6 Inventions Every Parent Would Like To See

Us parents have it easy compared with our grandparents’ generation. Baby monitors, disposable (and biodegradable) nappies, microwaves, properly designed buggies and the knowledge that CBeebies is always there if you need a distraction -- all have made parenthood that little bit less challenging. But there’s still room for invention. Here are six innovations we’d love to see happen, not counting the robot babysitter in our top image. 
 

Does your child’s bedroom floor look like this? EVERY DAY?

Random little toy fragments commingled with hair bands and discarded craft-matter? What you need is the Universal, Suckomatic Small-Toy Sorter. It works like a giant vacuum cleaner, sucking up all the small bits from the bedroom floor. They are then sorted by type. Lego goes into one chamber, plastic food into another, doll accessories into a third, tatty-yet-somehow-precious bits of sparkly paper into a fourth, and so on. It’s then a simple job to repatriate the pieces with their respective boxes. The Universal, Suckomatic Small-Toy Sorter can be programmed to separate anything up to the size of a Duplo brick, or as small as individual particles of glitter. 

Ever get the feeling your baby is trying to tell you something? All those infant goo-goos and gah-gahs may be loaded with meaning. 
“I am full of gas; burp me”
“Where is my toy? No, not that toy. The other one.”
“I have soiled myself. How embarrassing.”

That last one is a direct quote from Maggie Simpson, whose baby burbles were interpreted by her uncle’s baby translator in The Simpsons. 30 years on from that episode, nobody has yet cracked the problem, despite the advent of machine learning and AI. As my one year old would say, “Gaahh, bubu nana gah-gah!”. 

Sick of changing nappies all day? There is an answer. Self-cleaning diapers need changing just once a day, and can be left on for most of the week if you are very lazy. But how do they work? Your baby’s faecal matter is broken down to harmless water and CO2 by gentle chemicals and non-ionising radiation. This clever action is powered by micro-dynamos sewn into the gusset, so as long as your baby keeps moving around, they’ll stay clean. Genius!

Ever struggled to drag your buggy up a flight of stairs (especially if it’s a double-buggy)? Tired of cleaning dog mess off the front wheels? Time to convert your perambulator to hover mode. Four industrial-strength solenoid aerospikes work in unison to lift your buggy up to a metre off the ground. A gentle push, and off you go. Not to be used in strong winds. Batteries not included.

“Here comes the aeroplane… open wide... miiiiiaaawwwwwww!!” We’ve all used this aeronautical strategy to feed our infants. Take the effort out of proceedings with Fly Me To The Spoon, the world’s first piece of cutlery to make its own aircraft noises. Choose from 12 different sound effects, hand-picked by child psychologists to relax your baby and coax them into feeding. Fly Me To The Spoon also includes a proximity sensor, which triggers a change in pitch as the payload nears the mouth.
While we’re on the topic, what noise did parents make before planes were invented? “Here comes the choo-choo”? “Hark ye, the sound of the spinning Jenny”?
7 further tips for fussy eaters.

Much hypothesised; never yet discovered.