Product Review: Time Tracker

Oh, the Time Tracker Timer...how I love thee.

The sound of a timer is nothing new in our home.  We use timers for everything. For transitioning from one activity to the next, for when it's time to leave the house and go somewhere, for toy sharing, for "alone time" (when one child wants to play alone with a toy), and use of the computer.  And it's not just the kids - I have a timer set right now to go pick up one of the boys from therapy!  We have been responding to the sound of a timer for a few years now.

My poor kids are worse than Pavlov's dog; my kitchen timer went off for dinner one night and all three of them looked up and then at me wondering, what are we supposed to do next?!

When we started this practice of timers, I used what I had which was a traditional wind up kitchen timer.  I quickly found the downsides of a traditional kitchen timer: that obnoxious ring at the end, the incessant ticking, and no visual of how much time is left.  So I changed to a digital timer which was better because of no ticking and the alarm sound but still no visual.  And then I found... the Time Tracker Timer.  This link will actually take you to a video explanation of how the timer works.  Really cool.

It's  an autism family's dream timer but can be used for any child with great success. 

Pros:
You get to choose from multiple sounds to alert the child of changing levels of color, for instance, ticking, buzzing, or even a man saying "begin" or "time's up." 
It's programmable and visual with three levels of time and a warning sound at each level but silence in between, no incessant ticking.  It's especially helpful with computer time - no more feeling like times up comes out of left field.  The boys can see yellow light, red light, and they know it's going off soon.

Cons:
I do wish the final sound would last longer - maybe until you physically turn it off, just because sometimes I am not right there when it goes off and I cannot always depend on the boys to let me know ;).
It takes a minute to figure out how to set the timer.  There's a few steps involved - more than just spinning a dial, certainly.

I will say, if this particular timer is not your style, our second choice was the Time Timer which is a very, very popular choice in the autism community and may even be a purchase for us in the future.  I can see where each timer would be beneficial in different situations.