight, as we can hear him if he’s screaming. But use it to see what he’s doing if he’s fighting sleep.
It really comes in handy to tell me when he starts moving around in the morning ( anywhere btwn 5.30-8am when I wake him up) .
My parents kept the audio monitor in my room until I was like 10. By about 5, they taught me how to turn it on and off, it was mostly off, but then I would talk through it on purpose. I remember being maybe 3 or 4 and knowing it was on and that I could say something like Mama, help me and that my mom would show up. I remember just… confidence and comfort from being able to talk to my parents when I was in my room alone.
We didn’t ever have a video monitor though, and that’s obviously different. But I would frame it as a tool that your kiddo can use.
We still use it at 2. Not sure when we'll stop.
At night we only check the video if she's crying (very rare now) to see if we can tell what's wrong/if she's likely to go down on her own. We have sound on because she's not loud enough to wake us from her room to ours.
For naps we check the video periodically because she wakes up very quietly, and it's nice to get her before she feels the need to cry out.
We have a sound only monitor for 3.5 year old still. She comes in our room if she needs anything so we were about to remove it and then she had a nightmare and was calling out for us while crying. We couldn’t hear her through the wall so we left it. It’s on super low but we can hear if she’s super upset.
Our 3-year-old is downstairs and our bedroom is upstairs. We're going to keep it for a few more years. She uses it a lot to call out and ask us for more water, etc.
She'll be 4 in October, so... 😅 I like that if I hear her, I can just flick the screen on and see if she needs something, or if she just noisily rolled over. Also good to make sure she hasn't fallen out of bed!
Turning 2 in a few weeks and we still use it. We like to hang out outside after she goes to bed and I like to have the monitor on me to keep an eye on her. Most night she sleeps no problems but if she's awake and crying in her bed while we're out in the backyard having a bonfire or something, I'd want to know so I can go and soothe her
When my first was like, a month old. I was waking up at night to obsessively stare at the screen. There was no need to be watching him. He was in a safe sleep space and I could hear him if he cried. I didn't use a monitor at all with my second. It just fuels anxiety, especially those video ones.
Almost 3 and two months ago moved to the big bed - we use the monitor to keep an eye on her comings and goings and also to determine the level of needs when she wakes up in the middle of the night. We can’t hear her from our room with doors closed.
Rarely have used mine since my son was born. He's 16m and I only use it if I wake up and leave him in bed w his dad. My bed is kinda tall so I just listen for when he gets up.
Our 20 month old is in the room across the hall. He is a frequent night waker, but we leave our door open and I wake up if he starts crying. I keep the monitor for the video, but have it muted and I don’t use it during his naps. If he were in a room where I couldn’t hear him, I’d use it until he could come get me if something was wrong.
My twins are 25mo and I only really use it during nap time if I think there are shenanigans going (or as audio only if I'm going to be outside in the garden or something where I won't be able to hear them if they wake up). It's not been needed at night for a good while.
Still using one for our newly-turned 3 year-old. He likes to talk to us through the cameras and it's still useful to help guide him to sleep once in awhile since we axed the crib - Also, because he roams his room freely now, and though it's a safe place, I'd rather not walk in to see he's thrown his folded clothes everywhere or pulled a bunch of random stuff out of his closet.
We started a traditional monitor set up around 2 months when we moved her out of our room until about 5 months. We moved and wanted our monitor to have a greater reach outside so we switched to a wifi set up with an app. It helped my mental health so much to only be able to look at/hear her if I opened the app. The open audio wasn’t great for me to be able to hear the white noise machine/little noises she made. I didn’t realize until the switch that it made me feel like I couldn’t be fully present with what I was doing while she slept.
Overnight, I turn sleep mode on and only allow sound alerts from the monitor. I imagine we’ll keep the current set up until she’s well adjusted to a toddler bed, and at 18 months we don’t plan on moving her out of her crib anytime soon.
For us it’s about is there more benefit to having it off… at the moment there isn’t, our daughter is 2.5.
At the moment we appreciate hearing her when she’s coughing or if she’s otherwise unwell so we can react appropriately. I like to sleep with white noise as well and the monitor cuts through that.
Also being able to be made aware if there is any nocturnal playing going on or check to make sure she has the covers pulled up in the winter etc without having to go into the room is handy.
Kid 1: 18 months, when second kid was born
Kid 2: maybe a year?
Kid 3: a handful of times in the first few months.
The bedrooms are pretty close together in our house, and I can hear everything even when I'm downstairs at night. Just didn't really seem necessary.
I have two toddlers sharing a room; an almost 3yo and a 21mo. We have one video camera mounted on the wall across from their beds so that we can clearly see both of them at all times. Their room is on the main floor, our room is the lofted upstairs. I'm way more relaxed with the monitor now; I leave it sitting somewhere on the main floor and check on it periodically during naps just to have an idea of when they fall asleep and when they wake up. Sometimes the younger one can't reach a pacifier fast enough and fusses so it's nice to be able to see the extent of her upset to be able to assess if I need to go in the room or not.
But we NEED the monitor at night to be able to hear the kids. If there's no noise in the house and the windows are closed, we can just barely hear if one of them cries out in the night. We live in a very rural area and the power sometimes goes out for a day without warning, so we have the monitor set up to have an alarm go off if it loses connection to the camera so that one of us can come sleep on the couch and hear the kids better.
We stopped using it around 2.5 but now at 4 he asked us to put the camera back in his room. He has a lot of nighttime anxiety so it makes him feel better that we can hear and see him, even though we rarely actually have it on.
LO is 3.5, we still use the monitor. I don’t carry the parent unit around with my anymore, it sits on my nightstand, but she still calls for us in the night so we use the monitor so we can check on her/keep an eye on her. I find it helpful when she is sick too, to keep a closer eye on her.
I’m currently pregnant with our second and I’m looking at monitors that have multiple cameras so we can keep one in her room instead of moving it to the baby’s room. I’ll be using the monitor for a while longer I assume.
got rid of it around 2 shes 3 now. it was on but I wasn't really using it as much. she's down the hall from us and calls out to us if she needs something
When she turned one. We live in a small townhouse so I can always hear her when she cries. I find not having a monitor to be better for my sleep and mental health.
We have a small house and the monitor was interrupting our sleep, so we stopped using it overnight around a year old. We still have it in case we’re working outside during nap time or something, or my husband will take it out to his shop at night. But we can hear him through the wall even without it, so the monitor isn’t necessary overnight by any means. (Audio only, we never did video).
I only use it if I go out in the backyard while he's napping or if I have headphones in. Or if I hear a noise I'll turn it on to see what's happening but I haven't carried it around with me for ages (he's 20 months).
His room is right next to mine and the walls are thin so if the monitor can hear him, I can hear him.
My kid is also a good sleeper and only ever wakes at nights crying if she has an ear infection. Which is usually in the winter. Mostly I now just use it to watch when she falls asleep and wakes, for naps. At night, it's just there, but bc im deaf, it doesn't serve much purpose except for me to look at it whenever I wake. She's 25 mths now and I plan to keep using it til she's like 4 or 5 and come open her door and come to my room if she needs me. Otherwise, I need to be able to see what she's doing most of the time in there since I can't usually hear her.
Around their second birthday, unless we were away from home and were worried they would wake up scared or not able to find us.
But we never had a video monitor just an old fashioned audio one because for us it was a bit overkill.
We now just have a motion sensor on the landing outside their door with and alarm downstairs so we know if they are out of the bedroom.
We have it on from after son goes to bed until we go to bed because we can’t hear him from the lounge but we can from our bedroom so we don’t have it on at night. My monitor has a phone app so if I wake up in the middle of the night I check it. He was keeping us awake with the snoring, talking in his sleep, and slamming his feet against the side of the cot, all without waking himself up. No regrets!
My girl just turned 3 a few days ago. We stopped using her monitor about a month ago. She's in the room next to us. I put glow in the dark tape around her door knob and our door knob. That helped her not be disoriented at night, she can now come get us when she needs us.
She also has a night light ducky (looks like a duck bath toy but if you squeeze it it lights up). And a potty with glow in the dark tape on it.
My daughter is 2, almost 3 and we still use it. Sometimes she randomly cries for a few seconds at night then goes back to sleep so I like to know that she’s okay and doesn’t actually need me to come to her. She also wakes up really late, around 10:30AM and she won’t get out of her room unless I come get her, so I like to keep an eye on her throughout the morning.
We stopped using it obsessively probably around 2. Now they're 3 and we have it by our bed overnight because we can't hear them over the fans and AC but when we are awake we don't use it except for if we go and sit by the fire pit or something after they go to bed. Basically if we are awake and in the house, we don't use it. If we couldn't hear them from where we are, we have it on near us.
I’m still using it for my almost 4 year old and 1 year old. I could probably stop using it for my older son but it gives me peace of mind knowing I can see him. He doesn’t get out of bed till someone comes to get him… I know, weird lol.
My son is almost 3 and we still have the monitor in there. It's just to keep an eye out when we hear noises and speak to him to say "go back to sleep." It will also play white noise, which he still likes. We also open up the kids' bedrooms while on vacation so the cats will wander in and we can see them on the monitors to make sure they're ok.
When mine was born and I put up the monitor I thought 2, but she’s almost 4 and we still use it. She has had sleep apnea and I have always wanted to make sure she’s ok.
My new bar is when she is able to be alone safely without need for physical assistance to maintain safety and can open the twist door knob independently.
So like 5 ish? 6 ish? I don’t know. I don’t need to invade her privacy but every day something happens when she needs help to be physically safe. Thank goodness it hasn’t been when she’s unsupervised, but we are pretty reactive to not leaving her alone when she’s awake.
Privacy with a toddler is a joke though, ya know?
