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Providing an objective voice for the new home security customer
Mark Lowry
There's no right or wrong age for an adolescent or pre-teen to be left alone at home. Much of that depends on your child's maturity, and, not surprising, their ability to handle minor emergencies as they arise in the home.
Every parent at some point in time either has or will make the decision to leave their child alone at home for the very first time. To relieve as much anxiety as possible it's important to gauge your child's readiness for such a responsibility.
How does your child handle minor emergencies at home? Do they get frustrated easily, or go to another part of the house to get away? Or do they remain calm, pitching in when necessary and appropriate? How you answer this question will have you either putting on the brakes or moving ahead with your plans.
How do they follow rules in general? Do they obey your rules regarding curfew, television, homework, and telephone usage? How they treat your established rules will help you gauge how they're likely to react when left alone at home.
Does your child know how to arm and disarm your ADT security system? Has your child demonstrated that they understand why you place so much importance on home security? If you find yourself comfortable with the answers to the questions presented here, your child might be ready for the next level of responsibility: staying home alone for the first time.
Mark Lowry
Power outages are only a minor convenience if they happen while you're sleeping. You might wind up late for work, and your coffee pot might not start brewing on time, but aside from that you got to sleep through the worst of it. Our power outage this weekend, however, was while we were all wide awake and in fact happened in the middle of a movie.
The first thoughts in any power outage deal with hoping it doesn't last long. Shortly after that, still sitting in the dark, the next thoughts are about light. Inspired by the safety tips in your blog, we recently put together an emergency preparedness kit that included many items that proved to be valuable during this 4-hour power outage.
We prefer not to use candles, so we were well prepared with battery operated flashlights and a lantern, which provided plenty of safe light for everyone. We also recently bought a pretty nifty radio which includes short- and long-wave reception, dedicated weather channels, and best of all it runs on batteries. The flashlights proved to be priceless entertainment for our 2-month-old baby. He was in awe of its power, and it kept him occupied whenever he started fussing.
Do yourself a favor and boost the effectiveness of your ADT home security alarm system by keeping an emergency preparedness kit stocked with flashlights, radios, lamps, and other battery-operated gadgets, like we did. They'll prove to be quite useful next time your power goes out unexpectedly.
Police say a Colorado man entered the bedroom of a home while the residents were asleep, woke them up and showed them a handgun, then left without incident after saying he had the wrong house.
This would be a very scary situation for anyone, but it's also a situation that could have been avoided all together. Here are some ways to avoid waking up to armed and dangerous people in your house, or bedroom, in the middle of the night.
Exterior lighting set to turn on when motion is detected is a great deterrent. Burglars want to lurk in the shadows, and by taking their hiding places away you're giving them plenty of reasons to move on to an easier target.
Installing deadbolt locks on your exterior doors, and strong sash locks on all windows will make it extra hard for anyone to penetrate. Short of actually smashing out a window, or destroying a doorframe, these are two very effective ways to keep the bad guys out.
Lastly, having a professionally installed and monitored ADT home security system gives you many further layers of protection, including high-decibel sirens, and nearly instant response from highly skilled emergency dispatch personnel, who can get local emergency response units on their way, often faster than dialing 911.
There are only so many available 911 lines and operators in any given location around the country. This means it's possible that a line could be tied up on a frivolous call, preventing you from getting though in a real emergency.
A woman was just arrested in New Haven, Connecticut for attempting to use 911 as her own private taxi dispatcher. She called 911 six times requesting a ride home from a nightclub. In Bradenton, Florida a man was arrested for calling 911 a total of 18 times in two months. None of the calls were emergency related. In Avon Park, Florida another man was arrested for calling 911 more than 200 times during a three-day span!
Each time 911 is used for a non-emergency purpose a critical line is being tied up, preventing legitimate emergency calls from getting through. For the best in local response to home emergencies, consider a monitored ADT alarm system. Highly trained dispatchers have direct access to your local emergency response units, bypassing the 911 system. They generally get help headed to your location faster than dialing 911, which could mean the difference between life and death.
Fire protection in your home starts with a good plan, and plans work very well with lots of practice and when everyone knows their role. If escape plans are made, and your entire family knows what to do in the event of a house fire, chances are everyone will automatically react in a way that could save lives and reduce damages.
Additionally, having functioning smoke detectors installed throughout your house will help your fire security plan be even more successful. Early warning is a critical element in surviving a house fire, and smoke detectors with fresh batteries are the key security component in this equation.
Remember, in a house fire everyone has a single objective: to get out of the house to safety. This means not stopping for needless items, or even stopping to locate your cellular phone to call 911. When your house is protected with a monitored ADT security system, highly trained emergency dispatch personnel will already be alerting local emergency response units, often faster than calling 911.
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