Launch HN: Joon (YC W22) – A mobile game that teaches kids to build good habits

[bbrenner2]

Hi HN, we’re Brad, Kevin, & Isaac, the co-creators of Joon (https://www.joonapp.io/). Joon is a mobile game that motivates kids to do tasks that they might not otherwise want to do—things like chores, homework, brushing their teeth, or making their bed—or things which they like, but not always in the moment—calling a grandparent, for example. The game does this by embedding these tasks into fun “Quests” that the kids do want to do. Along the way, they develop good habits—not because they’re supposed to, but as a side effect of playing the game. Here’s a short video to give you the idea: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OkOwk_wOBBE.

One of the hardest parts of parenting (and of growing up!) is getting kids to do things that they don’t enjoy. Parents usually see these as important activities that will help their kids become independent, responsible, and ultimately, happy. Kids, however, often don’t feel the same way! This is an incentive alignment problem: kids want to have fun, parents want to raise a successful human. As technology advances, this is getting tougher, because kids want ever more tech while parents struggle to motivate and connect with them. Joon is our attempt at a ‘middle path’ that combines the fun tech that kids want to play with, and the good habit-building that parents want to see.

We started working on this idea when, shortly after college, the three of us had a conversation about our childhoods, and realized we had each played 10,000s of hours of video games when we were kids (mainly Runescape and Pokemon). While we didn’t regret the fun we had, we wondered what would have happened if we had spent that time doing something more meaningful. Looking back, we felt that there could have been something fun like those games, but that would also have helped us grow in life skills. We’re building Joon to be what we wish we’d had as kids, and because it’s something that parents are telling us they need right now.

Joon is a mobile game that’s like a combination of Pokemon, Club Penguin, and Tamagotchi. The twist is that in order to take care of your pet and make progress in the game, you have to do parent-assigned or self-assigned “Quests” in real life. It’s a world for kids where real-world activities and outcomes (mental health, relationship-building, cognitive development, physical health, etc) determine your outcomes in the game. Most importantly, it aligns the incentives of parents and kids by helping kids become more responsible through playing a game that they love.

Such a game must have very high retention (something which is difficult for mobile games) in order to keep the parent and child aligned. For this, it’s critical that the game itself be the motivating factor, not external rewards. We’ve been hearing about kids who are asking their parents for more tasks at home (whether it’s chores or family activities) every day so they can play Joon, so it feels like we are on the right track.

This is how the app works currently: A parent initiates account creation and adds their kids, and then can choose from a suggested list of tasks to assign their kid. The child will choose a pet and see what tasks (that we call “Quests”) they need to do. Once the Quests are completed & approved, the child will receive coins in the game that they can use to buy food to feed their pet (dont worry! there is no negative reinforcement here. I.e the pet just gets sleepy if it doesn’t get fed, it won’t die). This is the core game loop mechanic. There are longer game loops for the child to explore after they have mastered the core game loop such as dressing their pet, exploring new regions, unlocking new items, meeting friends, & even minigames..

Interesting enough, people of all ages are using the app, not just kids. For example, neurodivergent adults have been finding value from using it, which is pretty cool to see. We were both surprised that adults would use Joon, but at the same time not surprised, since we ourselves only realized as adults that we hadn’t developed many good habits as kids. In fact the earliest incarnation of the software was a prototype Kevin wrote while in college, to motivate himself to do things like get enough sleep.

In terms of pricing, we have just launched it as a subscription-based model with 3 plans to test. A monthly plan for $7.99, a quarterly plan for $16.99, and an annual plan for $49.99. Each plan can be used with a free trial or the user can just use a freemium version of the app for a certain amount of time without opting in to any plan.

Please let us know what you think and if applicable, share your experiences as a parent or gamer with us! We’d love to dive in further in the comments

[ChicagoBoy11]

The comment section here is pretty negative, and while I tend even to agree with a lot of it, as a school administrator working in the early childhood space, I can shed light on one important element that a lot of folks here are missing:

The demand for stuff like this is ABSOLUTELY real, and growing. Lots of folks here have made very thoughtful posts about why this is not an ideal way to motivate a child/teach them habits/etc., and lots of the responses counter with some wonderful practice that commenters do at home and works for them.

I, too, have delivered that spiel about a gazillion time for parents. More specifically, when talking about internet safety, or healthy device use, my mantra is always about how ineffective the notion that "some tool" can solve this for them is, and that honest, deep, meaningful communication with their children is the only real way to address these things. You know... parenting.