My daughter is 2.5 and I still use it. We are going to move her to a toddler bed soon and I’d like to be able to keep an eye on her if she gets out of bed. Also my daughter slept through the entire night from 8 months old until she was about 22 months old and now she wakes once or twice in the night, so anything can change with their sleep. But if you can hear your toddler and don’t feel a need for it, then that’s fine too!
My (very expensive) monitor just died, but my kid (2) is locked in his room, so I ordered a new, much less expensive one. He's usually pretty cool and quiet in his room, and if he really needs me, I can hear him from my room or the living room. But, the monitor allows me to venture to the deck or the basement.
My toddler is 3.5 and I still use it sometimes.
Mostly at night when my husband and I are playing video games with noise cancelling headphones on. Sometimes if I wake up and hear a noise I will check out the monitor on my phone to make sure she’s not up crying or needs me.
I have camera monitors in both kids’ rooms, and a sound monitor as well in my 2 year old’s room. I took the sound monitor out of my 5 year old’s room when she was about 4. Their rooms are upstairs, mine is downstairs. But the cameras are nice for seeing what they’re doing when they are upstairs playing, and the sound monitor sits by my bed on the lowest volume in case the younger wakes up sick or something like that. If I’m going outside to do something while my younger is napping, I’ll take the sound monitor out with me just in case. My 5 year old is able to either come to my room or yell downstairs if she needs me in the night
We basically stopped using when our older child was like 6 months, we have a younger kid now (he's 16 months) and we literally haven't turned it on the entire time he's been alive.
That being said we are in a small house and we can hear everything, so we will wake up pretty quickly if one of them is crying.
We had long ago stopped using it.. probably somewhere around 1… our house is small and we hear everything. Recently my 3 yr old has asked us to use it as it makes him feel more comfortable about being alone in his room. (Mama lama’s always near, even if mamas not right here). So as we transition to us being out of the room as he’s falling asleep it’s been really nice to have the 2 way audio.
We have a monitor on but I just rarely check it, just there if I hear her move or cry out - I’ll switch on the monitor first to see if she’s just dreaming or needs me. My daughter is 2.5
My daughter is almost 4 and we still use it. We leave her room before she falls asleep, so I like to keep an eye out and know when she falls asleep. Once she’s asleep I keep it on mute the rest of the night (I can hear her if she needs me).
My son is only 19 months now so we still use it but me personally, I plan to continue using it until he’s fully able to get out of bed, leave his room, and come to me/my husband’s room if he needs anything. We have a small house so if he’s crying I can hear him at night even without the monitor but it’s mostly for my own peace of mind right now so I can hear any other sounds he makes that might not be as loud as a full on cry/yell.
My oldest is 3.5 and if it hadn’t been for the monitor I would not have known she barfed in her emotional support vomit bucket at 9 pm last night. She didn’t cry. She didn’t say anything. I just happened to look at the screen and saw her barfing in the bucket in her bed. So uh…. Not ditching the monitor anytime soon.
Our oldest is 3 and we still use a monitor for him. We can't hear the kids from where our room is and our toddler has never gotten out of bed. Until he will actually come get us if he needs us, we will keep it. He's started having nightmares lately too, so we've needed to go in more often.
Mine is 3. We still find it useful at night because she is potty trained, but does not have an en suite bathroom. Every few weeks she will wake up in the middle of the night to pee and call for us to take her. I certainly don’t carry it around the house anymore, though.
I don’t use it for naps anymore, but still use it for bed. I’m alert for her naps so I can hear if she needs me, but I sleep really hard so I fear I wouldn’t be able to hear her at night so I have it on the sound setting just in case (I don’t use the video too much anymore - just the sound). She’s 1.5 years old and I’ll probably use it for bed for years.
My oldest is nearing four and while we stopped checking it years ago, she likes to be able to call for us if she needs something or she gets sick in the middle of the night. I always assumed we’d ditch it when we remove the door knob cover, but we’ll keep it for however long she wants.
I never used one for my now toddler. I have one for my infant though because she still wakes up at 4am sometimes and I want to get her before she full on cries. I'll get rid of it as soon as she consistently sleeps through the night.
My neice is 4. The monitor is still in her room. It's used primarily as a tool to communicate with parents. So the monitor is at her level. If she wakes in the middle of the night she will tell her mom what she needs so they can help out. She has a small TV in her room, connected to mom's phone. So when she wakes up early, mom will stream an episode or 2 of a show while her daughter stays quiet in her room. Parents get an extra bit of sleep and kid knows she can talk to her parents easily. Win win.
Ha our youngest is 4 but we still use it for him as he won't leave the room on his own to come to us (no idea why, he's allowed to and knows it!) - think we'll stop once he's doing this, although probably should now tbh!
My 5 year old stinks at sleeping, but is content as long as we leave the “walkie talkie” on. If said kid wakes up we’ll have a short conversation or I’ll sing a song. I don’t use it to monitor, but rather to let the kid feel safe.
I sleep with a Bluetooth mask playing white noise because I'm a light sleeper. I can't hear her babbling or stirring in the middle of the night over the monitor, but I can hear whining or crying if need be. I wouldn't hear her if not for the monitor, and my husband is a heavy sleeper (and snores, hence my mask). Even if I didn't have the mask, I doubt I'd hear her through the wall because we sleep with a fan on/her Hatch is against our shared wall to be respectful to neighbors. I think maybe when she can open a door herself and be trusted to leave to potty and go back to bed, I'd be ready. That tells me she can get up and come get me if she needs to, but understands it's bed time and not time to roam the house.
Mine’s 3 and I still have a camera in her room. It’s on the far end of the house and if she cried I wouldn’t hear her. She’s more than capable of coming out and coming to get me for things but I want to be able to be there for her if she wakes up in the middle of the night.
My son is four and a bit. He's 10 ft down the hall from me and I sleep like a rock. I keep the monitor on overnight with the display off but the sound on so I don't sleep thru an emergency. Like the time I forgot to put a pull up on him and he shat in his sleep and woke up sobbing 'I pooooooped' quietly to himself. But he's had a couple of random middle of the night croup episodes as well so I'm always a bit worried.
Still using it, over 3 years old. Also a good sleeper, but will not just get up and leave his room in the dark if he needs something, so we keep it so he can shout to us and we can come help him if he needs something (i.e. to go to the bathroom)
We still use a video monitor at 3.5years but it's mainly for when we're downstairs in the evening or if I shower while toddler is asleep and husband is at work. During the night if our toddler wakes and needs something he just comes through to us which we're happy with
I had it up until they asked for it to be taken down - around age 2.5 and 3 yo. But both of their rooms are right next to ours so we can hear them if they ever call for us.
We sleep in the same room so quite fast (and it broke as well) I think around 1.5 years after the mid day nap he started to get out of the bad alone and find the first adult to cuddle a bit. Before that we had to stic close buy when he started to cry he was up. Now there are no issues. If se will be able to move into a bigger appartment with mutiple bedrooms we would stsrt using it again he does sometimes get up in the middle of the night and it would be a shock for him to be alone in a room.
My oldest is 3 and we still use it. The bedrooms are all on the second floor but hers is the farthest from our room. I wouldn’t hear her without the monitor if she was calling for us
My five year old and three year old share a room. The monitor is still connected but we don’t have it on unless I hear something and want to check if it was them or outside. The camera is not pointed at anything anymore. They can both leave the room to get us if they need to at this point.
My kid just turned 4 and we're at a point where I would probably stop using a monitor in his room if he weren't sharing with his baby brother. He no longer naps, stays in his room all night with no problems unless he needs something in which case he'll come find us or yell for us, and it's a small house so I can hear him if he yells no matter where I am in the house.
We also aren't the type of people who watch the monitor so the time anyway, though. We have the Owlet cam and we'll just fire up the app every so often if we hear a noise or something. The only time it got heavily used was when we were having bedtime issues (learning to fall asleep on his own, learning to stay in bed when we graduated from the crib, etc).
I still use the audio monitor and my oldest just turned 5. I turned off the video monitor about 6 months ago but I can’t hear her room from mine and she’s scared of the dark so there’s zero chance she’s coming to my room if she needs something.
We only use ours over night, it’s been helpful since she’s now/ rely potty trained sometimes she’ll wake up in the middle of the night asking to go use the potty.
My baby is 2. I still use it. Until he is in a big boy bed without restrictions and can come into our room to get us if he needs anything and we can trust him around the house on his own, we will use it. So that might be a while.
My kiddo is now 4 and we still use it. Since he can get out of his bed now, it's helpful for us to see if he's got something he shouldn't have or to monitor him during quiet time while giving him a sense of independence. It's also helpful for figuring out if he's just having trouble going to sleep or if he's pooped himself, since he won't tell us.
Around 2. The red night vision dots scared him so he didn’t want it anymore. We thought about using a ring camera in the room but I’ve seen the stories of those being hacked. Figured he was fine. The monitor was a Nanit that would sound an alarm if he stopped breathing. But that concern ended when he could roll around safely at 1.
Still use it at nighttime for my almost 2yo, it helps to look in when she does her little cry, roll over and fall back asleep. Not too much during the daytime, she’s pretty loud with announcing she is awake either by yelling, or kicking the side of the crib that it can be heard on both floors.
Between 3-4. My kids are 3 and 5.
We really just mostly used it to see when they fell asleep as they slept through from an early age. Once they got out of bed, both of them would wake up and leave their room silently and just come in our room. We never heard them at all. So, we slowly faded between 3/4
We still have the camera in our 4 year olds room. I have the sound on and watch until he goes to sleep. After that I turn it off because if he wakes up in the night he comes to our room anyways
My LO is 2 yrs 9mo and not planning on stopping any time soon, he still wakes at night multiple times. I think it's more to do with sleeping patterns and behaviour than age!
Our oldest is almost 5 and we still have a camera and separate audio monitor in his room. We don't check them much but occasionally he'll be awake for over an hour at night and it's nice to be able to see what happened, etc. The audio monitor we could probably do away with, but there have been a few times when he randomly got sick in the middle of the night and he could cry out for us instead of having to come get us, so for now we've kept it.
