Pick a skill your child doesn't have yet — falling asleep alone, leaving the park without a fight, getting dressed, using the potty. We break it into small steps, find the one they're already on, and give you one short activity a day with the words to say. Plus the guides and book summaries that explain why, for the nights you want to understand it rather than do it.
Skill Sprouts isn't here to give you a longer to-do list. There is nothing to tick off and no streak to protect. There is one thing to teach, broken small enough that today's piece takes three minutes — and a record of what your child can do now that they couldn't a month ago. On the nights you'd rather understand it than do it, there's something short to read instead. Small steps. Soft landings. Nothing that counts down.
— with love, the Skill Sprouts team
Two of them are for you, on the nights you want to understand what's going on. One of them is for your child, on the mornings you want to do something about it.
One skill your child doesn't have yet — tying their shoes, falling asleep alone, leaving the park without a fight — broken into an ordered ladder of steps. Three minutes a day, and the ladder only ever moves up.
Tie their own shoes · Use the potty independently · Handle frustration without melting down
Short, plain reads on the thing that's hard right now — why it happens, what actually helps, and what to stop bothering with. Written by us, for the ten minutes you have.
What to do after you lose it · Ending the bedtime battle · When they hit, bite, or throw
The parenting canon in about twelve minutes — written out properly, in prose, not scraped into bullet points. The book you keep meaning to read, finished on a lunch break.
Good Inside · How to Talk So Little Kids Will Listen · No-Drama Discipline
They aren't three separate apps stapled together. Every read ends by handing you the plan that turns it into something your child practises — and every plan hands back to the reading behind it.
Each plan is one skill your child doesn't have yet, broken into an ordered ladder of steps. We find the rung they're already on, then give you a single short activity a day — with the words to say — and move up only once they've done a step unaided twice.
A program is a shelf, not a course. Montessori's practical life exercises, Gottman's emotion coaching — each one split into the individual skills it actually produces. Nothing is graded and nothing is tracked at this level. You just pick the plan you need next.
Real tools, small jobs, no rushing. Each plan teaches one job they can then do without you.
Naming what they feel, before it becomes a floor-thump.
Endings, bedtimes and the bits of the day that turn into a negotiation.
Dry days, then dry nights, at the pace they set.
The hand, the attention and the name — in that order, and earlier than you'd think.
Ninety seconds, five questions, and we'll tell you the one skill worth starting this week.
Find your starting pointThis is the teaching half — the part your child does. The reading half is there whenever you want it, and asks nothing of you. No guilt loops, no notification bombardment, no streak to break.
Tie their shoes, use the potty, fall asleep alone, leave the park calmly — one skill at a time.
A quick check finds the rung they can already do, so nothing you practise is busywork.
Two good runs and the step is theirs. A hard one just makes tomorrow easier. Miss a day and nothing is lost.
I deleted three other parenting apps because they made me feel like a project manager. Skill Sprouts feels like a friend texting me reminders. The two-minute thing actually works.S
I read the Good Inside summary on a Tuesday lunch break and started the frustration plan that night. Twelve minutes of reading actually changed what I said to him at bedtime.D
As a child therapist, I recommend this to half my families. Breaking a skill into rungs is exactly how we teach — and the tone never shames. Rare combo.N
No red badges. No "you missed yesterday" shame spiral. Skip a day, skip a week — your sprout just naps and waits for you. The whole point is to lower the stakes, not raise them.
Each plan breaks one skill into rungs small enough that the next is genuinely within reach — the same task-analysis approach used in early-years teaching and occupational therapy. Several plans follow a named method end to end: Montessori's practical life exercises, Gottman's emotion coaching, Brazelton's child-led readiness. The tone and the scripts come from the same literature we summarise on the reading side. Warm, simple, and doable on a chaotic Tuesday morning. No flashcard nonsense.
A guide is ours. We write it about one specific problem you're having tonight — the toys on the floor at 8pm, what to do after you lose it — and it takes about five minutes. A book summary is somebody else's: the actual argument of a real parenting book, written out in about twelve minutes so you get the thinking rather than a listicle of its chapter titles.
Both end the same way — by handing you the plan that turns the idea into something your child practises.
No, and they're not meant to replace them. We write our own summaries, in our own prose, of the ideas in each book. We're not affiliated with the authors and they haven't endorsed us. If a summary lands and you want the whole argument, go and buy the book — that's the point of reading it with us first.
Yes. Each child gets their own profile, their own sprout and their own plans — a three-year-old learning to dress themselves and a five-year-old learning to write their name run side by side. Switch between them with a tap. The guides and book summaries are shared, because they're for you, not them.
We're on iOS and Android — same features, same prices. Web version is coming.
Yes. No emails to send, no "are you sure" loops. Where you cancel depends on where you subscribed — see the next question. The free tier stays free for as long as you want it.
Wherever you bought it is where you manage it. That's the rule the app stores enforce, and it means we can't change or cancel a store subscription on your behalf from our side.
Not sure which one you used? Start at the billing portal — sign in with the same email or Google account you subscribed with, and it will either open your Stripe billing page or tell you that Apple or Google is handling it instead.
Three minutes. One step. One thing they'll be able to do that they can't today.