But 100% of the time, as soon as I am done, I get asked for all sorts of recommendations for things that I JUST told them are actually suboptimal and, ultimately, ineffective. I tend to work with mostly very high-earning families, who either by choice or circumstance, spend usually not that much time with their children and look at this stuff as another one of their many problems that they can outsource a solution to.

It seems that OP here has developed a tool that can sell well to the parents (you are developing good habits!) while also appealing to the kids (its just a game!), and has high production value. The thing I'd argue most of you are missing is that the educational value of this, IF THEY ARE TO SUCCEED AS A BUSINESS, actually takes a backseat to the perceived value that this has for the parents and the kids. Those are not one and the same... at all.

One commenter here said that they were surprised, as a parent, that YC would fund something like this. I chuckled, because I think something like this is exactly what following "make something people want" leads you towards, especially in contrast to "make something people need." I fully agree that no family needs this, and that frankly they are missing out on a lot thinking that this is a healthy thing to bring into their home. But I promise you that loads, and loads of family with lots of money WANT this.

[NAR8789]

That is insightful but also depressing. Paraphrasing... 1) the incentives are set up to create more companies like Joon, but 2) the nature of the solution space ensures those companies tend to be parasitic on society rather than helpful. i.e. all solutions in this space will be net negative on society, but the space is too fertile so solutions will grow and find traction. Externality perfect storm.

Do you think there's a way Joon can take their mindshare and pivot their audience towards healthier behaviors without tanking their business?

[iveaves]

In response to the general sentiment of comments here:

In an ideal world, there would be no need for Joon.

Parents would be having meaningful and deep conversations with their children. They'd be spending a lot of time building up their kids’ intrinsic sense of responsibility. They'd be consistently spending quality time with their children, forming a deeper relationship with them, built on trust, mutual respect and love.

However, after talking to so many parents, many of them are trying to "survive" first, before they can "thrive." They're working full-time jobs. They experience constant guilt that they aren't doing good enough. They read articles everyday about parenting, but struggle to implement what they're learning. They watch their kids addicted to their screens, playing games and watching TikToks, but they feel powerless to manage it.

And we are conscious of the harms technology can have on kids. From the get-go we’ve been working with pediatricians + child psychologists to hopefully eliminate these externalities.

We're not trying to replace effective parenting. We're trying to be a better choice than the current options -- TikTok, Youtube, Roblox/Minecraft/any pure game -- that their kids are spending hours on every day. We're trying to make parents' lives easier so that they can go from "surviving" to "thriving."

We appreciate everybody taking the time to read our post and comment here.

[awb]

> However, after talking to so many parents, many of them are trying to "survive" first, before they can "thrive." They're working full-time jobs. They experience constant guilt that they aren't doing good enough. They read articles everyday about parenting, but struggle to implement what they're learning. They watch their kids addicted to their screens, playing games and watching TikToks, but they feel powerless to manage it.

But these are all issues with parents, not with kids. Why not make a gamification app for parents to help them parent better? I think someone else suggested an app that shut off the parents phones for a period of time. Or an app where parents and kids do chores together?

And realistically kids are only doing 15min of chores a day. They make their bed, throw their dirty clothes in the hamper, put away their toys and they’re usually done. Maybe a chore in the yard too. And the rest of the time this virtual pet is just eating up screen/brain time just like any of the other screen time apps you mentioned. So it’s not reducing screen time, is it?

Every device already has a screen time limit and parental controls to limit time and content as needed.

Like you said: “In an ideal world, there would be no need for Joon.”

So why shoot so low? Why not aim high and create a better world where apps like Joon don’t need to exist? That might mean addressing the cause of the problem, rather than masking the symptoms.

[NAR8789]

Put another way, you're trying to build a "lesser evil" to draw children away from greater harms.

What if you took another tack? Instead of building a habit RPG for children, build it for the parents, and make the quests small things they can do each day to build connection with their children. I guarantee you: if the children are glued to their screens, then so are their parents.

It can even be chore-oriented, in that chores should be done together with children. I'd recommend maybe starting communication-oriented or affection-oriented though.

Since time is the primary thing parents lack, let your value prop be ways to save them time, whether that be by clever hacks or by helping them organize fitting these activities into their lives.

[stuaxo]

Agreed - even earning pretty OK £, both parents working 5 days a week it's hard. If a 3 day working week was normal then this would be a lot easier.