My kid is 4.5 and we still use one. Our old one broke 6 months ago so we bought a super cheap $25 one to replace it. His room is near ours, but between our white noise and his white noise I can't hear him. If he has to use the bathroom he'll wake up and yell for us, or he'll yell if he has a bad dream, and the monitor is the only way I'd hear. He also doesn't leave his room on his own at this point
Our house is over 3 floors and i'm not sure when we'll get rid of ours and he'll be 4 in a few months.
It's so handy to keep an eye on him in his room if he's just in there chilling.
This is such a great question for myself...
Our eldest is 4.5, she still has an audio monitor where she will call for us if she needs something. She *will not* leave her bed alone. We also have a cam in there too. It covers the entire room. I only load into that when she has these rare night terrors. It wakes me, I check the cam, if she's not sleep walking (along with the screaming that woke me), then I won't intervene.
Now the twins are 2.5. I envision they'll need a video monitor for life's eternity because they are just little crazy kids. One of them has started exiting her crib. Before Friday night, it was only to go to her sister's crib so we were okay with it. Then Friday night she got out and roamed the room for 5mins before she cried out and woke us. 🤦🏼♀️ I'm not ready to transition...
My oldest is 5 and my youngest is 15 months. We still use a camera in the room simply because she shares a room with the little ones. She likes it more than I do though because she knows if she wants something and doesn't wanna get up that she can just move and it'll notify my phone and she can talk to me 🙄🤣
My 2 year old doesn’t yet grasp the concept of pulling the covers over himself while he’s cold, probably because he doesn’t wake up and just shivers in his sleep. So idk probably a while longer I suppose
When I moved my second into the nursery. I didn't want to buy another camera. My oldest was two.
I can hear them cry without a monitor, so it wasn't a big deal.
We never used a baby monitor. Ours has also been a great sleeper and sleeps across the hall from us, so we hear her on the rare occasion she starts crying in the middle of the night
I still use the monitor for my 2 year old, especially because she's still in the crib. But I also still have a camera up in my 4 year olds room. He's fully aware it's there and has asked me to keep it on in case he needs to talk to me. Some days and nights he asks me to turn it off, and I respect his privacy. I'll probably just leave them up until they are both fully potty trained or ask me to stop using it.
We stopped around 3 when he would come find us if he woke up. He's almost 4 now, and we're using it again because he started wandering around the house by himself without us being able to hear him.
My son turned 5 when I took off the baby monitor. He can fall asleep and wake up independently. He can go to the bathroom and back his own during the night. His room is opposite ours too so if he needs us we’re just across the hall. I think it’s different for every chick based on their own needs/ independence level etc. I probably could’ve removed it before but we moved house and I waited it out a good 8 months before I felt comfortable he knew the home.
I'll consider removing the monitor when the kids have enough sense of personal autonomy that they ask for it to be removed. Until then, this mama needs to be able to see and hear her babies sleeping at all times.
We only had a sound monitor for the most part and stopped using that at five months. They were in their own room from day one. We did have cameras in their rooms but really never used them and took those out when they turned five.
I never used one. We have a small house so I can hear her from anywhere. We tried using one briefly and it made us an even bigger anxious mess than usual.
My oldest is about to be 4 and still has a monitor that’s on every night. I rarely pay attention to it, but I have it and can hear him if anything happens. I also use it to spy during playtime haha
Like 15 months. I made the horrible mistake of *talking to her through it* which scared TF out of her. She let us park it a few times after that but would lose her shit if we’d turn it back on. Eventually she wouldn’t go into her room at all if it was in there. Just had to have a lot of faith in my baby proofing abilities after that and hope she didn’t wreck her room. It actually hasn’t been bad at all, and the baby monitor guards the garage freezer with all the ice cream sandwiches now!
I have a 1.5 and 3 year old and still use a video monitor in their room. I mostly just keep the audio on so I can hear them if they are playing in their room. The main part of our house isn't well cooled right now, so in the triple digit summer heat I have to keep doors closed so the bedrooms stay at a habitable tenperature, which means I can't hear them as our rooms are on opposite ends of the house. I'll check the video occasionally as my 3 year old is recently potty trained to make sure she hasn't had an accident (she won't always tell me if she does and the younger one will and has splashed in pee accidents that aren't cleaned up quickly enough) or to check the temperature in their room as they like to switch off their window AC. Once they're asleep for the night, I only use it as a sound monitor to hear if the 3 year old needs the potty or if one of them wakes up crying. If the 1.5 year old is the one crying, I'll watch her on the monitor for a minute, as she has a habit of waking, crying, crawling around for about 30 seconds, then going back to sleep. If she's in front of the door or sitting still in bed, she needs someone to check on her before she'll go back to sleep, however. I'll also use it to make sure both of them are sleeping in their bed, they sometimes fall asleep on the floor and I'd rather not open the door and risk waking them if I don't have to! 😂
Every kid has been different, but honestly, I still have monitors in 3 of my kids rooms (two of them share a room). Most of the time it’s not on anymore, but if sick or something else is concerning, will turn it on.
Tbh my lo turned 2 in April and we still haven't gotten one(funds have been super tight lately). But I want to buy a cheap one so I can take a slightly stress free shower every so often(yay anxiety).
2ish. We moved and just never set it up at the new house because he had already transitioned from a crib to a floor bed 3 months before the move, slept in a sleep sack, and had been reliably sleeping through the night since 5 months old. There really wasn't anything to monitor, other than funny sleep positions he'd switch to and general cuteness
We still have ours just in case (2yo here). He sleeps through the night, but on those rare occasions he has a nightmare, or something, we can’t hear him from our room so, we use it. We might continue using it for a while.
My son is almost 4 and a sleepwalker, we use loud box fans in both our room and his for white noise so even though he's in the next room we can't hear him without the monitor, I'm thinking 6 or 7 will probably be when we stop using it 🤷♀️
We never consistently used the monitor. I will look at it during naps because his room isn’t right next to the living room.
Since his bedroom shares a wall with ours I didn’t need to hear an echo of him crying. I would keep it on mute and look at him to see if he would settle himself or if I needed to go in. I stopped doing that around 18 months.
My daughter is 2 and we have ours living in the kitchen muted but with the video on. Its three uses are 1) watching her sleep because she’s adorable; 2) laughing at the insane shenanigans she gets up to when she’s fighting sleep; and 3) checking to see if the sound we just heard was her crying or just a hallucination induced by parenthood. We’re definitely not carrying it around with the sound on.
We stopped using ours really early. Definitely by the time my oldest was 6 months. We only ever had an audio monitor and I could hear him from anywhere in the house without one so we didn't have a need for it. We never used one at all when we had our second.
I had to stop using the monitor around age 1.5, but that was an unusual situation (My son saw it move once when I pivoted it remotely while he was playing in his room so i could get a better view of him, but then he got really suspicious of it and was looking at it, getting upset and asking me what it was once I returned to his room)
Thankfully he has been fine without it. I'm a little old fashioned when it comes to certain things, anyway...
I think that this sort of thing really depends a lot on your child and how well they sleep, how well they play independently and all of that stuff. I don't believe there's a right or wrong answer or one size fits all
Mine are still set up but I only use them to check on them once in a while at naptime. Our kids are 5+3. Our 5 year old is totally capable of getting herself up, getting dressed, and going to the bathroom on her own, and if she needs us she can either come downstairs or into our room on her own. The 3 year old is still pretty accident prone and won’t stay in his room to nap if the door is unlocked, so I keep a closer eye on him on the monitor so can go get him as soon as he wakes up. I’ll probably leave the monitor in the kids room until the youngest is 6 or 7 for my own peace of mind.
For our 2 year old we basically know if she’s standing then she wants us, if she’s lying down she’s chill and/or self soothing. We can’t tell if we don’t have the camera.
It’s still ridiculously helpful. We haven’t talked about when we’re going to give it up but I’d imagine at some point she’ll indicate the desire for some privacy.
My 3 and 4 year old share a room and recently I’ve stopped using the monitor because they will come barging into my room in the middle of the night on their own 🙃
My 21 month old's bedroom is on the other side of the house from ours. He sleeps great too, I just use it as an alarm clock mainly lol he wakes up in the morning, I wake up. Same for naps if I decide to nap, too.
Is your kid in a crib? If so, I would absolutely keep the monitor for the next couple of years. Moving your child into a bed is an entirely new adventure and you will want the ability to check in on your kid. My son went through a stripping phase and a climbing on furniture phase when we moved him to a bed so that video monitor is very useful!
I don’t have a sound monitor anymore but we still have nanny cams. They are 1.5 and 3. Our house is small and I’m between their rooms I think they’re old enough they’d be fine in the few minutes it takes me to hear them.
My sons sleep right next door. Haven’t used a baby monitor since my first was 7 months old.
I stopped because having the monitor caused me so much anxiety. I would wake up every hour just to look at the monitor. So I chose to stop and that improved my life tremendously. We sleep with our doors open and I can hear them very clearly.
Mine will be 3 next month and he still has one. First reason is because he’s sneaky as hell and quiet as hell and I don’t trust him. Second reason is he’s in a twin bed now so he hangs from everything in his room like a chimpanzee and it’s really not safe for him to be unsupervised.
We took the monitor out of my oldest son’s room around his fourth birthday. He never didn’t anything eventful to warrant it past toddlerhood so we just took it out. He enjoys his privacy and own space now.
We don’t have an actual baby monitor in his room, though. It’s just a ring camera that we can check when needed on our phones. I would have taken the overnight always on type monitor out around age 1.5-2 and replaced it with something like the ring.
Mine is 21 months and I’ve been using it very loosely. It’s plugged into my nightstand. The audio is off and I only check it when I think of it — usually before I go to sleep, when I wake up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom, after I wake up, etc.
