About Dandelion Parent
Dandelion Parent gives you something to say in the moments that test you: a short script matched to your child's age, in a voice that sounds like you, with a note for whatever makes that moment hard given how you grew up.
Why it exists
Most parenting advice arrives as a book or a course, and the hard part arrives at 5:40pm with a shoe in the air. Knowing what you'd like to do is different from having the words ready when you're tired and your own childhood is suddenly in the room.
So the guides here are short, they're tied to the week your child is in, and they come with an SOS page for when things have already gone sideways.
Why a dandelion
Dandelions take root in hard ground, and their seeds travel a long way from where they started. That's the picture we have of a parent who is keeping what was good about how they were raised, setting down what wasn't, and passing on something a little different. It's a picture of you, and it isn't a promise about outcomes. No app can make one.
The standard every guide is held to
Every research claim has a source you can open.
If a guide says what a study found, that study is listed under the guide with a link. If we can't cite it, we say it as practical advice or leave it out.
We say who was studied.
A lot of developmental research was done with older children, with adults, or with small groups of families. When that's the case the guide says so, and we write "was linked to" where a study can't show cause.
No invented precision.
No made-up percentages, no confidence scores, no claims about what a behavior does to a particular part of the brain unless the cited paper says it.
Research and style are kept apart.
Each guide separates what the evidence supports from choices that come down to your family's style. Where research doesn't rank the options, we tell you it's your call.
No shame.
Hard moments are ordinary, and nobody stays calm every time. The guides treat coming back together afterwards as the thing that matters.
The full list of papers, and how each is checked, is on the sources page.
What it can't do
- It's education for parents. It isn't medical care, therapy or a diagnosis, for you or for your child.
- The guides have not yet been reviewed by a pediatrician or child psychologist. We'll say so here when they have.
- The scripts are examples in four different voices. The research supports the approach behind them; the exact words have not been tested in studies.
- Guides are drafted with the help of AI tools and then checked against each paper's abstract. Mistakes are possible, and we fix them when we find them.
- It's written for typical development from birth to five. If you're worried about your child's health, development or safety, your pediatrician is the right person to ask.
Your information
There are no accounts. Your child's birthday, the patterns you choose and everything you log are stored on your own device, and you can export or delete them from Settings at any time.
Contact
Questions, corrections, or a moment you wish there were a guide for: hello@dandelionparent.com.