[Geenkaas]

I am torn, my kid loves playing on the computer (any screen) more than he does his doing chores, and combining these would be great, but the gamification of my parental responsibility does not sit well. I really appreciate your work and effort but chore > reward is not my goal or method.

What if the game itself has more depth (learning for example) while remaining as engaging? Simple dopamine triggers they have enough.

[bbrenner2]

Totally hear your point! Chore > reward is not our long term goal either. I think you actually nailed it that our longer-term goal is to add more depth (i.e. integrating books, math problems, other learning resources, etc.) into the platform to wean off of just chores. This is just our MVP state right now where we had launched a small solution that parents have been expressing a need for.

[TedDoesntTalk]

Try Khan Academy Kids app.

[lykahb]

Yet another product that aims to insert itself into the family relationship between the people, where no third party has even been needed.

Like most mobile games, it conditions the users to behave according to its reward loop. The description above talks about retention. The screenshots show a few UX patterns to increase engagement, both with children and parents.

As an engineer, I see a market for this app. As a father, I wouldn't recommend it to anyone. A board and the stickies can do a job.

[lnanek2]

My wife works as a language teacher and I noticed a big difference when she started doing an adventure game like this with one of her young boy students. The kid went from accidentally turning off his web cam a lot, pretending audio isn't working, not looking at the video call at all, etc. to actually being engaged and wanting to answer the next question to earn more points he could then spend on equipment to defeat the next "monster" in the game. Be they robots or man eating plants or whatever and then win the treasure at the end. She would just draw the monsters and the treasure and the equipment in colored marker in a notebook she showed the student each step, but it was still very motivating to him. Seems like this app takes a lot of the work out of the parent/teacher side.

[gmichnikov]

> We’ve been hearing about kids who are asking their parents for more tasks at home (whether it’s chores or family activities) every day so they can play Joon, so it feels like we are on the right track.

As a parent ... this might be the right track for you the game creator, but it is not the right track for the kids.

[bbrenner2]

Totally hear your perspective. Having kids beg for chores is not what we are hoping to achieve in the long-term. Our broader goal is to help encourage kids to learn positive habits like making their bed, reading every day, etc. Hopefully we can use this tool to help the parent-child relationship work together towards this goal rather than have it just be a dopamine hit for kids and a task tracker for the parents.

[gautamdivgi]

I really have mixed feelings about this, tending to "not so good". Gaming chores tends to be a real problem. Ideally, kids need to do chores, homework and self-care not for a reward but because they just need to be done. I can quickly see this being a problem in the future where unless the "reward" exists, there is no motivation to do the "work".

I'm unsure of the parent feedback on this as well. As a parent, I do chores with my kids. As an example - I help them clean-up their rooms and they help with clean-up of the house in general. I still read to them and expect them to read on their own.

My view is probably jaded since I work remotely full-time. So there may definitely be a space where this is regarded as something parents would pay for.

[endisneigh]

> Joon has 3 pricing tiers: Monthly, Quarterly, and Annually and each come with a 7 to 14 day free trial.

How much? Why can’t companies just explicitly say the price?

[bbrenner2]

Shoot I didnt see this and replied to other comment about this, so apologies! We just launched subscriptions last week but we are still price testing different price points. Right now one of the most common price point that we are offering is $7.99 per month, $16.99 quarterly and $49.99 annually. Once we solidify the price, we'll absolutely update the FAQ and make pricing more transparent on the site since totally agree with you that it needs to be very transparent.

[rapind]

In your FAQ you have an entry “How much does June cost?” which uses a lot of words to avoid answering what it costs.

[bbrenner2]

We just launched subscriptions last week but we are still price testing different price points. Right now one of the most common price point that we are offering is $7.99 per month, $16.99 quarterly and $49.99 annually. Once we solidify the price, we'll absolutely update the FAQ and make pricing more transparent on the site since totally agree with you that it needs to be very transparent.

[echan00]

Lots of negative feedback here. While I don't have kids, I'd imagine if I introduced this app to my nephews they would just try it once or twice and forget about it because many other apps are more fun.

On another note, I would also suggest OP to take the feedback received with a grain of salt. At the end of the day, your job is to find people who love your app. You're not going to convince every parent/child and that's okay while you're building out your niche.