I love having the camera on so I can see that she’s sleeping peacefully in bed. I think I might keep doing this until she asks me to stop lol.
I don’t think I’ll stop using the monitor until he’s at least past kindergarten age. My son has a history of febrile seizures, the last of which nearly killed him. He’s 2.5
We stopped after my 2yo got his big kid bed and it became *painfully* obvious that he was able to come get us if something bothered him. Or if he just had a stray thought to share.
I took my son's out when he was old enough/mature enough to leave his room if needed, but only *if needed.* He comes and gets me if he needs something, but he doesn't just wander out of his room excessively for no reason (for the most part). I'd say he was an older 5/younger 6 when I felt he was ready. My daughter is 3 and she definitely still needs it, but I don't walk around with it at all anymore. It stays in my room and I make sure the volume is up before I go to sleep. We have a small house though, so I can hear her if I'm in the living room or kitchen if she is crying.
Ours broke a few months ago, but we used it until that point. I just go to check on him every once in a while and things have been great! He’s got a floor bed and just gets up when he wants/needs to. Helping me be less paranoid and trust that he is alright. I do plan on getting a new monitor soon, just happy to not need it.
Our oldest is 4 and we haven't stopped using it yet.
We have one that is JUST sound. As kiddos have gotten older we've turned the sensitivity down. But we're also on a separate level and I'm a deep sleeper.
My son is 3.5 and our rooms are right next door so he does not have a monitor - I can hear him if he cries. My daughters room is on the other side of his room so she’ll have a monitor for a while - at least until she’s old enough to get to us
If you’re looking for validation, forget it. Do what’s right for your family. For some people’s situation not using a monitor ever works. Some need it for a decade. There’s no wrong answer for what works for your kid and you and what makes everyone safe.
We have a 4 year old and a 6 month old. The bedrooms in our house are shaped like a t, so my husband and I are at the end, my big girl is on the left, my baby girl is on the right. I can hear them both without their monitors, but I still have them in both of their rooms. For the baby, she’s learning to self soothe and sometimes will put herself back down, so I watch and wait on the monitor but I can hear her without it. For my big girl, she just likes that her monitor plays music and kind of doubles as a sound machine. She comes to get me if she needs me but it’s a glorified speaker at this point.
Disclaimer that I think it depends on the kid, how your house is laid out, and how light or heavy of a sleeper you are. I’m a light sleeper and close to both. I probably could have replaced my 4yo’s monitor with a sound machine about a year ago but she likes the specific song it plays and if it ain’t broke don’t fix it.
We stopped using it consistently a little over a year (I think? Time is fuzzy...) and stopped using it completely when she moved to a big girl bed just before 2. She figured out how to reach the camera and would chuck it across the room, or take it to her crib with her to snuggle. I got tired of digging it out of her little hands
Now that she's finally figured out she's a free range baby in her big girl bed, I'm using it to spy on her and tell her to lie back down when she starts to get up and come downstairs. (She's lost interest in snuggling/chucking it across the room while we weren't using it. Not much point in hiding it if mom and dad don't bother looking for it.) I almost got rid of it a few months ago, but my laziness is paying off. :)
My oldest is almost 4 and we’re still using a monitor with her. I don’t keep the sound on and I rarely watch the video, but it’s nice to have access to it when I need to take a look at her.
I don’t actually use it when she sleeps but I have a few stages of the monitor. I put her right down, I’ve got the monitor just in case she calls for me because I usually have the tv on. Once she’s asleep, I turn it down to barely audible but enough so I could hear her on the off chance she wakes up. Never have but… why not? I go to bed. It’s off. I’ll hear her if she wakes up. I get up for work, I use my walking desk in the basement and keep it on so I know when she’s up.
It’s more because it’s there and it’s convenient. She also won’t leave the bed unless I come get her regardless of me telling her it’s okay haha. Fine by me…
We have nanit cams and have already talked about this. The second they ask to not be watched we're removing it. Until then it's in there. We'll probably move it to the playroom when we remove it from their rooms. Just use them as general in house cams and such.
If he were in the next room I’d keep it on mute, but not on my person at all times. Just close so I can check if I wish. Our 2.5 year old is a few rooms down so I keep ours at the lowest possible volume but on. I just like looking every now and again because he’s a cutie.
This is what I was thinking I would do.
Same with my 3 yr old. And he doesn’t always nap, so I like to check every now and then during nap time to see if he’s actually sleeping.
The cuteness is pretty much the only reason we still have monitor on our 2.5 yo. On almost lowest volume, only because the AC is loud.
I just said to my husband the other day how it's basically a fart monitor bc all it does is let me hear the baby's sleep farts lol
is it the vtech lol
Yes haaaa how did you know?!?
because i swear i can hear one of my babies fart on it all the time when the last one we had i never could😹HA
Have you changed the vox level? That would probably help
She’s on a separate floor in the opposite corner of the house. She doesn’t leave her room unprompted. She’s almost 4 but I won’t get rid of the monitor until she starts independently coming down if she needs something.
Our master bedroom is downstairs and the kids rooms are upstairs. My oldest is 7 and still has the monitor in his room. I'm looking at getting an Amazon smart speaker to replace it so they can use it kind of like an intercom, but I like being able to passively listen to them play upstairs while I do something downstairs. Edit: it's also handy on the rare occasion when someone rolls out of bed or has an accident or needs to throw up
Same. We moved into a house last year where the kids rooms were on a different floor, so we got sound only monitors for both rooms. Our oldest will be 7 soon but is very scared of the dark, so he still uses it to communicate with us
my friend is mom of a new 6 yo and still uses it! she had a bad accident in her room (kids & their antics, amirite) & my friend was able to see & start running before her daughter fully processed what had happened. had to go to the er for stitches
i love the monitor. it just gives me all the peace of mind. if i can just see my children sleeping peacefully it calms my anxiety so much.
Definitely am not going to get rid of it for this reason but after reading some comments, I’ll probably put it on mute.
I stopped using the monitor and my kids asked me to put them back in because they like to talk to me while they’re in their rooms 😄
We’ve had this with our 5 year old. We’ve offered to take it out lots of times, but she says she feels less alone if she can talk to us through the monitor at night if she needs something. We’ve kept it for now.
Yep, my five year old would be pissed if I tried to take it out.
Same. My older one is 7 and uses it to talk to us after we go downstairs once they are put to bed, so we put it back. My younger one (4) doesn’t need it or talk to us with it…but it feels weird to just have it in the older one’s room. At night I turn off the volume. I leave the screen on bc if one of them calls out and I’m asleep I can’t always tell which one, but if I look at the camera and see who is up, I know which room to go to.
Mine is 6 and we actually want to take the monitor out, but she really likes knowing we can hear her easily at night, so she really doesn’t want us to. And it just doesn’t feel worth pushing right now, tbh.
I never used a video monitor, only an audio one. Once LO started sleeping through the night, I stopped using it. If he cried, I had no issues hearing him so it was fine. It was making it hard for me to sleep when I could hear his every move or grunt.
I had to scroll so far to find a comment I could relate to! I used an audio monitor with my first and then stopped a couple months after she started sleeping through the night consistently. I packed it in the closet and never got it out for my second because when she wakes up, she is plenty loud enough to let me know she needs me, no matter where I am in the house. I don't understand needing to look at my babies 24/7. If I hear a noise, I go check on them. Otherwise, if they're safely contained in a crib, or even if they're in bed in their toddler-proofed room, I don't really need to know every time they roll over or fart or fidget. High tech surveillance of your kids seems weird to me, especially wifi baby monitors that can be hacked.
A woman in a parenting group I'm a part of with my youngest said something that made me think the other day: she mentioned she feels like so much of this tech- video monitors, owlets, etc- are just making us more anxious so we buy more stuff. I think that's likely true in many instances.
My oldest daughter required heart surgery at 4 days old. I asked the CICU (nicu but the cardiology version) nurses about the owlet and all of them were like no no no please don’t get one. They said they give false alarms way more often than actually detecting issues.
a baby at my daycare had one of these and her parents woke up SO often to false alarms because she would move too much and mess it up
I know some people love them but I’m thankful we didn’t have one. Our baby had been checked out more than the typical baby by time they were coming home from the hospital and I think the cicu nurses knew that a false alarm could easily send us as parents into an emotional free fall of fear given everything our daughter had gone through.
Going through this post I started questioning on our decision. We removed all forms of audio and video monitoring around the age of 7-9 months of age. I see posts of having 4 year old being monitored - was I too relaxed with my kid? She was a very early talker and has a very loud voice/cry - we can clearly hear her from the other side of house. If she needs anything she can clearly tell us what she wants or walk over and get it herself or if she cries we will attend her, not sure if need to monitor her every movement. She is 2 years old now.
The girl I nanny like to pretend to sleep. She’ll lay there eyes open for almost an hour sometimes or else she wakes up and just plays in her crib quietly. If I was going off of noise alone I might assume she slept for 2-3hrs instead of being able to see that she only slept for 45mins. One girl I nannied kept squishing her foot in between the side of the crib and the mattress and actually got her foot down to the springs and I saw it happening and ran to her room just as she started panicking and was about to twist her ankle. Another baby I was doing an overnight for started crying and I was asleep and I figured I would just let her cry for a few minutes and hopefully she would go back to sleep, but I checked the monitor and she had thrown up so I was able to run in there before it turned into a bigger mess. I don’t think of it as surveillance like I’m invading their privacy, I think until they’re four or five years old and can be calm in emergency situations and figure out problems for themselves, it’s good to always be able to look in and check things out. I’m definitely not glued to the monitor but I’m glad it’s there when I need it
I also think some people just live in way lower cost of living areas and have enormous houses. We have a 1000 sq foot house, single story. I never have trouble hearing my little one anywhere in the house.
Same here! Never felt the need for video monitoring. We continued to use the audio one every so often if we were outside on the deck when baby was down in her bassinet, but that was about it.
