Do you ever have that gnawing feeling in the pit of your stomach when you’ve been away from your kids for far too long without knowing exactly what’s going on?

Once they’ve reached that precarious age when you can leave them alone or in the hands of a nanny for a while, but they’re still too young to make real use of smartphones and similar devices, you’re faced with a challenge: How to monitor your children’s behavior when you’re not there to supervise them?

The most obvious answer is the installing of a nanny cam. In the broadest sense, there are two types of these – the first is known as a self-contained camera. You turn it on and can’t interact with it directly afterward. The second and much more effective camera for your situation is a nanny cam you can watch on your phone, courtesy of the wonders of modern technology.

Why Self-Contained Nanny Cams Aren’t the Answer

Self-contained nanny cams, similarly to a closed-circuit TV surveillance system, have no contact with the world via Wi-Fi or otherwise. They rely on a fixed amount of storage space allotted by a memory card (which you have to actually buy separately, more often than not).

To be clear, they aren’t bad surveillance devices – having every minute of footage stored on the device and ready for playback is great for piecing together information about an unpleasant incident after the fact, but it requires you to take the memory card out, connect it to a device that can playback the video file, and sift through all the footage until you find what you’re looking for.

The most glaring flaw here is that you can’t observe your child in real time and intervene if necessary. That’s why a camera with Wi-Fi connectivity is the obvious choice for all your child-surveillance needs.

Linking a Wi-Fi Nanny Cam to Your Smartphone

Any nanny cam capable of establishing a Wi-Fi connection can be linked to your phone. There are two stages to this. First, you have to turn on the cam’s on-board Wi-Fi and have it recognize your home network. Next, you have to download the proprietary app which goes along with the camera.

In most cases, that’s it, you’re done! Since practically every household’s Wi-Fi is also connected to the internet, you can establish a remote connection as well and are able to check in on your little tyke, from anywhere.

This connectivity brings many benefits. Knowing what’s going on right now is the most obvious one, closely followed by the ability to take a screenshot and start recording the feed to the device you’re viewing it on. More advanced nanny cams also have microphones for audio recording, and have speakers so that you can interact with your child or babysitter whenever you like.

Another benefit of a connectable camera is the customization options available only through its app. These vary considerably by model and price, but each one should let you access the feed, snap a picture and start/stop recording. Better nanny cams come with more options, like the ability to adjust the camera’s angle by panning and tilting it, operating its zoom or fiddling with the picture’s contrast and brightness settings to get the best possible viewing experience from it.

Push notifications are another great feature – you can’t always be glancing at your phone, but you can set it up so that a push notification comes through every time the camera captures some kind of activity, and set it to go through only during certain times as to not interrupt important business meetings and the likes.

Conclusion

A nanny cam you can watch on your phone is the ideal solution for keeping your child safe without unnecessary interference, from wherever you may find yourself. Knowing that there’s a camera present to record your child’s room is great, but it isn’t until you can take an active role in that monitoring process and react in a timely manner that the benefits of having such a security system in place really starts to shine through.

In this situation, everyone wins – your child gets to enjoy their freedom, you get to keep note of both child and nanny, while she proves herself to be as competent and caring as she claims to be. The benefits are so obvious that getting a connectable nanny cam should take up a prominent spot on your list of priorities.