[hazza_n_dazza]

For kids always playing on their phones, this might be good. For others maybe they don't need this. // May I suggest as a buyer of many games for kids, that your pricing model means an instant and permanant NO from my household. Signing up for stuff takes effort and memory, not getting to own what I paid for sucks. $50 a year (more than that price in AU) is crazy. I can buy 10 good kids games for that. Another reason: pricing model requires continual engagement, which means lots of 'rewards'and flashy lights and emotional triggers - no thanks.

[NAR8789]

> the earliest incarnation of the software was a prototype Kevin wrote while in college, to motivate himself to do things like get enough sleep.

Did this work? Is Kevin still getting enough sleep nowadays?

[tdaltonc]

You must be aware of all of the products that have attempted this solution to this problem. why is your attempt going to be more successful?

[mdrzn]

Honestly I don't mind the idea, the product seems good and interesting enough to catch the attention of kids. I mean, if there was an 18-34 version I'd download it immediately.

[czbond]

Oh very interesting - novel twist that I'm excited about for my kids.

[Dnguyen]

How is this compare to ChoreMonster? They were hot for a while and don't hear about them anymore.

[bbrenner2]

Good question - ChoreMonster actually got acquihired in 2018 by Verizon and then immediately shut down. We are quite bit different though, with choremonster parents would assign tasks and then kids would complete them for either small game rewards (like monster farts) or extrinsic rewards like more screen time. We try to build a full game experience (like pokemon) as the motivator but are also trying to lean away from just the parent assigning kids chores and help children feel empowered to create / select their own habits or hobbies that they would like to do!

[masteranza]

Awful idea, which I'd downvote if I had enough karma on YC. Kids have fantastic imagination, doing the "rendering" for them is always going to set them back. The best tech oriented ways to learn kids to clean after themselves is give them toys which need to be replenished.

[pjerem]

Yes, that's what I love with my son. He doesn't need any device to, realistically, be a dragon, or a dinosaur. Granted, a t-shirt with a dinosaur illustration can help.

[awb]

FYI you can’t downvote submissions or direct replies only comments

[iveaves]

That's a totally fair point! We've seen technology help expand kids imagination, and we're hoping to do the same.

[t8y]

I don't want to hate on this game but I think there's a bad trend amongst all YC game investments.

How do they not realise that production values are important for games? Pretty much all YC funded games don't have good art direction. In 99.9% of cases if the game is ugly it's dead on arrival. So many of these games are just YC throwing away $500k. For less than the investment in one game they could hire a few games industry people to give advice on the games. There's so many game art students that graduate every year without being able to get jobs that could make these games look decent.

Off the top of my head MZ was YCs best game investment. Game of War lost players to alternative games with higher production values. Along with other issues the company lost most of its value when it was sold.

Looking at this game these are some issues IMO:

-Dragon animation speed does not match movement speed. This makes it seem like the dragon is not actually walking along. It also doesn't face the direction you're moving. I get this is probably to reduce the amount of sprites needed but with the dragon also not having an animation that matches its movement speed it makes it even more jarring.

-Perspective and art style are all over the place. The "quests" sign and chest next to it are clearly created at a different camera angle to the houses, they are also a completely different art style. Inside you can see the walls from all directions, this is used in action games because something could be on that wall, if there's no action elements inside then using regular style walls would help.

-Lighting is all over the place, even on the same object. In the town section the building in the bottom left (visible at 0.33 in the video) has a dark back suggesting that it is lit from towards the camera, it casts a shadow on the ground as though the light is from the opposite side. On that building there's also no shadow from the chimney. Either everything should cast shadows or nothing should. None of the small props and trees cast shadows.

-The dragon sprite is cell shaded but the backgrounds are not. This can work if done well but because there's a bunch of different styles it can't make the dragon stand out anyway.

-Lots of things(but not all) have a white glow/outline. Is this to show what is interactive? Can these be clicked on? The door to a building seems like enough. Also the buildings have shadows that ground them in the scene but then a white glow is put over them to make them stand out.

Reading the reviews it seems like lots of parents are enthusiastic about the product but I think you need to be careful when they say their kids "love" the product. I've seen this with literally every educational game or gamification system I've ever interacted with. Kids love the game instead of school but would never stop playing their regular favourite game for it.

I think it's disturbing that the website has better production values than the game. Feels very targeted to parents not kids. It seems like they think kids wont notice a low quality game when the founders literally give examples of games they played as kids that have high production values.

[iveaves]

This is super helpful feedback and totally agree. We just started working with a great studio for art / animations (before, it was a mix of freelancers and asset packs we could find, as we were mainly bootstrapping). The production value should become much higher really soon.