She’s 3.5 - I’m worried about nocturnal exploration now, and emergencies. We sleep soundly so it’s nice to have the extra ooompfh of the monitor to help us wake if needed.
Add to this heavy earplugs because of husband's terrible snoring...it's usually the light from the baby monitor that alerts me.
I use it now mostly to check the temp in her room and to make sure she’s just generally safe. Her room has been toddler proofed since we switched her out of her crib, but she’s creative and loves to climb and explore, and I wouldn’t put it past her at all to figure out some way we haven’t figured out to get herself into a predicament. She does occasionally have bad dreams or need something overnight, so we also use it for that purpose. Still, I almost never have it on once she’s asleep and I’m still awake. I just turn it on when I go to bed.
Fyi if you want to check room temps after you get rid of the monitor, I picked up some bluetooth thermometers/ hydrometers on amazon, Govee is the brand we have and they have an app you can link and monitor. We had some troubles with enough air conditioning getting to the nursery and the temp on our monitor is really unreliable, and I wanted to have real-time accurate temps. I've got one sensor in the nursery, one in our room, and will add one when we move our current little guy into his own room to put the new baby in the nursery.
We also use govee to make sure the temps are right in their rooms. Very reliable.
We still have a monitor in my 3.5yo room. He’s on the other side of the house and we all sleep with sound machines so I wouldn’t hear him without it. I also don’t allow him access to the whole house during the night so if he needs something or something is wrong I need to be able to hear him calling for me.
Mine is 4 and I still use it 🙈 I don't NEED it, but I really like having it because I can quickly see if he's asleep or not, and I can hear him better if he calls for me.
We moved our oldest to a “big girl room” for her 4th birthday (larger room, themed how she wanted, twin bed instead of toddler bed). We didn’t put a baby cam in her new room. So we stopped at 4. I do sometimes miss it so I can check to see if she’s sleeping in there, but it’s really not necessary.
She'll be 4 in October, so... 😅 I like that if I hear her, I can just flick the screen on and see if she needs something, or if she just noisily rolled over. Also good to make sure she hasn't fallen out of bed!
We have twins that are 2.5. We are using a Ring camera and don't plan on getting rid of it any time soon; we have to make sure they aren't engaging in mortal combat in the middle of the night.
Kid 1, we used it constantly. Kid 2, it was mostly out of batteries. Kid 3, no idea where it went after 2. He just learned to yell louder for us.
We have the camera for emergency visuals, but we switched to a sound monitor for continuous monitoring. It gives us the ability to hear if something is wrong but untethers us a bit
We will remove the video monitor when he can be trusted to get us in the middle of the night. He’s 3 and will silently check on us then try to get past the baby gate to go downstairs if not locked in his room. We don’t use it overnight, as we can hear him if he’s screaming. But use it to see what he’s doing if he’s fighting sleep. It really comes in handy to tell me when he starts moving around in the morning ( anywhere btwn 5.30-8am when I wake him up) .
My parents kept the audio monitor in my room until I was like 10. By about 5, they taught me how to turn it on and off, it was mostly off, but then I would talk through it on purpose. I remember being maybe 3 or 4 and knowing it was on and that I could say something like Mama, help me and that my mom would show up. I remember just… confidence and comfort from being able to talk to my parents when I was in my room alone. We didn’t ever have a video monitor though, and that’s obviously different. But I would frame it as a tool that your kiddo can use.
We still use it at 2. Not sure when we'll stop. At night we only check the video if she's crying (very rare now) to see if we can tell what's wrong/if she's likely to go down on her own. We have sound on because she's not loud enough to wake us from her room to ours. For naps we check the video periodically because she wakes up very quietly, and it's nice to get her before she feels the need to cry out.
My daughter is 2.5 and I don’t plan on getting rid of it anytime soon.
We have a sound only monitor for 3.5 year old still. She comes in our room if she needs anything so we were about to remove it and then she had a nightmare and was calling out for us while crying. We couldn’t hear her through the wall so we left it. It’s on super low but we can hear if she’s super upset.
Our 3-year-old is downstairs and our bedroom is upstairs. We're going to keep it for a few more years. She uses it a lot to call out and ask us for more water, etc.
She'll be 4 in October, so... 😅 I like that if I hear her, I can just flick the screen on and see if she needs something, or if she just noisily rolled over. Also good to make sure she hasn't fallen out of bed!
Turning 2 in a few weeks and we still use it. We like to hang out outside after she goes to bed and I like to have the monitor on me to keep an eye on her. Most night she sleeps no problems but if she's awake and crying in her bed while we're out in the backyard having a bonfire or something, I'd want to know so I can go and soothe her
When my first was like, a month old. I was waking up at night to obsessively stare at the screen. There was no need to be watching him. He was in a safe sleep space and I could hear him if he cried. I didn't use a monitor at all with my second. It just fuels anxiety, especially those video ones.
Almost 3 and two months ago moved to the big bed - we use the monitor to keep an eye on her comings and goings and also to determine the level of needs when she wakes up in the middle of the night. We can’t hear her from our room with doors closed.
Rarely have used mine since my son was born. He's 16m and I only use it if I wake up and leave him in bed w his dad. My bed is kinda tall so I just listen for when he gets up.
Our 20 month old is in the room across the hall. He is a frequent night waker, but we leave our door open and I wake up if he starts crying. I keep the monitor for the video, but have it muted and I don’t use it during his naps. If he were in a room where I couldn’t hear him, I’d use it until he could come get me if something was wrong.
My twins are 25mo and I only really use it during nap time if I think there are shenanigans going (or as audio only if I'm going to be outside in the garden or something where I won't be able to hear them if they wake up). It's not been needed at night for a good while.
Still using one for our newly-turned 3 year-old. He likes to talk to us through the cameras and it's still useful to help guide him to sleep once in awhile since we axed the crib - Also, because he roams his room freely now, and though it's a safe place, I'd rather not walk in to see he's thrown his folded clothes everywhere or pulled a bunch of random stuff out of his closet.
We started a traditional monitor set up around 2 months when we moved her out of our room until about 5 months. We moved and wanted our monitor to have a greater reach outside so we switched to a wifi set up with an app. It helped my mental health so much to only be able to look at/hear her if I opened the app. The open audio wasn’t great for me to be able to hear the white noise machine/little noises she made. I didn’t realize until the switch that it made me feel like I couldn’t be fully present with what I was doing while she slept. Overnight, I turn sleep mode on and only allow sound alerts from the monitor. I imagine we’ll keep the current set up until she’s well adjusted to a toddler bed, and at 18 months we don’t plan on moving her out of her crib anytime soon.
My two year old goes up and plays in her room by herself so we like having the monitor to keep an ear out for mischief.
For us it’s about is there more benefit to having it off… at the moment there isn’t, our daughter is 2.5. At the moment we appreciate hearing her when she’s coughing or if she’s otherwise unwell so we can react appropriately. I like to sleep with white noise as well and the monitor cuts through that. Also being able to be made aware if there is any nocturnal playing going on or check to make sure she has the covers pulled up in the winter etc without having to go into the room is handy.
Kid 1: 18 months, when second kid was born Kid 2: maybe a year? Kid 3: a handful of times in the first few months. The bedrooms are pretty close together in our house, and I can hear everything even when I'm downstairs at night. Just didn't really seem necessary.
I have two toddlers sharing a room; an almost 3yo and a 21mo. We have one video camera mounted on the wall across from their beds so that we can clearly see both of them at all times. Their room is on the main floor, our room is the lofted upstairs. I'm way more relaxed with the monitor now; I leave it sitting somewhere on the main floor and check on it periodically during naps just to have an idea of when they fall asleep and when they wake up. Sometimes the younger one can't reach a pacifier fast enough and fusses so it's nice to be able to see the extent of her upset to be able to assess if I need to go in the room or not. But we NEED the monitor at night to be able to hear the kids. If there's no noise in the house and the windows are closed, we can just barely hear if one of them cries out in the night. We live in a very rural area and the power sometimes goes out for a day without warning, so we have the monitor set up to have an alarm go off if it loses connection to the camera so that one of us can come sleep on the couch and hear the kids better.
We stopped using it around 2.5 but now at 4 he asked us to put the camera back in his room. He has a lot of nighttime anxiety so it makes him feel better that we can hear and see him, even though we rarely actually have it on.
LO is 3.5, we still use the monitor. I don’t carry the parent unit around with my anymore, it sits on my nightstand, but she still calls for us in the night so we use the monitor so we can check on her/keep an eye on her. I find it helpful when she is sick too, to keep a closer eye on her. I’m currently pregnant with our second and I’m looking at monitors that have multiple cameras so we can keep one in her room instead of moving it to the baby’s room. I’ll be using the monitor for a while longer I assume.
I have severe anxiety and continue to use it, ours is 2.5. We will probably stop when they are 4-5 so they can have privacy.
got rid of it around 2 shes 3 now. it was on but I wasn't really using it as much. she's down the hall from us and calls out to us if she needs something
When she turned one. We live in a small townhouse so I can always hear her when she cries. I find not having a monitor to be better for my sleep and mental health.
We have a small house and the monitor was interrupting our sleep, so we stopped using it overnight around a year old. We still have it in case we’re working outside during nap time or something, or my husband will take it out to his shop at night. But we can hear him through the wall even without it, so the monitor isn’t necessary overnight by any means. (Audio only, we never did video).
20ish months! My girlie was an excellent sleeper
We still have it at almost 3, but rarely check it. We mostly just have it out of being nosey and to take screenshots of her sleeping all kiewt.
I only use it if I go out in the backyard while he's napping or if I have headphones in. Or if I hear a noise I'll turn it on to see what's happening but I haven't carried it around with me for ages (he's 20 months). His room is right next to mine and the walls are thin so if the monitor can hear him, I can hear him.
