[HN Gopher] Launch HN: Joon (YC W22) - A mobile game that teache...
___________________________________________________________________
Launch HN: Joon (YC W22) - A mobile game that teaches kids to build
good habits
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
Author : bbrenner2
Score : 46 points
Date : 2022-01-19 14:53 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.joonapp.io)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.joonapp.io)
| iveaves wrote:
| 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.
| stuaxo wrote:
| Agreed - even earning pretty OK PS, 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.
| NAR8789 wrote:
| 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.
| awb wrote:
| > 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.
| czbond wrote:
| Oh very interesting - novel twist that I'm excited about for my
| kids.
| Geenkaas wrote:
| 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.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| Try Khan Academy Kids app.
| bbrenner2 wrote:
| 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.
| NAR8789 wrote:
| Weaning off chores but adding more and more to the platorm
| feels ominous, dystopian even.
|
| The end goal should be to wean _off_ of Joon, not suck more
| and more of external meaningful actions _in_.
|
| I understand though that the business incentive and the
| parenting incentive are hard to align in this case.
| elcapitan wrote:
| This looks like satire from the "Silicon Valley" show, tbh.
| ChicagoBoy11 wrote:
| 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.
| [deleted]
| NAR8789 wrote:
| 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?
| ChicagoBoy11 wrote:
| > all solutions in this space will be net negative on
| society, but the space is too fertile so solutions will grow
| and find traction.
|
| To me, its a bit more about being stuck in a sub-optimal
| steady state. If we take this as an example, "the right", or
| optimal way to parent someone through these challenges, has
| become just too difficult. It is too steep a gradient to
| climb, so sub-optimal alternatives like this get a lot of
| traction. But then these sub-optimal alternatives actually
| change the landscape of the domain itself, making climbing
| the gradient to the optimal solution even tougher. It becomes
| self-fulfilling, and the optimal solution becomes
| unreachable. (I once revealed to a parent that during a
| lesson a child tearfully revealed that she felt that her
| parents didn't care about what she had to say because they
| would always be on their phones at dinner instead of talking
| to her. When I suggested revisiting that culture at home, the
| parent scoffed at me and ridiculed what I was suggesting, for
| surely no family could operate like that).
|
| If you ever see a family at a restaurant with a younger child
| glued to a screen, you instinctively recognize the effect I'm
| talking about. Surely not getting your toddler glued to a
| screen as you are out in the world is the right way to raise
| them. But it is hard. And, the fact is, you know there exists
| something there that can instantly get them to behave. So you
| gravitate towards it -- perhaps initially, JUST THIS ONE
| TIME. But of course now, it gets much harder not to do this
| again. And we're off to the races.
|
| If I can allow myself to get on a soapbox for a moment, I
| think the fake news phenomenon illustrates this so well.
| Never, in the history of humanity, has it been so easy to
| learn/know things. Yet it seems that at the same time, never
| have so many humans been certain of their completely false
| beliefs. At some point, you need to recognize that really the
| issue we have is one of demand, and sadly for us I don't
| think we really demand the things that we really need a whole
| lot of the time. This goes with these parenting apps, gyms,
| news, etc. Tech is just devilishly efficient at a lot of
| things, so I think we notice it more readily there. _steps
| off soapbox_
| beepbooptheory wrote:
| Maybe there are just some things that can't be fixed in this
| world with the tool of venture capital. And if so, childcare
| and education are definitely good candidates.
| Dnguyen wrote:
| How is this compare to ChoreMonster? They were hot for a while
| and don't hear about them anymore.
| bbrenner2 wrote:
| 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!
| bigbossman wrote:
| This feels like the kind of app created by people who don't have
| kids.
| somethoughts wrote:
| At first glance it reminded me of Jira For Kids :)
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9shZslfbaS0
| gabrielflorit wrote:
| ramses0 wrote:
| TL-DR: Habitica + Tamagochi for kids
| lnanek2 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| 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.
| awb wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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).
| awb wrote:
| The best products are built to address your own needs.
|
| Kids don't want to have fun doing chores, chores aren't fun.
| Kids want to feel included, important and respected.
|
| The fact that you (the giant, highly-intelligent human that
| keeps them alive) wants their help is the most important
| thing and makes them feel like they have a valuable place in
| the family. The chore isn't the thing that matters, it's the
| parent looking their child in the eye and respectfully
| treating them as an equal that matters. And once you have
| established that mutual respect, getting chores done is easy
| and mutually beneficial.
