I found a weird little free bedtime story tool and my kids haven’t bugged me for YouTube after dinner all week
Bedtime has been my least favorite part of the day for a while now. I work from home, by 7:30 my eyes hurt from staring at a screen, my back aches from sitting at the desk all day, and all I want to do is pour a glass of iced tea and sit on the porch without anyone asking me for anything. But my 5-year-old Lila insists on a story every single night, and she’s very specific: she has to be the hero. None of this princess waiting for a rescue nonsense, none of letting a dragon be the main character. It’s got to be her, doing the thing, saving everyone.
Last week, I tried to wing it. I was so tired I mixed up the name of her best friend from preschool, and I forgot to include her stuffed rabbit Mr. Floof, who comes everywhere with us. She got so upset she crossed her arms, refused to get under the covers, and demanded we get ice cream out of the freezer to “make up for getting the story wrong.” My partner had an early doctor’s appointment the next morning and gave me that look that says you did this, you deal with it. We ate ice cream at 8:27 pm, I got sticky blueberry all over my sweatpants, and I went to bed in a bad mood.
I was scrolling that local parenting Facebook group the next day, the one where 60% of the posts are people selling used high chairs and 40% are people arguing about whether schools should ban birthday treats, when I saw a guy posting about this AI thing he built. His name’s Rob, he’s a dad of three, said he got so sick of the exact same fight every night that he built this over three months of staying up after his kids went to bed. It makes custom bedtime stories where your kid is the hero, you just plug in whatever random stuff they’re into that week, and it spits it out. It’s a free two-week beta right now, no credit card, nothing, just try it. I figured why not, what’s the worst that could happen?
I tried it that night. Lila was obsessed with penguins that week, and she’d just found a whole patch of giant dandelions in the park that she’d been talking about nonstop, so I typed in: “Lila, 5, loves dandelions and penguins, has a stuffed rabbit named Mr. Floof, needs to find a lost baby penguin that escaped the zoo.” Hit the button, 30 seconds later there’s a whole story. It’s not fancy, just a couple pages, easy enough to read out loud. First one had a tiny mistake, it called the baby penguin Billy instead of the name Lila wanted (she insisted on Gary), but I just changed it as I read, no big deal. It’s beta, after all, Rob even says on the site he’s still fixing kinks, don’t yell at him if it’s weird.
The story ended with Lila finding Gary the penguin hiding in the dandelion patch, using her knowledge of how dandelions blow seeds to track where he’d gone, and the zookeeper gave her a whole bucket of blueberries as a reward. She sat there the whole time with her eyes big as saucers, and when I finished she made me read it again. Then she told her toddler brother all about how she’d saved the penguin, even though he just chewed on his sock and drooled on the sheet. Then she got into bed, pulled Mr. Floof up next to her, and didn’t even ask for YouTube. That’s the first time that’s happened in months.
It’s not perfect, don’t get me wrong. Last weekend my 7-year-old nephew was staying over, he’s obsessed with fighting Minecraft creepers, so I set up a story for him, and the first one turned the creeper into a sad lonely guy who just needed a friend. My nephew crossed his arms and said that’s lame, I want to blow him up with a diamond sword. So I retyped what I wanted, got a whole new story that he thought was the coolest thing ever. The stories are also a little cheesy sometimes, like they always drop some little lesson about being kind or brave at the end. Lila just rolls her eyes and says “yeah duh, can we get to the blueberry part” anyway, so it doesn’t bother me. It’s way better than me rambling through a story that falls apart halfway through because I can’t remember what I said came before.
I used to buy those personalized story books for kids, right? The ones you order online that have your kid’s name printed in them, cost 30 bucks a pop. I got one for Lila for her birthday last year, and it was fine, but it didn’t have any of the random stuff she cares about that changes every month. One month it’s garbage trucks, next it’s penguins, next it’s worms she found in the backyard. Those books can’t keep up. This thing, you just plug in whatever they’re into that day. It’s free right now, so I don’t have to drop 30 bucks every time her obsession changes.
Rob’s little about page said he got the idea after a night where all three of his kids fought over who got to be the hero. Oldest wanted to be the space ranger, middle wanted to be the mermaid that saves the day, youngest insisted his pet hamster got to co-star. He ended up with everyone crying, no one happy, and he sat on the kitchen floor after everyone went to bed drinking a warm beer that he’d forgotten about, and thought why isn’t there something that does this for you when you’re too tired to make it up. That’s such a relatable dad thing, right? You don’t need some fancy million dollar app, you just need something that solves the tiny, annoying problem you have every single night.
I don’t know what’s gonna happen with this thing. Rob said after the beta he might put a tiny monthly fee to keep it running, or he might get sick of working on it and let it disappear. I don’t even know him, I just found his post in a random Facebook group. But for right now, it’s there, it’s free, and it’s made my evenings way less stressful. Tonight I forgot to charge my phone, so I couldn’t pull it up anyway, I had to make up a story myself. I messed up Lila’s best friend’s name again, we ended up eating goldfish crackers at 8:45, same as the ice cream night a week ago. Some things never change. But for the nights I’m too tired to remember names and dandelions and lost penguins? It’s a pretty good little trick to have.
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