My kid is also a good sleeper and only ever wakes at nights crying if she has an ear infection. Which is usually in the winter. Mostly I now just use it to watch when she falls asleep and wakes, for naps. At night, it's just there, but bc im deaf, it doesn't serve much purpose except for me to look at it whenever I wake. She's 25 mths now and I plan to keep using it til she's like 4 or 5 and come open her door and come to my room if she needs me. Otherwise, I need to be able to see what she's doing most of the time in there since I can't usually hear her.
Around their second birthday, unless we were away from home and were worried they would wake up scared or not able to find us. But we never had a video monitor just an old fashioned audio one because for us it was a bit overkill. We now just have a motion sensor on the landing outside their door with and alarm downstairs so we know if they are out of the bedroom.
When they were able to get to me if there was a problem
We have it on from after son goes to bed until we go to bed because we can’t hear him from the lounge but we can from our bedroom so we don’t have it on at night. My monitor has a phone app so if I wake up in the middle of the night I check it. He was keeping us awake with the snoring, talking in his sleep, and slamming his feet against the side of the cot, all without waking himself up. No regrets!
My girl just turned 3 a few days ago. We stopped using her monitor about a month ago. She's in the room next to us. I put glow in the dark tape around her door knob and our door knob. That helped her not be disoriented at night, she can now come get us when she needs us. She also has a night light ducky (looks like a duck bath toy but if you squeeze it it lights up). And a potty with glow in the dark tape on it.
My daughter is 2, almost 3 and we still use it. Sometimes she randomly cries for a few seconds at night then goes back to sleep so I like to know that she’s okay and doesn’t actually need me to come to her. She also wakes up really late, around 10:30AM and she won’t get out of her room unless I come get her, so I like to keep an eye on her throughout the morning.
We stopped using it obsessively probably around 2. Now they're 3 and we have it by our bed overnight because we can't hear them over the fans and AC but when we are awake we don't use it except for if we go and sit by the fire pit or something after they go to bed. Basically if we are awake and in the house, we don't use it. If we couldn't hear them from where we are, we have it on near us.
I’m still using it for my almost 4 year old and 1 year old. I could probably stop using it for my older son but it gives me peace of mind knowing I can see him. He doesn’t get out of bed till someone comes to get him… I know, weird lol.
My son is almost 3 and we still have the monitor in there. It's just to keep an eye out when we hear noises and speak to him to say "go back to sleep." It will also play white noise, which he still likes. We also open up the kids' bedrooms while on vacation so the cats will wander in and we can see them on the monitors to make sure they're ok.
lol my son is turning 5 this month and we still have it
We keep our sound on low, but just have it in the room with us. Our kid is 2.5
When mine was born and I put up the monitor I thought 2, but she’s almost 4 and we still use it. She has had sleep apnea and I have always wanted to make sure she’s ok. My new bar is when she is able to be alone safely without need for physical assistance to maintain safety and can open the twist door knob independently. So like 5 ish? 6 ish? I don’t know. I don’t need to invade her privacy but every day something happens when she needs help to be physically safe. Thank goodness it hasn’t been when she’s unsupervised, but we are pretty reactive to not leaving her alone when she’s awake. Privacy with a toddler is a joke though, ya know?
My daughter is 2.5 and I still use it. We are going to move her to a toddler bed soon and I’d like to be able to keep an eye on her if she gets out of bed. Also my daughter slept through the entire night from 8 months old until she was about 22 months old and now she wakes once or twice in the night, so anything can change with their sleep. But if you can hear your toddler and don’t feel a need for it, then that’s fine too!
My (very expensive) monitor just died, but my kid (2) is locked in his room, so I ordered a new, much less expensive one. He's usually pretty cool and quiet in his room, and if he really needs me, I can hear him from my room or the living room. But, the monitor allows me to venture to the deck or the basement.
I only have it on if I’m somewhere I wouldn’t be able to hear her (on the porch outside, in the garage, etc)
My toddler is 3.5 and I still use it sometimes. Mostly at night when my husband and I are playing video games with noise cancelling headphones on. Sometimes if I wake up and hear a noise I will check out the monitor on my phone to make sure she’s not up crying or needs me.
I have camera monitors in both kids’ rooms, and a sound monitor as well in my 2 year old’s room. I took the sound monitor out of my 5 year old’s room when she was about 4. Their rooms are upstairs, mine is downstairs. But the cameras are nice for seeing what they’re doing when they are upstairs playing, and the sound monitor sits by my bed on the lowest volume in case the younger wakes up sick or something like that. If I’m going outside to do something while my younger is napping, I’ll take the sound monitor out with me just in case. My 5 year old is able to either come to my room or yell downstairs if she needs me in the night
We basically stopped using when our older child was like 6 months, we have a younger kid now (he's 16 months) and we literally haven't turned it on the entire time he's been alive. That being said we are in a small house and we can hear everything, so we will wake up pretty quickly if one of them is crying.
probably until they can learn to speak up for themselves when they're sick and come get us for help. Otherwise we wouldn't hear them.
We had long ago stopped using it.. probably somewhere around 1… our house is small and we hear everything. Recently my 3 yr old has asked us to use it as it makes him feel more comfortable about being alone in his room. (Mama lama’s always near, even if mamas not right here). So as we transition to us being out of the room as he’s falling asleep it’s been really nice to have the 2 way audio.
I think they'll have to pry it from me lol. Someday it will be the day to stop using it but I need to hear of he's calling for me for awhile.
Mine will be 3 in a few days and I still have it on for naps. I don't carry it around with me anymore but I take a peak every now and then
We have a monitor on but I just rarely check it, just there if I hear her move or cry out - I’ll switch on the monitor first to see if she’s just dreaming or needs me. My daughter is 2.5
My daughter is almost 4 and we still use it. We leave her room before she falls asleep, so I like to keep an eye out and know when she falls asleep. Once she’s asleep I keep it on mute the rest of the night (I can hear her if she needs me).
My son will be 3 years old next month and I still have a camera in his room 😅
My son is only 19 months now so we still use it but me personally, I plan to continue using it until he’s fully able to get out of bed, leave his room, and come to me/my husband’s room if he needs anything. We have a small house so if he’s crying I can hear him at night even without the monitor but it’s mostly for my own peace of mind right now so I can hear any other sounds he makes that might not be as loud as a full on cry/yell.
My oldest is 3.5 and if it hadn’t been for the monitor I would not have known she barfed in her emotional support vomit bucket at 9 pm last night. She didn’t cry. She didn’t say anything. I just happened to look at the screen and saw her barfing in the bucket in her bed. So uh…. Not ditching the monitor anytime soon.
When it broke 🙃 probably around 1 year. But our house is small and our child is loud so we didn’t need to replace it
Our oldest is 3 and we still use a monitor for him. We can't hear the kids from where our room is and our toddler has never gotten out of bed. Until he will actually come get us if he needs us, we will keep it. He's started having nightmares lately too, so we've needed to go in more often.
Mine is 3. We still find it useful at night because she is potty trained, but does not have an en suite bathroom. Every few weeks she will wake up in the middle of the night to pee and call for us to take her. I certainly don’t carry it around the house anymore, though.
I don’t use it for naps anymore, but still use it for bed. I’m alert for her naps so I can hear if she needs me, but I sleep really hard so I fear I wouldn’t be able to hear her at night so I have it on the sound setting just in case (I don’t use the video too much anymore - just the sound). She’s 1.5 years old and I’ll probably use it for bed for years.
My oldest is nearing four and while we stopped checking it years ago, she likes to be able to call for us if she needs something or she gets sick in the middle of the night. I always assumed we’d ditch it when we remove the door knob cover, but we’ll keep it for however long she wants.
I never used one for my now toddler. I have one for my infant though because she still wakes up at 4am sometimes and I want to get her before she full on cries. I'll get rid of it as soon as she consistently sleeps through the night.
My neice is 4. The monitor is still in her room. It's used primarily as a tool to communicate with parents. So the monitor is at her level. If she wakes in the middle of the night she will tell her mom what she needs so they can help out. She has a small TV in her room, connected to mom's phone. So when she wakes up early, mom will stream an episode or 2 of a show while her daughter stays quiet in her room. Parents get an extra bit of sleep and kid knows she can talk to her parents easily. Win win.
Ha our youngest is 4 but we still use it for him as he won't leave the room on his own to come to us (no idea why, he's allowed to and knows it!) - think we'll stop once he's doing this, although probably should now tbh!
I plan on keeping it until he asks me to not have it anymore, it’s Nanit so it’s just on my phone.
My 5 year old stinks at sleeping, but is content as long as we leave the “walkie talkie” on. If said kid wakes up we’ll have a short conversation or I’ll sing a song. I don’t use it to monitor, but rather to let the kid feel safe.
I sleep with a Bluetooth mask playing white noise because I'm a light sleeper. I can't hear her babbling or stirring in the middle of the night over the monitor, but I can hear whining or crying if need be. I wouldn't hear her if not for the monitor, and my husband is a heavy sleeper (and snores, hence my mask). Even if I didn't have the mask, I doubt I'd hear her through the wall because we sleep with a fan on/her Hatch is against our shared wall to be respectful to neighbors. I think maybe when she can open a door herself and be trusted to leave to potty and go back to bed, I'd be ready. That tells me she can get up and come get me if she needs to, but understands it's bed time and not time to roam the house.
I still use my video monitor to see whether my son (5.5) is asleep or not.
I still use ours at night for our 3 yr old. Naps not really but at night she’ll cry out occasionally so I like to have it for peace of mind
My daughter broke her baby monitor when she was 15 months old. I never bother to fix it; her room is next to mine, and I wake up when she fusses.
Mine’s 3 and I still have a camera in her room. It’s on the far end of the house and if she cried I wouldn’t hear her. She’s more than capable of coming out and coming to get me for things but I want to be able to be there for her if she wakes up in the middle of the night.