|
| So yeah you can gamify chores, but then that comes at the
| expense of one of the great ways to build a parent/child
| relationship: coming to a common, respectful understanding of
| what it means to be part of the same household.
|
| I could go on and on about this idea. But that's why I think
| it's so important to have an exec in your business that is
| living and breathing this parent/child relationship because
| you can't interview 100 parents before each important
| decision.
|
| I appreciate the ambition, but 3 non-parents trying to make
| an app for parents is a lot like trying to write a travel
| guide about a country you've never been to. It's possible,
| but certainly way harder.
| GreenWatermelon wrote:
| 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.
| awb wrote:
| > I would like to see your arguments about the unsettling
| things, instead of attacking the founders themselves.
|
| I'm not attacking the founders. Just providing feedback that
| the app itself as well as their backstory doesn't sit well
| with me (for reasons mentioned above). You shouldn't be in
| the startup business if you think direct feedback is an
| attack. FYI, I'm a parent with 3 kids in their target
| demographic.
|
| Here's a quick hit list of issues:
|
| * Replacing cooperation with gamification
|
| * Moving an important piece of parent/child communication to
| a generic digital interface
|
| * Trying to build a long-term habit (chores) with a short-
| term goal (making a pet not go to sleep). What happens when
| the kids friends say that digital pets are lame and FPS or
| RTS games are cool? How do you motivate the kid to do chores
| now? My kids are into games for a few months at most on
| average, best case scenario is off and on for a couple years
| at most. They grow up and they're interests change.
|
| * Kids learning / activities are highly personal and a lot of
| successful ones start with a similar backstory: "I built X
| for my own kids and they loved it so much I built a business
| out of it." There's no way as a parent of 13 years I'm
| listening to 3 college kids about what they think is best for
| my kid. Any interview with a Parenting blog/magazine is
| almost DOA, unless they really want to play up the Silicon
| Valley trope of being able to out-think any problem, even one
| you've never experienced directly. Not sure how far that'll
| fly though. But if I have two apps and one is built by young,
| parentless techies and another by some untechie parents, I'm
| naturally going to give the parents the edge when it comes to
| introducing something to my young kids.
|
| Anyway, all the critiques are starting to get massively
| downvoted, so I'll leave it there, but I could continue on
| although I'm not sure it would do much good.
|
| As others said, maybe the goal is to make an app enough
| parents want and I'm just a parent that would never want this
| app.
| GreenWatermelon wrote:
| I appreciate you taking the time to write those issues.
| Indeed they were what I was looking for.
|
| I upvoted because I think those are good critiques, and
| some gave me a new perspective on the matter.
| gautamdivgi wrote:
| 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.
| lykahb wrote:
| 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.
| rapind wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| surajs wrote:
| endisneigh wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| 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.
| NAR8789 wrote:
| > 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?
| vincentmarle wrote:
| With great parenting apps like these, who needs parents? /s
| schleck8 wrote:
| 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
| masteranza wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| iveaves wrote:
| That's a totally fair point! We've seen technology help expand
| kids imagination, and we're hoping to do the same.
| awb wrote:
| FYI you can't downvote submissions or direct replies only
| comments
| JonAtkinson wrote:
| 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.
| GreenWatermelon wrote:
| 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.
| iveaves wrote:
| 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 founders@joonapp.io
| klyrs wrote:
| How about a phone app that encourages parents to put down
| their phones and do the hard work of motivating their
| children to participate in household activities?
| Ntrails wrote:
| > The goal is to help align incentives of parents and kids.
|
| Instead of taking the time to teach your child empathy and
| personal responsibility, you want parents to give them a
| virtual candy bar for doing things so they keep doing them.
| Reinforcing something I would term as bad motivation (I'll do
| anything to get virtual coins to spend in a mobile game)
|
| Honestly I'd rather just give them a real candy bar and be
| done with it.
| thmorriss wrote:
| Would you rather delegate your child's attention to
| YouTube/Reddit/Instagram, which will inevitably happen the
| moment they get their own devices?
| gonzo41 wrote:
| 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.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| I make sure my kids see me reading from a physical book
| almost every night. I use digital books too, but when they
| see me using that, it's not obvious what I'm doing.
| echan00 wrote:
| 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.
| NAR8789 wrote:
| > 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.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-01-19 23:01 UTC)