Archived: Do you hear what I hear?

Original Post Date: November 29, 2006
We have a baby monitor in our bedroom that we turn on every night to listen for Ethan. A few nights ago, in the middle of the night, it started making a horrible static sound. When it did the same thing again the next night, Matt went into Ethan’s room to change the channel on the monitor (there are only two channels). As soon as he changed channels, I could hear the sounds of a baby very clearly. However. It was not our baby. We quickly realized that our next door neighbors, who have a two month old, must have a similar monitor to ours, and now, depending on which channel I have our receiver on, I can either monitor our child or theirs.
This has prompted me to view baby monitors in an entirely different, and somewhat sinister, light. The monitor that goes in the child’s room is completely silent, and has only a small red light indicating that it’s on. I have long said that when Abby becomes a teenager, we are going to hide one under her bed and I’m going to use it to spy on her when she’s in there with her friends or on the phone. Don’t judge, you know you’d do it too.
However, I never thought about the possibility of these things reaching to strangers. What if we hadn’t figured this out right away, and had overheard stuff we didn’t want to? Now granted, they are Indian and we wouldn’t understand a word they said, but you see my point. What if THEY were listening in on US? It’s not like a whole lot of drama takes place in E’s bedroom, but still! Let’s hope the government doesn’t figure out the value of these things, or the privacy of parents everywhere will be compromised! (This is NOT a political statement. It is only a joke.)(I am NOT that person who freaks out about the government invading my privacy. That’s Matt.) So if you have a baby monitor in your home, be careful—you never know who’s listening in!