"is your child happy at school" - advertisement at yahoo

an apparatus to make a child happy at school as well as afterschool

Parents have kids wear a thing that meeps a every few hours then collects data rather like with published experience sample monitoring psychology procedures [link] that use(d) electronics

the kid tells or keypads the computer how they feel, the parents compare how their kid feels to a database of all the kids at school with a graph, parents then use parenting to guide kids to new activities, negative peer avoidance, a different school or medication to create a being a kid gestalt that is way above average

I like the form factor of a springy drawstring terminator ----(((((O-)--- that you squeeze when it buzzes

or the sympa thizzer might look like a pocket tamogotchi, it should have a fingerprint reader to measure that it was the actual person plus it should do visual recognition of mood like the Dr anbar ccd digital emotion imaging to detect mood otherwise people could just tell the kid to act happy verifying the kid is happy is the thing

if I found out that my child was at the upper third of positive mood at school I would be thrilled then parent towards guidance to the upper tenth of happiness

technically I think I would have to have children first
-- beanangel, Jul 21 2008

The beatings will continue until morale improves.
-- Custardguts, Jul 21 2008


Needs to be contextualised (god, that is an awful word) - placed in a context. Some kids might register in the top third of happiness because they are ripping wings off flies.
-- 4whom, Jul 21 2008


...and you need to control for the boost in self-worth they'll feel because you're paying attention to them (cf. famous experiment in which factory employees' productivity increased when piped music was introduced to the factory, and then increased again when the piped music was removed. They weren't reacting to the music, they were reacting to the idea that management was paying attention to them).
-- hippo, Jul 21 2008


not a musical instrument then?
-- po, Jul 21 2008


This might be a bit philosophical: Making your child happy in the here and now is not all there is to raising a child. Childhood is, in many ways though not in all ways, a training for adulthood. Your child might not enjoy learning to read, but they need to do it because otherwise they're going to be pretty stuffed in the long term.
-- david_scothern, Jul 21 2008



random, halfbakery