Are you ready? Are you set? Because this one has been a long time coming…
Now your kids can submit their own Smiles and Frowns to their boards – for your approval, of course – from their own devices with new Kids Requests on our Smiles & Frowns: Kids View app!
Kids Requests is a new premium feature (just $.99 a month or $9.99 a year for your whole family!) that Moms and Pops have long been asking for. And why not? Parents know a game changer when they see one. Giving kids a little more control is a great way to engage them more, and it gets them one step closer to truly owning their own behavior. So let’s do it!
Getting started with Kids Requests is easy. Just install Smiles & Frowns on your adult devices and Smiles & Frowns: Kids View on each of your children’s devices. Then just swipe left on any child’s row on a parent device, tap on Kids View and follow the prompts to link the two. Once you’ve enabled Kids Requests, the Smiles and Frowns they can now submit on their devices will show up for approval on yours. (For detailed directions, click here.)
With Smiles & Frowns: Kids View, your kids can always follow their progress and see their behavior lists for free. And we think that Kids Requests is a great new feature can really help your family in some big, big ways.
If you’re a parent, the advantage is obvious:
Your kids can now help shoulder the load! Once they start lending their motivated little hands to tracking their own behavior, it’ll help improve the Consistency of your plan without making it even harder on parents.
At a time when the pandemic and homeschooling issues are making adults feel doubly overstressed, this can be a big help. It only takes a few seconds to approve, change, or sometimes even deny the Smile and Frown requests they submit. And it also gives a new way to talk about – and Collaborate on – good behavior. Nice!
If you’re a kid, the advantage is also obvious:
You’re finally in control! When you do something good, you can mark it right down. No asking. No waiting. No mom or dad forgetting to give you credit. You just do that good thing and submit your Smile (or Frown) for approval, and you know you’re getting credit for your behavior.
Which means it’s time to really dive into your behavior board, hunt around all the different ways you can earn Smiles and avoid Frowns, and start racking them up and get to earning some rewards! Again, nice. That touches on Clarity, Consequence and Challenge, rounding out our all-important 5C’s.
But there’s also something that’s less obvious.
My neighbor is a teacher, and she has talked with me several times about the idea of self-reflection. The ability to hold a mirror up to yourself, follow your own progress and learn from what you see is a core skill that helps kids build self esteem and critical thinking. Kind of a holy grail. Enter Kids Requests…
Now that your kids can immediately “reward” themselves by submitting their own Smiles & Frowns, they get a little more control over their own behavior. Which we parents can lean into. Praise them for engaging in the process. Encourage them to explore all of the Smiles on their board to find new ways to be good. We hope that Smiles & Frowns Kids Requests gives you a powerful new way to help your kids learn to recognize and reflect on their own behavior in a more active way.
The Dads over here… we’ve always said that ultimately, Smiles & Frowns is simply a tool to help your family turn good behavior into a great conversation. We hope this new feature gives you a great new way to make that happen.
Good luck out there!
Tommy G, one of the Smiles & Frowns Dads