How the check works

Where the five patterns come from

The patterns are not clinical categories and not a personality test. They are our grouping of the everyday situations we and the first beta families kept landing in when we asked what the hard evenings had in common. Five groups came out: short on time, unsure how, talks that stay on the surface, exhausted, no structure. Every family has a bit of all five; the check finds the one that weighs most right now.

We wrote the questions ourselves, with psychologists, and tested them on our own family first. A child psychologist advises us; her name goes on this page once the contract is signed, not before. Martin is working on a PhD in psychology.

How the scoring works

Eighteen questions, each with three to four answers. Every answer adds points to one or two of the five patterns; nothing is hidden, there are no trick questions, and you can pause and come back. The pattern with the most points is yours. If a second one is close behind, you see it too.

Both parents answer separately. Your own answers stay private, the family pattern is the average of both views. If you disagree with your partner, that is useful information, not a problem: the result says so.

Children answer their own short version in kids' mode: thirty questions in three age versions, picture answers for the youngest. Their answers count half as much as a parent's and are never shown to the parents one by one, only as a summary. The child sees that before the first question.

Once a month a short progress check asks ten statements on a scale from one to five. If another pattern now weighs more, the map switches to it. Nothing is locked in.

What the check is not

Not a diagnosis. Not a screening for ADHD, autism, depression or anything else. Not a judgement of you as a parent. It is a snapshot of an everyday situation, taken by you, used to pick a sensible first step. If your family is in a crisis, the check will not see it; the helplines in the app and a real person will.

What the advice rests on

The steps on the map and the practices lean on well-researched ground, not on one guru: attachment research, emotion coaching as described by John Gottman, authoritative parenting as described by Diana Baumrind, rupture and repair as described by Ed Tronick, and the thinking of conscious parenting, in our own words. No punishment-based methods, no shaming, no withdrawal of love, anywhere in the app.

Mila, the assistant, answers from the same texts and from well-established child psychology. She does not diagnose, name medication or give legal advice, and an automatic check looks at every answer before you see it.

Limits, honestly

The check has not been validated in a study yet. Thirteen beta families and our own are not a sample. What we can say: the questions are understandable in three languages, the five groups are stable across the families we have seen, and parents recognise their pattern. What we cannot say yet: how reliable the result is over time, or how much the map changes a family. We will measure both during the beta (test and retest after four weeks, review by the advising psychologist) and put the numbers here, whatever they are.

Who checks our work

Today: the two of us, our own family, the first beta families, and the psychologists we developed the content with. A child psychologist advises us on the check, the patterns and the map; her name and credentials appear here once the contract is signed. Until then, don't take our word for it: run the free check and judge the result yourself.