What you see when you open the app
The parent home opens onto today. You see each child in your family, today’s practice goal in minutes, how many minutes they’ve done so far, and a simple progress ring. If today is already done for everyone, the home screen just says so, there’s nothing to dismiss, nothing to swipe past, no “congrats” popup engineered to extract engagement.
Tap any child to see their week so far, their last few practice sessions (with instrument and any notes they wrote), and the simple per-day breakdown. Tap into the session itself to see start time, end time, and notes, and to add a comment of your own if you want.
Setting and changing a practice goal
Every child has a daily practice goal in minutes. You set it when you add the child, and you can change it any time from the child’s profile. A reasonable starting point is 15 minutes for younger kids and 30 minutes for kids who are taking lessons; we don’t enforce any particular number, and we don’t shame you (or your child) for choosing less.
The goal is a target, not a contract. Kid mode shows progress against today’s goal but doesn’t penalise the child for missing it. We deliberately do not show streaks that “break” with a missed day, the research on streak-shaming kids is consistent and bad, and we’re not interested in that mechanic.
The family calendar
The calendar tab shows every event you and your coparent have created: lessons, rehearsals, concerts, recitals, exams, eisteddfods, family gigs. Tap the plus to add a new event with date, time, location, the kid(s) involved, and a free- text description. The event sits in both adults’ calendars immediately.
Notifications around events are opt-in: the default is one reminder 60 minutes before. You can adjust this per-event or globally in Settings. We don’t send unsolicited reminders for things that don’t exist.
Coparent sync
If there are two adults in the family, both create accounts and the first one invites the second from Settings → Coparents. Once accepted, the family is shared: same children, same goals, same calendar, same history. Either adult can add or edit kids, change goals, create events, or update notification preferences.
Practice logged on one parent’s phone shows up on the other’s within seconds. Notifications you opt into fire on both phones. If the kid was at one parent’s house when they practiced, the other parent sees it from wherever they are.
We use the word coparent in the app and on this site to describe the second adult in the family. It can be a spouse, a former partner, a grandparent, a step-parent , anyone who shares responsibility for the kid’s practice life. The app doesn’t encode the relationship, just the shared access.
Notifications you opt into
Three notification types exist in the app:
- Practice completed, when a kid finishes a session, the other adult(s) in the family get a quick ping with the kid’s name, instrument, and duration. Useful when one parent is out and the other is supervising.
- Event reminder, by default, 60 minutes before any event in the family calendar. Tunable per-event and globally.
- Coparent added, when a coparent accepts an invitation, the inviter gets a confirmation ping. Sent once; no follow-ups.
That’s the entire notification list. There is no “your kid hasn’t practiced today” nag, no “don’t break your streak” bait, no upsell push. If you want to silence everything, Settings → Notifications has a single switch for that.
Privacy controls
From Settings you can export the full family record (sent via email as JSON), delete a single child (their history is preserved but they’re removed from the active roster), or delete the entire family account. Account deletion runs a double confirmation, then cascades across every table. You have 30 days during which we can restore on request to hello@crescender.com.au; after 30 days the data is permanently removed.
What you won’t see
We’ve deliberately left things out. The parent surface has no leaderboards comparing your kid to other people’s kids. No chat or social features (the app isn’t a community product; it’s a private family tool). No in-app advertising or sponsored content. No upsell modals. No “rate us in the App Store” nag. No daily activity ring you have to close.
The reason there’s nothing flashy in the parent surface is that we don’t need you to spend a lot of time in it. Your kid’s practice life is happening in the real world, with their instrument. The app is just the spreadsheet that knows what happened. Less of you using the app is better, not worse.