[hazza_n_dazza]

> Use gamification to keep your child on track. Your child chooses a virtual pet (called a Doter) to feed, wash, and grow. When they complete the real-life activities assigned to them, their Doter grows and levels-up in the game helping your child visualize their own progress.

Shouldn't that be dotee? One who is doted upon. By a doter.

[JonAtkinson]

As a parent, the idea of delegating my child’s attention to a third party, VC funded company seeking profit is extremely distasteful.

I don’t want my child to become accustomed to living with their activities being monitored (and presumably used to build a profile which outlines their preferences) in exchange for succeeding in their chores.

The dystopian in me sees this is a child’s gateway to joining the depersonalised workforce, trained that validation comes from completing their tasks and seeking the hollow reassurance of a gamified system.

I’m sure you have worked hard on your product but this is a horrifying end state.

[iveaves]

Totally understand where you're coming from - it's certainly not meant to be a fit for every parent.

What we are building is taking an existing parent-behavior pattern (chore charts, nagging to complete tasks, activities to get your child to become more responsible, etc) and turning it into a language that kids understand as well. The goal is to help align incentives of parents and kids.

Ultimately, we want it to be a game where time on the screen is just as important as time off the screen, and where kids are excited to do life-skill building activities.

In a world where a lot of parents feel their kids are stuck to their screens, we're hoping this provides some respite by leveraging screen-time as a way to get them engaging in the real world.

We definitely want to avoid that dystopian future, and want to make the best product for parents and kids. Given that, we'd love to hear more of your concerns to help broaden our perspective. In addition to commenting here, you can reach out directly at [e-mail]

[GreenWatermelon]

Your dystopian future is already here. Kids spend countless hours grinding meaningless resources in games, or doing stupid actions to gain enough resources to unlock a new item in a fremium battle-pass-schemed game.

[thmorriss]

Would you rather delegate your child’s attention to YouTube/Reddit/Instagram, which will inevitably happen the moment they get their own devices?

[gonzo41]

It's telling that SV types try to delay access to technology to their kids.

If you work with technology long enough, you start to appreciate it's absence. I really feel for kids these days, they don't know what it was like to not know things, and to have a small world.

[NAR8789]

> One of the hardest parts of parenting (and of growing up!) is getting kids to do things that they don’t enjoy.

This sounds like "eat your wheaties", and I think this is a faulty premise / self fulfilling prophesy / you're asking the wrong question. To echo some of the other comments on this thread, chores should not be viewed as "eat your wheaties", but rather are an opportunity for meaningful connection and a way for child to bond with family and community.

I'd go even further and say children given the right environment and at the right age want to do chores. Chores can and should be enjoyable and meaningful. For evidence, take a look into the Montessori method and in particular Montessori Practical life. I think you'll find the following:

- A wealth of anecdotal examples of children doing chores on their own for fulfillment and to demonstrate their independence. (No daddy, let me do it myself!)

- Children want to do chores because that's what they see their parents doing, and also because they have a drive towards their own independence. (corollary: the same goes for smartphones and other addictions)

- Where this goes wrong is when parents either help too much (not giving the child opportunities), or when parents overcriticize (not giving the child space to learn). The root problem is not one of incentives, but of either miscommunication, lack of communication, or too-high or too-low expectations.

A caveat here: Montessori Practical Life is oriented towards 3-6 year olds. Based on your origin story if you're thinking about the age where you were playing video games, you were probably older than 6, and maybe that's the age group you're targetting.

Given what I see as the root causes of chore distaste though, I don't feel that incentivizing things via a video game will solve the problem even for older children--I predict dependency on Joon and habits going away as soon as that crutch is removed.

But maybe I and others are being too negative. Maybe there's a path to bootstrapping from Joon to more meaningful connection and weaning off of the game? Given that you have the will and energy to throw at the problem, maybe you can discover a solution to this weaning problem. Maybe you can discover a path to bootstrap from Joon to meaningful child-family and child-community connection.

Since you have energy and interest, here's some exposure to my viewpoint sources, in the interests of converting you to what I see as a healthier worldview, so that as you spread your worldview it's tempered with mine. I'd recommend you look at a few of the following resources:

- Talk to your local Montessori community. Find an AMI-certified school and talk to the staff about Montessori Practical Life, and how it compares to or might relate to Joon.

