I stumbled on a weird little bedtime story tool built by a dad of three, and it fixed my 8 PM chaos this week
I was hovering over the stove last Tuesday, waiting for my lemon pasta water to boil, still picking Cheerios out of my sweatpants from breakfast, scrolling TikTok with one hand like every other tired parent at 6:30 PM. I wasn’t looking for anything, really—just avoiding wiping down the counter for five more minutes—when this guy popped up on my For You Page. He was in a faded gray hoodie with a coffee stain right over the pocket, one of his kids was yanking on his sleeve off-camera, and he sounded like he’d rather be in bed than filming a video. Which, honestly, made me stop scrolling.
He said he’s a dad of three, and he built this thing because he was sick of the nightly bedtime story fight. Every single night, all three of his kids wanted to be the main hero. None of them wanted to be the sidekick. He’d stayed up three nights in a row half-asleep making up garbage about a three-headed dragon with each kid’s head being the hero, and he thought there had to be an easier way. So he messed around and built this thing that makes custom bedtime stories where your kid is the hero, and it’s free for a two-week beta right now, no credit card required.
Full transparency: I write words for a living, I should be good at making up stories, right? Wrong. By 8 PM, my brain is the consistency of refrigerated mashed potatoes. Last week I tried to make up a custom story for my 5-year-old Lila, who demands every story star her, and I accidentally killed her sidekick unicorn. She cried for 20 minutes. I had to dig out the frozen unicorn stuffed animal from the toy bin and do a whole fake resurrection ritual just to get her to bed. I was 10 minutes late to the show I was supposed to watch with my husband after. So I was primed to try anything.
I clicked the link, fully expecting a million pop-ups asking for my email, my first born, my social security number. Nope. Just a little clean page that asks for your kid’s name, a couple of their favorite things, any things they don’t like, and hit go. I typed in Lila, said she loves orange tabbies, rainbow glitter, hates broccoli, hit go. 10 seconds later, there was a story. It was called “Lila and the Glitter Cave Broccoli Monster.” I’m not kidding. The whole plot is Lila is out walking and finds a lost magic orange tabby who guards the glitter cave, the broccoli monster stole the cave key, Lila talks the broccoli monster into giving it back (turns out he just wanted someone to share his cheese puffs with) and at the end she gets a vanilla ice cream cone with sprinkles as a reward.
Lila lost her mind. She was bouncing on the bed so hard the lamp shook. My 7-year-old Jax, who only cares about garbage trucks right now, immediately demanded his own. I typed Jax, said he loves garbage trucks, has a pet goldfish named Bubbles, wants to rescue a broken garbage truck stuck off the side of a mountain. It spit that right out. Only weird thing: it had Bubbles the goldfish riding in Jax’s jacket pocket the whole hike. Lila called that out immediately, like “Mom, goldfish can’t breathe out of water! That’s stupid.” We all laughed, and I just changed it on the fly when I read it aloud—Bubbles waited in a cool puddle by the road while Jax climbed up. It was fine, way better than my dead unicorn fiasco, that’s for sure.
I went back and read the little about blurb on the site after, and it’s just this guy. He said he got so tired of those $30 personalized story books you buy off Instagram that your kid looks at once and then shoves under the bed never to be seen again. He said he doesn’t store any of the kid info you put in, he doesn’t want the hassle of storing a bunch of data, doesn’t want to sell it to anyone. That made me feel better, honestly— I’m weird about putting my kids’ names into random online things, but this felt different. Not some big corporate thing chasing a profit, just a dad who was sick of the same fight we all have every night.
It’s not perfect, obviously. The first time I used it I messed up and put my name in instead of Lila’s, so I got a whole story about me rescuing a kitten, and the kids thought that was the funniest thing ever, so we read that anyway. My sister tried it last night, her 11-year-old son rolled his eyes and said it was cringe, then went back to reading his Dog Man graphic novel. So it’s not for every kid, every time. I’m still a little weirded out by any automated thing that makes stuff for kids, honestly—this isn’t some endorsement that this is the best thing ever, or that you need it. It’s just a little thing I tried this week that worked for me.
I don’t know, I guess I just wasn’t expecting this to be such a tiny, nice little win. Usually bedtime is a 45-minute fight: who gets to pick, why is this story boring, can we have another snack, I need a drink of water. This week, it took two minutes to get a story that’s all about them, it’s silly, it fits whatever random thing they’re obsessed with this week, and I got to drink my entire mug of tea after they went to bed while it was still hot.
I don’t know if this guy will keep it free, or if it’ll even be around next month after the beta ends. I don’t have a big neat takeaway here. It’s just a thing a dad built for his kids that he’s sharing with everyone else for free right now, and it worked for mine. If your 8 PM is as much of a mess as mine usually is, it’s worth 2 minutes to check out. No promises it’ll change your life, but it might get your kid to bed 15 minutes earlier, and that’s enough for me right now. (1127 words)
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