familynet.mobi

Dear Parents -

Hello – we are Ed and Peter, and we are psychologists who work with parents and families every day. We are also parents and we struggle to balance all of the demands of daily life with a desire to communicate clearly with our partners and our children. To address these struggles, we have created this smart-phone-based “app” to help with the complexity of communicating with our families.

The purpose of this parenting “app” is to make it easier for families to do the kinds of daily communication that we already know how to do. Most parents know that raising children requires consistency and clarity in our behavioral expectations. If we ask our children to say “Please” and “Thank you” to adults on a daily basis around the home, then we can expect that behavior from them when they are out in the community without us. We know that if we sometimes allow a later bedtime, then it is not surprising that the children may request or beg for this treatment on a night when we want them to go to bed earlier. However, in our day-to-day lives it is easy to get distracted by the thousand tasks of daily life: checking homework, making sure dinner is on the table, that the laundry is done, and that our kids are at their sports practices on time. We are pulled in so many directions at the same time that it is literally impossible to keep track of it all.

In the rest of our lives we all have kinds of different systems, but at some level we all use calendars, assistants, to-do lists, post-it notes, and reminders to help us keep up with all of the tasks that we set out to accomplish. But when it comes to our lives as parents we have not yet automated these essential tasks. The goal of this “app” is, simply, to help make parenting tasks visible and bring them into our awareness on our phones when they will be the most helpful.

“ParentNet.mobi” allows you to set up your family the way that it works best for you:

• Children can be added and assigned behaviors,
• You can change the assigned at any time,
• Reminders and behavioral reporting are integrated,
• When children completes a behavior he or she is given points,
• Points are collected toward earning privileges that you assign,
• Children can log in too, using either a passcode or an email address, and let you know when they think that they are finished with tasks or wish to trade in points for a privilege.
• You can also invite other caregivers (partners, nanny’s’, or whomever), and these other caregivers can be allowed to see one or all of your children.

We hope that you enjoy it, and we would love to get your feedback on how “ParentNet” is working for you!

Sincerely,
Peter and Ed