- Ask them to refer you to the article "Stop Saying Good Job To Your Kids (and what to say instead)". I'm finding a few articles with that title but can't find the particular one that I'm thinking of. Your Montessori guides will know.

- Read "Taking Charge": https://smile.amazon.com/Taking-Charge-Caring-Discipline-Sch... . Not Montessori, but a similar vein, and I feel like it tries to tackle the same problem you're tackling--building up "good" behaviors. Goes at it more from a Maslow's hierarchy of needs perspective, but I think all these life philosophies are in the same family, and a healthier counterpoint than the "Eat your wheaties" philosophy I see reflected in your post.

---

Tangentially, I find the "eat your wheaties" mentality distasteful even for adults, but maybe this is just a quirk of my own psychology. Any time I perceive something as "I should do this because it's good for me" rather than "I do this because I enjoy it", I just fall into a procrastination loop. I literally lack the ability to take the "force myself through" path, and in the long term this has been a blessing. To "correct" my habits (I did, like you, grow up also playing many thousands of hours of video games, and I didn't exercise enough and tended to stay up late to boot), I've always had to find intrinsic enjoyment in my new habits, whether that be cleaning, eating more vegetables, getting more exercise, etc. In the end I've made the happy discovery that my tastes are very malleable, and this is the best tool in my belt for self-shaping.

An informal support for my way of doing things being more widely applicable: there seems to be a lot of research floating around supporting that procrastination is due to negative emotional associations.

In that light, it seems what Joon does is try to paper over that negative emotional association by providing a counterbalancing positive emotional association. I'd imagine where you'll see success here is incidentally--Joon might overcome initial resistance and sometimes if a person does the chore enough the original negative association might fade towards neutral, at which point the bootstrapping problem is half-solved. I'd imagine this doesn't happen in all or even a majority of cases though.

---

To draw another analogy-- because of how you frame chores, I have a hard time imagining Joon being able to frame chores as anything greater than grinding mobs for XP. Grinding mobs is a boring chore, but XP is rewarding, so that makes grinding mobs fun, right?? Hecka no! XP is just a number on a screen, and grinding mobs is boring as all heck.

No, I play RPGs for challeging dungeons and boss fights and hard mode. Bosses do drop more XP, but XP and loot are not what make boss fights fun. Boss fights are enjoyable for the intrinsic challenge and the satisfaction of growing to meet that challenge. In Joon, what would constitute a boss fight? And how would you motivate it?

More generally, where in Joon is the feeling of personal skill progression? In the best games (and in life), this goes deeper than just my on-screen character gaining skills-- I personally get better at the game, and can feel it. What is the analogous feeling in Joon? Given your focus, I'd imagine this would have to be some form of getting better and faster at the chores themselves and eager to further test my skills in real life.

[bigbossman]

This feels like the kind of app created by people who don't have kids.

[somethoughts]

At first glance it reminded me of Jira Junior For Kids :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9shZslfbaS0

It's not quite that after further investigation and perhaps might seem actually workable with the right kids and mindset.

[awb]

As a parent, I can’t believe this got funded by YC.

> We started working on this idea when, shortly after college, the three of us had a conversation about our childhoods

I think actually being a parent is a pretty important qualifier before trying to make an app that involves the parent/child relationship.

So many things unsettling about this idea that I think would have been shot down by founders with kids.

Sorry, but either get a founder/CEO that’s a parent or pivot to a market that you understand at a deep level.

[iveaves]

I definitely see where you're coming from!

We think to build this we need passion and perspective. We're extremely passionate about this space. As you mentioned, being parents would have definitely helped us deepen our perspective. While it's no replacement to being an actual parent, we try to gain this perspective in the best ways we can (we've spoken with 100+ parents, continuously seek advising from pediatricians, occupational therapists, and experts).

[GreenWatermelon]

A parent isn't necessarily a good parent, and non-parents won't necessarily bad parents. The creators can also work with parents and parenting specialists, and read parenting books, something which "real" parents often never do.

I would like to see your arguments about the unsettling things, instead of attacking the founders themselves. I too believe there might be some bad ideas about this app, though it seems useful for someone like me who'd like to improve his habits.

[ramses0]

TL-DR: Habitica + Tamagochi for kids

[vincentmarle]

With great parenting apps like these, who needs parents? /s

[schleck8]

Ever seen parents who just sit their toddlers in front of youtube kids and tiktok all day? atleast this has a positive influence on them

[elcapitan]

This looks like satire from the "Silicon Valley" show, tbh.