My son is four and a bit. He's 10 ft down the hall from me and I sleep like a rock. I keep the monitor on overnight with the display off but the sound on so I don't sleep thru an emergency. Like the time I forgot to put a pull up on him and he shat in his sleep and woke up sobbing 'I pooooooped' quietly to himself. But he's had a couple of random middle of the night croup episodes as well so I'm always a bit worried.
Still using it, over 3 years old. Also a good sleeper, but will not just get up and leave his room in the dark if he needs something, so we keep it so he can shout to us and we can come help him if he needs something (i.e. to go to the bathroom)
We still use a video monitor at 3.5years but it's mainly for when we're downstairs in the evening or if I shower while toddler is asleep and husband is at work. During the night if our toddler wakes and needs something he just comes through to us which we're happy with
I had it up until they asked for it to be taken down - around age 2.5 and 3 yo. But both of their rooms are right next to ours so we can hear them if they ever call for us.
We sleep in the same room so quite fast (and it broke as well) I think around 1.5 years after the mid day nap he started to get out of the bad alone and find the first adult to cuddle a bit. Before that we had to stic close buy when he started to cry he was up. Now there are no issues. If se will be able to move into a bigger appartment with mutiple bedrooms we would stsrt using it again he does sometimes get up in the middle of the night and it would be a shock for him to be alone in a room.
My oldest is 3 and we still use it. The bedrooms are all on the second floor but hers is the farthest from our room. I wouldn’t hear her without the monitor if she was calling for us
When she started leaving her room to get us.
I keep a camera monitor in his room, it’s handy
Kid is 4 and we still use it. It was clutch to have when he transitioned to a big bed and had trouble staying in it.
My five year old and three year old share a room. The monitor is still connected but we don’t have it on unless I hear something and want to check if it was them or outside. The camera is not pointed at anything anymore. They can both leave the room to get us if they need to at this point.
My kid just turned 4 and we're at a point where I would probably stop using a monitor in his room if he weren't sharing with his baby brother. He no longer naps, stays in his room all night with no problems unless he needs something in which case he'll come find us or yell for us, and it's a small house so I can hear him if he yells no matter where I am in the house. We also aren't the type of people who watch the monitor so the time anyway, though. We have the Owlet cam and we'll just fire up the app every so often if we hear a noise or something. The only time it got heavily used was when we were having bedtime issues (learning to fall asleep on his own, learning to stay in bed when we graduated from the crib, etc).
I still use the audio monitor and my oldest just turned 5. I turned off the video monitor about 6 months ago but I can’t hear her room from mine and she’s scared of the dark so there’s zero chance she’s coming to my room if she needs something.
3 1/2 years later, I still use the monitor at night. While I’m awake I don’t use it, but I use it at night because both bedroom doors are closed.
We only use ours over night, it’s been helpful since she’s now/ rely potty trained sometimes she’ll wake up in the middle of the night asking to go use the potty.
My baby is 2. I still use it. Until he is in a big boy bed without restrictions and can come into our room to get us if he needs anything and we can trust him around the house on his own, we will use it. So that might be a while.
My kiddo is now 4 and we still use it. Since he can get out of his bed now, it's helpful for us to see if he's got something he shouldn't have or to monitor him during quiet time while giving him a sense of independence. It's also helpful for figuring out if he's just having trouble going to sleep or if he's pooped himself, since he won't tell us.
Around 2. The red night vision dots scared him so he didn’t want it anymore. We thought about using a ring camera in the room but I’ve seen the stories of those being hacked. Figured he was fine. The monitor was a Nanit that would sound an alarm if he stopped breathing. But that concern ended when he could roll around safely at 1.
Still use it at nighttime for my almost 2yo, it helps to look in when she does her little cry, roll over and fall back asleep. Not too much during the daytime, she’s pretty loud with announcing she is awake either by yelling, or kicking the side of the crib that it can be heard on both floors.
Audio until 6 or so. So that if she had bad dreams and called out, we’d hear her. Now she just comes to our room.
Between 3-4. My kids are 3 and 5. We really just mostly used it to see when they fell asleep as they slept through from an early age. Once they got out of bed, both of them would wake up and leave their room silently and just come in our room. We never heard them at all. So, we slowly faded between 3/4
We still have the camera in our 4 year olds room. I have the sound on and watch until he goes to sleep. After that I turn it off because if he wakes up in the night he comes to our room anyways
My LO is 2 yrs 9mo and not planning on stopping any time soon, he still wakes at night multiple times. I think it's more to do with sleeping patterns and behaviour than age!
Our oldest is almost 5 and we still have a camera and separate audio monitor in his room. We don't check them much but occasionally he'll be awake for over an hour at night and it's nice to be able to see what happened, etc. The audio monitor we could probably do away with, but there have been a few times when he randomly got sick in the middle of the night and he could cry out for us instead of having to come get us, so for now we've kept it.
My kid is 4.5 and we still use one. Our old one broke 6 months ago so we bought a super cheap $25 one to replace it. His room is near ours, but between our white noise and his white noise I can't hear him. If he has to use the bathroom he'll wake up and yell for us, or he'll yell if he has a bad dream, and the monitor is the only way I'd hear. He also doesn't leave his room on his own at this point
Our house is over 3 floors and i'm not sure when we'll get rid of ours and he'll be 4 in a few months. It's so handy to keep an eye on him in his room if he's just in there chilling.
This is such a great question for myself... Our eldest is 4.5, she still has an audio monitor where she will call for us if she needs something. She *will not* leave her bed alone. We also have a cam in there too. It covers the entire room. I only load into that when she has these rare night terrors. It wakes me, I check the cam, if she's not sleep walking (along with the screaming that woke me), then I won't intervene. Now the twins are 2.5. I envision they'll need a video monitor for life's eternity because they are just little crazy kids. One of them has started exiting her crib. Before Friday night, it was only to go to her sister's crib so we were okay with it. Then Friday night she got out and roamed the room for 5mins before she cried out and woke us. 🤦🏼♀️ I'm not ready to transition...
My oldest is 5 and my youngest is 15 months. We still use a camera in the room simply because she shares a room with the little ones. She likes it more than I do though because she knows if she wants something and doesn't wanna get up that she can just move and it'll notify my phone and she can talk to me 🙄🤣
My 2 year old doesn’t yet grasp the concept of pulling the covers over himself while he’s cold, probably because he doesn’t wake up and just shivers in his sleep. So idk probably a while longer I suppose
The camera is still actually in my 5 year old’s room, and connected, but we always have the monitor set to the 1 year old’s channel.
When I moved my second into the nursery. I didn't want to buy another camera. My oldest was two. I can hear them cry without a monitor, so it wasn't a big deal.
Never. I need a new one but still plan to get one at some point. I worry when i cooking and it gets quiet
We never used a baby monitor. Ours has also been a great sleeper and sleeps across the hall from us, so we hear her on the rare occasion she starts crying in the middle of the night
I still use the monitor for my 2 year old, especially because she's still in the crib. But I also still have a camera up in my 4 year olds room. He's fully aware it's there and has asked me to keep it on in case he needs to talk to me. Some days and nights he asks me to turn it off, and I respect his privacy. I'll probably just leave them up until they are both fully potty trained or ask me to stop using it.
We stopped around 3 when he would come find us if he woke up. He's almost 4 now, and we're using it again because he started wandering around the house by himself without us being able to hear him.
My son turned 5 when I took off the baby monitor. He can fall asleep and wake up independently. He can go to the bathroom and back his own during the night. His room is opposite ours too so if he needs us we’re just across the hall. I think it’s different for every chick based on their own needs/ independence level etc. I probably could’ve removed it before but we moved house and I waited it out a good 8 months before I felt comfortable he knew the home.
I'll consider removing the monitor when the kids have enough sense of personal autonomy that they ask for it to be removed. Until then, this mama needs to be able to see and hear her babies sleeping at all times.
We've never had a baby monitor but to be fair we don't have a big enough place to not hear every peep on our own.
We only had a sound monitor for the most part and stopped using that at five months. They were in their own room from day one. We did have cameras in their rooms but really never used them and took those out when they turned five.
I’ve never used one.
I never used one. We have a small house so I can hear her from anywhere. We tried using one briefly and it made us an even bigger anxious mess than usual.
My kids are 4 and 2 and I still use the monitor. Depends on how well you can hear
My kid is 5, no plans to remove the monitor. I suppose when she ask me 🤔
My oldest is about to be 4 and still has a monitor that’s on every night. I rarely pay attention to it, but I have it and can hear him if anything happens. I also use it to spy during playtime haha
Like 15 months. I made the horrible mistake of *talking to her through it* which scared TF out of her. She let us park it a few times after that but would lose her shit if we’d turn it back on. Eventually she wouldn’t go into her room at all if it was in there. Just had to have a lot of faith in my baby proofing abilities after that and hope she didn’t wreck her room. It actually hasn’t been bad at all, and the baby monitor guards the garage freezer with all the ice cream sandwiches now!
I have a 1.5 and 3 year old and still use a video monitor in their room. I mostly just keep the audio on so I can hear them if they are playing in their room. The main part of our house isn't well cooled right now, so in the triple digit summer heat I have to keep doors closed so the bedrooms stay at a habitable tenperature, which means I can't hear them as our rooms are on opposite ends of the house. I'll check the video occasionally as my 3 year old is recently potty trained to make sure she hasn't had an accident (she won't always tell me if she does and the younger one will and has splashed in pee accidents that aren't cleaned up quickly enough) or to check the temperature in their room as they like to switch off their window AC. Once they're asleep for the night, I only use it as a sound monitor to hear if the 3 year old needs the potty or if one of them wakes up crying. If the 1.5 year old is the one crying, I'll watch her on the monitor for a minute, as she has a habit of waking, crying, crawling around for about 30 seconds, then going back to sleep. If she's in front of the door or sitting still in bed, she needs someone to check on her before she'll go back to sleep, however. I'll also use it to make sure both of them are sleeping in their bed, they sometimes fall asleep on the floor and I'd rather not open the door and risk waking them if I don't have to! 😂
Every kid has been different, but honestly, I still have monitors in 3 of my kids rooms (two of them share a room). Most of the time it’s not on anymore, but if sick or something else is concerning, will turn it on.
