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Comment by mattrp | Hacker News Reader

As a privacy-conscious parent with five children, all of whom are gifted in numerous ways, we do often speak with a psychologist about how to keep them challenged, how to steer negative behavior into good behavior, etc. I couldn’t imagine not having such a guide at our side in addition to all the books and content we consume as inspiration in our quest to nurture our family. However, I would also caution you - and pardon me for being presumptive about what this service will do, but please don’t run ML on my kids. I really don’t need their lives contributing to mass collection of psycho-data and analysis.

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Tom here (Elizabeth's cofounder.) Completely valid worries in today's world! But rest assured we have no intention of doing that.

We want to use technology to make this service accessible and affordable to as many people as possible - for example being able to video chat rather than go to a physical location. But that's as far as we want to go.

Very good to hear that. How do you intend to use ML (I read one of the founders has an ML background)? Also what makes the service different from healthgrades other than facilitating the video call? How do you intend to ensure your providers follow hippa and/or aren’t charlatans? I’m genuinely intrigued... so above aren’t intended to shoot down your business.

:) We're new so these questions are great as they help us learn!

Healthgrades is for finding a clinical service; we are not a health service. We often use the term coach (which isn't a perfect term but the best we have right now.) We hope it is an ongoing relationship and not just used when somethings 'going wrong.' Another way we sometimes talk about it is that it's like a really good friend who happens to have an incredible background in child development. With that in mind, we don't fall under hippa as we don't discuss medical issues, although we aim to be at hippa level regardless.

Yup - Catalin has a background in ML. We're not working on any ML stuff right now - he's just an incredible technologist! The closest I can see right now is us being able to maintain a body of knowledge similar to how most doctors use Up To Date. We could then use ML to surface the information to the coach / expert so they always have the most up to date knowledge at their finger tips.

We want to be as efficient as possible so we can support as many parents as possible, and as effective as possible so we provide the best support. But we never want to replace the direct human connection, nor to use data in any way that parents wouldn't want - we know if we lose any trust we've got nothing!

It seems like you’re being thoughtful about your approach. Another question that comes to mind - how will you curate your providers? I think that’s been a challenge for similar models in other areas - they end up with a ton of providers ... too many initially to serve the customers they have...

This is a harder Q! I don't 100% know but two things give me hope.

First, there are so many incredible experts in early childhood right now that - IMO - are undervalued. We have so many that want to have a home to use their skills in support of parents alongside whatever they currently do.

Second, we're investing heavily in the selection and then ongoing support and / professional development of our coaches.

Over time we will need to increase the support and development even further but for the foreseeable future we're just happy how many incredible people are out there.

That makes a lot of sense to be very supportive of your coaches. Maybe also keep it to a small cohort initially... As I’ve meet various gig workers one common complaint is that many feel like there are too many of them competing for too small deals or that they find it difficult to match deals with their specialty and end up passing or getting passed over because there wasn’t a perfect match in skills / career history. Back on the hippa topic... to me just even saying we talk to a psychologist about our kids development has stigma. Like what’s wrong your kids or you... so just even having an account May be a problem for some parents... also I bet quite a few will ask about using fsa dollars (which I assume you won’t be able to take) but maybe something to look into. Stigma aside I bet a lot of employers would pay for part or all of the fees as a perk.

The stigma is hard. As a mental health professional I am biased, but I think the parents that come to us for support are some of the best parents I know! Curious, thoughtful, and interested in working with someone to develop a thoughtful plan. We find there is a range of feelings. Some parents on our service shout out their happiness with working with us from the rooftops. Others have said it feels uncomfortable to share. Regardless, parenting is extremely personal. And we recognize that parents inviting us into the process is vulnerable and sacred. We don't take it lightly.

I should also say, we have been really cautious not to bring on too many providers. We have people who are interested, but we are on boarding professionals in response to demand (rather than a ton of people up front). We do stay ahead with interviews and keep a list of interested providers who know we will reach out when we need to!

> in addition to all the books and content we consume as inspiration in our quest to nurture our family

A bit off-topic, but would love pointers to your top books / content on how to keep them challenged, how to steer negative behavior into something more positive, etc.

The kids love anything by Susan Wise Bauer. The Story of the World audiobooks narrated by her father are in constant rotation in the car and these provide a jumping off point to go deeper into topics. There are a few used booksellers on eBay that sell just about any title for $3.99, so when I see something that is related to a recent topic, I just get it. Magic Treehouse is great too - we found someone selling their entire collection on Craigslist.. occasionally I introduce challenges like how to calculate the orbit of a satellite (we all failed to find the Starlink train but we learned our mistake). We also take lots of field trips. Wildlife is an endless topic of interest... we introduced iPads and raspberry pi’s early on but this was an absolute disaster so right now it’s old school: books, paper, experiences and lots of talking.

Thank you!

I keep thinking about your question and you know one book that was really helpful to me was written by a friend — https://www.amazon.com/Family-Board-Meeting-Jim-Sheils/dp/13...

It’s less of a book than maybe an introduction to a framework he uses with his coaching clients. It’s not Hemingway but the key insight he exposed for me was that entrepreneurial parents raise kids with higher rates of depression. I don’t think he did a study to arrive at this conclusion but it was more an observation of people he knew. So he created a way for parents to engage their children using a format called the family board meeting. It’s basically a four hour one on one session doing an activity of the kids choosing without a cell phone involved. Kind of obvious but very hard to commit to when your business needs constant attention.

What books would you recommend? Parent to 3 young kids and haven’t read any books on parenting or raising kids yet. As much worries about making a bad choice as well as a good one (in book choice that is!) that would lead to teaching the wrong stuff and habits

The first thing I would say is to resist typing your kids as xyz. I think everyone is genuinely afraid / hyper vigilant of kids who are “on the spectrum.” (As an example)... don’t give your kid a label. Second advice would be don’t evaluate your kids without evaluating yourself. Your kids are a reflection of you. As for books, I can’t say there’s a complete book that I can recommend. At best you find snippets here and there that provide ideas. The best thing we’ve done is connect with a psychologist. The kids don’t see her, actually don’t even know she exists.

Simplicity Parenting is an easy and amazing read. The Audiobook is pretty good as well. :)

I think broadly, the challenge with parenting books is that they sometimes put forth a particular philosophy or approach (some are more neutral and inclusive than others). So, I think it really depends what you are looking for, what your parenting style is, and the ages of your kids.

And if you are looking for advice, context is really important.

To directly answer though - my favorite parenting book is The Gardner and The Carpenter by Alison Gopnik

And, the parenting books by Emily Oster (Crib Sheet and Expecting Better - the latter is about pregnancy and the first early childhood).

Upvote for any parent with 5+ Kiddos!

This. I can barely survive 2. 5 means glutton for punishment or kids are their hobby too lol

Thank you!

How do psychologists learn what's good for children without studying the population at scale?

This is probably going to be unsatisfactory as it will be a bit vague but I'm going to try ... :)

I think part of the challenge we're trying to help with is that lots of places (blogs, websites) say 'this is good for children.' Which could be true (if backed by the research) but that takes an averages approach (I love the book End of Average by Todd Rose.) It sounds a little millenial, but there is no average child and so an approach the uses averages often doesn't work.

Our experts get to know the specific family, philosophies and kids, and then bring their expertise (which includes the population scale research) to support them in a way that makes sense for them.

It's a bit like where we do population-level research on health, but we don't then expect that everyone take the same approach based on a few inputs. We still get them to talk to a doctor.

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