Does anyone know of a baby monitor that keeps some kind of record of activity?

Of course, i would want one for our 86 (dementia/ALZ) year old, when she goes on visits. The last one happened over Thanksgiving, well she is not he same and would love to know what she does there,unfortunately, it would mean bugging, her in their home and I do not know if, you can get away with it, but they did forget in a 53 hr. period, 3 doses of Advair for a person with asthma, and one day of evening meds, plus they did not bathe her and she came back wearing the same clothes she left with.

Guardian wants us to OK another 50 something hour visit, are you kidding?

Waiting to see if set back, is permanent...

There are tons of discrete cameras on the market. Check out ebay or amazon, they will play video right on your computer or you can have a nanny cam type set up that you can monitor from across the country. I have found ones with good reviews as low as $70. We are getting one so that we can check in on the rare occasions that we go out together. He keeps saying he is not doing stuff, but the evidence is otherwise, some of it quite unsafe. We need to know for sure if he can be trusted or we need to start getting baby sitters for him.

You want the Tunstall CareAssist box of tricks. Don't know if it's available in the US, but in any case I'm sure other brands are available.

This is how it works. The caregiver carries around a little Blackberry-sized gizmo (hereinafter called "the monitor.") which will pick up alerts up to (it says on the leaflet) 200m away. The care receiver has a trigger, which can be worn either on a pendant or on the wrist, like a watch. When s/he presses the trigger, a little light comes on so that s/he can see the call has been sent; and at the other end all heck breaks loose - an alarm which is beginning to provoke a Pavlovian reaction in me + hefty vibrations, which continue until the call is responded to.

They're actually designed to be used in ALFs and nursing homes, so the monitor is equipped with a memory (you can get a USB wotsit to upload it onto your PC) to track call history; and you can also get pressure pads to put on chairs and beds which will alert you if your parent HABITUALLY gets up without calling you and DRIVES YOU ROUND THE TWIST - not that I let it get to me hem-hem.

The monitor has a rechargeable battery, and has to be charged every 8 hours or so depending on how heavily it's used. The charger is just like a cell-phone's, i.e. always in the wrong place when you need it.

I haven't a clue how much they cost - ours is on loan from Social Services - but I'd remortgage to have one anyway. Unbelievably useful if you have a reluctant care receiver.

I do also use a baby monitor at night so that I can avoid waking my mother up fully if I don't have to - I just listen in when she gets up to use the commode until I hear her get safely back into bed. But the CareAssist means I don't have to have the baby monitor turned up so loud that I can hear every snore, cough and heavy sigh - if she gets up, I'll know all about it.

I've just checked the company's site and apparently they have offices in New York and Mississauga, Ontario for Canadian readers. No they don't employ me! - they just saved me from a nervous breakdown. Hope they'll distribute to private families. If not, apply consumer pressure!

Nanny cams are the only way to really know what is going on when you can't be there. Is it a huge issue based on your mom's dementia, or just you would feel better knowing? Plus, with her dementia, how can you know your mom is telling the story with accuracy? Some things you have to let go of, and pick your battles when something seriously wrong is happening. If the caregivers are not abusing her in some other way, save yourself some money. But, if you cannot let it go, buy the cameras.

I would be curious as well, tho I can't imagine anything other than the "nanny cam" type set up. I have the 2way radio baby monitor for my mom and her CGiver as well, (I live out of state), but have considered the nanny cams.

However, if they were ever discovered, it would severely diminish trust between all of us.

But, as you say you're not sure if you're mom is saying something for this or that reason, THAT right there could be the answer you might want to give for having the cams (not that we must ever justify our actions, but it DOES seem that way sometimes.....), to be able to remotely check in on her periodically......

Food for thot?

(continued) we run into problems with the covering aides delay in responding to her call for help with her depends. This happen when they are watching tv in the eve and she is sleeping and wakes up realizing the Depends needs changing. Her judegement of time is not good at all since her stroke so I am not sure if she is just being impatient because they are not as quick to respond as the regualr aide. (I dont live with my mom.) So I wish there was a way to know for sure how long the aide actually took to respond. Once she said the aide explained the delay to her but she could not remember what she said.