The Saturday afternoon was falling apart in slow motion. My daughter was draped across the couch, one leg hanging off the edge, announcing every two minutes that there was “nothing to do.” My son was stacking the same three Magna-Tiles into a tower and then knocking it over, which seemed to be losing its appeal even for him. I was standing in the kitchen doorway, half-planning a grocery order, half-watching them dissolve into the kind of boredom that turns bickering.
I did what I try not to do. I reached for my phone.
But instead of handing it to them, I opened my notes app. I had a list I’d been keeping for months—random activity ideas I’d seen online or remembered from my own childhood. Things like “build an indoor obstacle course with couch cushions,” “sort socks by color and see who finishes first,” or “draw a treasure map of the living room.” I picked the treasure map one, called the kids into the kitchen, and grabbed a roll of receipt paper I’d been saving for no reason. For the next forty-five minutes, they were completely absorbed in drawing an elaborate map with landmarks like “Mommy’s scary closet” and “the secret staircase.” No tablet, no yelling, no problem.
That moment stuck with me. Not because it was magical—it wasn’t, there was a small marker incident—but because the only reason it worked was that I had an idea ready at the exact second I needed one. And I’d gotten it from a screen, but the kids never saw one.
That’s the beginning of an idea I keep turning over. I want to build an app—but not for kids. It would be for parents, and its only job is to suggest a simple, screen-free activity at the moment you need it. No videos, no “curated content” for children to scroll through, no rainbow-colored games. Just a tap, a one-line idea, maybe a photo of the setup. Something like, “Put a piece of painter’s tape on the floor and have your kid walk along it like a balance beam,” or “Give your kid a spray bottle with water and let them ‘wash’ the patio door.”
Every time I mention this to another parent, they get a certain look in their eye. A sort of tired hopefulness. They ask: “But would it tell me what to do if my kid is bored and I’m making dinner?” Or: “Could I filter out anything that uses glitter?” That last one came from my friend Jen, who still hasn’t forgiven me for the slime phase.
And honestly, those questions are the whole point. Because the problem with most activity ideas I see online is that they’re written for a parent who has energy, time, and a fully stocked craft bin. They’re beautiful photos of pinecone fairy houses and sensory bins with chickpeas dyed every color of the rainbow. They make me feel like I’m failing before I even start. What I need is not inspiration. What I need is a low-friction suggestion that fits the reality of my house—which means it has to be cheap, quiet, and cleanable in under five minutes.
So I started paying closer attention to which activities actually saved me. The ones that worked had a few things in common. They used materials I already had, they didn’t need me to be involved the whole time, and they had a natural stopping point. The tape balance beam, for instance, lasted about twenty minutes and ended when my son decided to peel the tape off the floor and stick it to the dog. Not perfect, but effective. Sorting the socks was good until my daughter started pairing them into “wedges” and throwing them at her brother.
I also noticed that the ideas were better when they were slightly weird. “Use wooden spoons as drumsticks on pots” is fine, but “tell your kid to pretend they’re a robot and they have to move like a robot to get to the bathroom” works better because it has a story. It gives them a little bit of ownership. They can argue about the story, but they’re still doing what I need them to do.
The more I tested things, the more I started asking other parents what they’d want from an app like this. A dad in our building said he could use it just for the search function, like “activities that don’t require supervision for a six-year-old” or “things to do with a toddler who wants to do whatever the big kid is doing.” A mother of three mentioned that she wanted something that would give her a suggestion based on her kids’ ages and the time of day, because a rainy morning needs different energy than the last thirty minutes before bedtime.
Some parents said they’d never install it. I talked to a woman at the playground who told me she was trying to reduce her own phone use as much as possible, and an app telling her when to look at her phone felt like a step backwards. She said she’d rather deal with boredom as it came, and I understood. There’s a part of me that agrees with her. The phone is already too close, too often. But my reality is that I’m going to have my phone with me anyway. If I’m being honest, using it to find a good idea beats using it to silence a kid.
Because this is a parenting app, I keep coming back to the validation question. Not “is this a good idea?” but “is this a real problem?” I think it is. I think the problem is the gap between wanting to be screen-free and having the mental bandwidth to come up with a screen-free activity on demand. That gap is where the whining lives. And when I’m tired or overwhelmed, my first instinct is to close the gap with a screen. An app that suggests a low-effort, high-engagement activity could do something important: it could make it easier to choose not to hand over the tablet. It wouldn’t be replacing the parent’s creativity. It would just be pointing it in the right direction at the right time.
I haven’t built anything yet. I’ve got a notebook full of activity ideas and a few paper prototypes that I’ve shown to people. The responses are all over the place, which is good. One friend said she wouldn’t need it because she just throws her kids outside, and I get that—if you’ve got a yard and cooperative weather, you’re already winning. Another friend told me she’d pay real money for a button that says “make this activity not involve small parts.” She has a two-year-old with a talent for eating marbles.
The most useful feedback I’ve gotten came from a mother who runs her own daycare. She said the app would only be worth it if the activities were really fast to read, like three bullet points max. She said she doesn’t want step-by-step instructions or supply lists longer than her grocery receipt. She just wants a hook and a goal. One activity she told me about: give the kids a muffin tin, a bowl of water, a sponge, and a plate of plastic toys. Let them move the toys from the tin to the plate using only the sponge. That’s it. She said her kids do it for half an hour. I wrote it down.
I’ve started thinking about what the app would actually look like. Not the interface, but the spirit. It’s not a guidebook and it’s not a game. It’s a filter between the internet’s endless activity ideas and the moment of truth on your kitchen floor. It’s a small nudge that says, “Here’s something you haven’t tried. It might work. It might fail. But it’s worth twenty minutes.”
The other day, my daughter found the treasure map we’d made and asked if we could make another one. I said yes, and as I opened my phone to check my list for something new, she grabbed my hand and said, “No, don’t look at the phone. Let’s just make one and see what happens.” So we did. It was messier and less coherent than the first map, and it was fine. The list in my phone is still there. So is the idea for the app. I’m not sure yet if it’s something I’ll actually build, or if it’s just my way of coping with the fact that parenting asks me to be endlessly creative at the most inconvenient times.
But I’m still asking parents what they think. Not because I need validation, exactly, but because I want to know if other people live in that same gap—the one between wanting to do the right thing and knowing you’re too tired to think of what that is. If enough parents say yes, maybe I’ll figure out how to make it. Or maybe I’ll just keep using my notes app, and hoping I remember the muffin tin trick when I need it.
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