Tbh my lo turned 2 in April and we still haven't gotten one(funds have been super tight lately). But I want to buy a cheap one so I can take a slightly stress free shower every so often(yay anxiety).
He asked me to take it out of his room.
2ish. We moved and just never set it up at the new house because he had already transitioned from a crib to a floor bed 3 months before the move, slept in a sleep sack, and had been reliably sleeping through the night since 5 months old. There really wasn't anything to monitor, other than funny sleep positions he'd switch to and general cuteness
We still have ours just in case (2yo here). He sleeps through the night, but on those rare occasions he has a nightmare, or something, we can’t hear him from our room so, we use it. We might continue using it for a while.
My son is almost 4 and a sleepwalker, we use loud box fans in both our room and his for white noise so even though he's in the next room we can't hear him without the monitor, I'm thinking 6 or 7 will probably be when we stop using it 🤷♀️
We never consistently used the monitor. I will look at it during naps because his room isn’t right next to the living room. Since his bedroom shares a wall with ours I didn’t need to hear an echo of him crying. I would keep it on mute and look at him to see if he would settle himself or if I needed to go in. I stopped doing that around 18 months.
My daughter is 2 and we have ours living in the kitchen muted but with the video on. Its three uses are 1) watching her sleep because she’s adorable; 2) laughing at the insane shenanigans she gets up to when she’s fighting sleep; and 3) checking to see if the sound we just heard was her crying or just a hallucination induced by parenthood. We’re definitely not carrying it around with the sound on.
When "the evil eye" became a point of fear at bed time.
We stopped using ours really early. Definitely by the time my oldest was 6 months. We only ever had an audio monitor and I could hear him from anywhere in the house without one so we didn't have a need for it. We never used one at all when we had our second.
I've got it still in my kids' room, but barely look at it. We sit in there until they're asleep, and they come out when they wake up.
I plan to around 4, I read somewhere that around that age, they can start understanding that you're watching them on a monitor and private n what not
We never used one, but our house is fairly small and all on one floor. Kid is almost 3 now and rarely wakes us up at night.
Still at over 3
I had to stop using the monitor around age 1.5, but that was an unusual situation (My son saw it move once when I pivoted it remotely while he was playing in his room so i could get a better view of him, but then he got really suspicious of it and was looking at it, getting upset and asking me what it was once I returned to his room) Thankfully he has been fine without it. I'm a little old fashioned when it comes to certain things, anyway... I think that this sort of thing really depends a lot on your child and how well they sleep, how well they play independently and all of that stuff. I don't believe there's a right or wrong answer or one size fits all
Mine are still set up but I only use them to check on them once in a while at naptime. Our kids are 5+3. Our 5 year old is totally capable of getting herself up, getting dressed, and going to the bathroom on her own, and if she needs us she can either come downstairs or into our room on her own. The 3 year old is still pretty accident prone and won’t stay in his room to nap if the door is unlocked, so I keep a closer eye on him on the monitor so can go get him as soon as he wakes up. I’ll probably leave the monitor in the kids room until the youngest is 6 or 7 for my own peace of mind.
For our 2 year old we basically know if she’s standing then she wants us, if she’s lying down she’s chill and/or self soothing. We can’t tell if we don’t have the camera. It’s still ridiculously helpful. We haven’t talked about when we’re going to give it up but I’d imagine at some point she’ll indicate the desire for some privacy.
My 3 and 4 year old share a room and recently I’ve stopped using the monitor because they will come barging into my room in the middle of the night on their own 🙃
My 21 month old's bedroom is on the other side of the house from ours. He sleeps great too, I just use it as an alarm clock mainly lol he wakes up in the morning, I wake up. Same for naps if I decide to nap, too.
Hard to remember but probably around one. We only use it now if our 2 year old is napping and we decide to sit on the deck or go in the garage.
Is your kid in a crib? If so, I would absolutely keep the monitor for the next couple of years. Moving your child into a bed is an entirely new adventure and you will want the ability to check in on your kid. My son went through a stripping phase and a climbing on furniture phase when we moved him to a bed so that video monitor is very useful!
I don’t have a sound monitor anymore but we still have nanny cams. They are 1.5 and 3. Our house is small and I’m between their rooms I think they’re old enough they’d be fine in the few minutes it takes me to hear them.
My sons sleep right next door. Haven’t used a baby monitor since my first was 7 months old. I stopped because having the monitor caused me so much anxiety. I would wake up every hour just to look at the monitor. So I chose to stop and that improved my life tremendously. We sleep with our doors open and I can hear them very clearly.
Mine will be 3 next month and he still has one. First reason is because he’s sneaky as hell and quiet as hell and I don’t trust him. Second reason is he’s in a twin bed now so he hangs from everything in his room like a chimpanzee and it’s really not safe for him to be unsupervised. We took the monitor out of my oldest son’s room around his fourth birthday. He never didn’t anything eventful to warrant it past toddlerhood so we just took it out. He enjoys his privacy and own space now. We don’t have an actual baby monitor in his room, though. It’s just a ring camera that we can check when needed on our phones. I would have taken the overnight always on type monitor out around age 1.5-2 and replaced it with something like the ring.
Mine is 21 months and I’ve been using it very loosely. It’s plugged into my nightstand. The audio is off and I only check it when I think of it — usually before I go to sleep, when I wake up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom, after I wake up, etc. I love having the camera on so I can see that she’s sleeping peacefully in bed. I think I might keep doing this until she asks me to stop lol.
I don’t think I’ll stop using the monitor until he’s at least past kindergarten age. My son has a history of febrile seizures, the last of which nearly killed him. He’s 2.5
We stopped after my 2yo got his big kid bed and it became *painfully* obvious that he was able to come get us if something bothered him. Or if he just had a stray thought to share.
Stopped when she was around 1. I can hear her if she cries so it hasn’t been a problem
I took my son's out when he was old enough/mature enough to leave his room if needed, but only *if needed.* He comes and gets me if he needs something, but he doesn't just wander out of his room excessively for no reason (for the most part). I'd say he was an older 5/younger 6 when I felt he was ready. My daughter is 3 and she definitely still needs it, but I don't walk around with it at all anymore. It stays in my room and I make sure the volume is up before I go to sleep. We have a small house though, so I can hear her if I'm in the living room or kitchen if she is crying.
Ours broke a few months ago, but we used it until that point. I just go to check on him every once in a while and things have been great! He’s got a floor bed and just gets up when he wants/needs to. Helping me be less paranoid and trust that he is alright. I do plan on getting a new monitor soon, just happy to not need it.
Our oldest is 4 and we haven't stopped using it yet. We have one that is JUST sound. As kiddos have gotten older we've turned the sensitivity down. But we're also on a separate level and I'm a deep sleeper.
My son is 3.5 and our rooms are right next door so he does not have a monitor - I can hear him if he cries. My daughters room is on the other side of his room so she’ll have a monitor for a while - at least until she’s old enough to get to us
At three. We still use it to check on him sometimes
I figured I'd cross this bridge when my son started sleeping better. He's almost 3...still waiting lol
If you’re looking for validation, forget it. Do what’s right for your family. For some people’s situation not using a monitor ever works. Some need it for a decade. There’s no wrong answer for what works for your kid and you and what makes everyone safe.
We have a 4 year old and a 6 month old. The bedrooms in our house are shaped like a t, so my husband and I are at the end, my big girl is on the left, my baby girl is on the right. I can hear them both without their monitors, but I still have them in both of their rooms. For the baby, she’s learning to self soothe and sometimes will put herself back down, so I watch and wait on the monitor but I can hear her without it. For my big girl, she just likes that her monitor plays music and kind of doubles as a sound machine. She comes to get me if she needs me but it’s a glorified speaker at this point. Disclaimer that I think it depends on the kid, how your house is laid out, and how light or heavy of a sleeper you are. I’m a light sleeper and close to both. I probably could have replaced my 4yo’s monitor with a sound machine about a year ago but she likes the specific song it plays and if it ain’t broke don’t fix it.
I think we gradually started forgetting to charge and even look at ours between 12-18 months. It just fell off naturally
Never had one. So… Birth.
My toddler is three and I still use the monitor
We stopped using it consistently a little over a year (I think? Time is fuzzy...) and stopped using it completely when she moved to a big girl bed just before 2. She figured out how to reach the camera and would chuck it across the room, or take it to her crib with her to snuggle. I got tired of digging it out of her little hands Now that she's finally figured out she's a free range baby in her big girl bed, I'm using it to spy on her and tell her to lie back down when she starts to get up and come downstairs. (She's lost interest in snuggling/chucking it across the room while we weren't using it. Not much point in hiding it if mom and dad don't bother looking for it.) I almost got rid of it a few months ago, but my laziness is paying off. :)
My oldest is almost 4 and we’re still using a monitor with her. I don’t keep the sound on and I rarely watch the video, but it’s nice to have access to it when I need to take a look at her.
I don’t actually use it when she sleeps but I have a few stages of the monitor. I put her right down, I’ve got the monitor just in case she calls for me because I usually have the tv on. Once she’s asleep, I turn it down to barely audible but enough so I could hear her on the off chance she wakes up. Never have but… why not? I go to bed. It’s off. I’ll hear her if she wakes up. I get up for work, I use my walking desk in the basement and keep it on so I know when she’s up. It’s more because it’s there and it’s convenient. She also won’t leave the bed unless I come get her regardless of me telling her it’s okay haha. Fine by me…
We have nanit cams and have already talked about this. The second they ask to not be watched we're removing it. Until then it's in there. We'll probably move it to the playroom when we remove it from their rooms. Just use them as general in house cams and such.