In The New York Times Magazine‘s Innovations issue, author Catherine Rampell unpacked the latest invention about to hit the market.  It’s nicknamed the Shut Up Gun. When you aim the SpeechJammer at someone, it records that person’s voice and plays it back to him with a delay of a few hundred milliseconds. This seems to gum up the brain’s cognitive processes — a phenomenon known as delayed auditory feedback — and can painlessly render the person unable to speak.

Kazutaka Kurihara, one of the SpeechJammer’s creators, sees it as a tool to prevent loudmouths from overtaking meetings and public forums, and he’d like to miniaturize his invention so that it can be built into cellphones. “It’s different from conventional weapons such as samurai swords,” Kurihara says. “We hope it will build a more peaceful world.”

The Shut Up Gun may be a great tool to deal with more obstinate folks out in public, but in a home, it could wreak devastation.  Many children already have their version of this technology built into their personality and they use it to consistently tune out their parents.  Break through this barrier with 4 proven ways to communicate with your kids.

Huddle up with your children tonight and ask them:  “On a scale of 1 to 10, how well do you think we communicate?  Why?”