This wearable for toddlers keeps them safe by letting their parents track their health and location

It fills the gap between the age when parents use baby monitors and the age at which parents give their kids phones.

Even though parents are likely to work from home, it is unrealistic to expect them all the time to be there for their kids. The Littlebird is a great tool to help you keep an eye on your children. Littlebird is a toddler-friendly wearable that helps parents monitor their children’s sleep, activity, whereabouts and health. Monica Plath (a mother of two from Seattle) came up with the idea. Her own experience helped her design a device to help her keep track of her children while she was away. Plath partnered with NewDealDesign who helped take LittleBird from a concept to a fully developed product.

Designer: NewDealDesign for LittleBird

The name Littlebird borrows itself from the commonly used phrase ‘A little bird told me…’, pointing at the wearable’s ability to keep the parent informed of their kid’s whereabouts and health. Designed to sit on a child’s wrist, the Littlebird Toddler ‘CareTracker’ (a portmanteau of caretaker and tracker) is a sans-screen wearable for kids aged 1-5, that works along with an app on the parent/guardian’s phone. The wearable comes with 24×7 GPS and cellular connectivity, allowing parents to track their kids’ locations, while onboard sensors help monitor the toddler’s heart rate, temperature, activity, and mood, allowing guardians to chart their physical and emotional wellbeing.

Plath reached out to NewDealDesign to help bring her idea to life. Having previously worked with Fitbit for 10 years developing their wearables, NDD was uniquely positioned to help design and engineer the Littlebird wearable, taking it from a mere idea to a fully fleshed product. Plath’s brief was both simple and relatable – “I was just trying to feel that my children were safe,” she explained. I wanted them to be happy. Just the really primal needs that any parent has when you’re trying to juggle two lives. A mother should be an example of excellence. You need to provide for your family, and to feel good about the care choices that you’re making.”

The Littlebird Toddler CareTracker is a $299 wearable device that offers a year’s worth of free cellular connectivity, with a fee of $15 per month after that. It is perfectly sized for children’s wrists. The tracker must withstand bumps and scrapes as well as getting dirty/wet, along with the teething process. It’s not complete without the companion app. This is part-health and location-tracking system, part social media timeline, that lets caregivers, friends and babysitters share information on their child’s activities and whereabouts with parents. Parents can also see their kid’s temperature, heart rate and steps and get comprehensive reports about their child’s health through the app’s dashboard.