Children & Milestones

How it works

The mechanics of this kit, plainly — what runs and when, where the data lands, and what you look at.

• Childhood sweep runs mondays · 7am and keeps the Your children dashboard fresh. Mondays — keeps the record true and the due list current. Reads nothing you haven't named.
• Growing up runs quarterly · the 1st, 8am. Every quarter — one card per child: what is due, which way growth is moving, what was logged since last time.
• What is captured lands in the Children dataset, which lives at Data/Children in your vault — yours to open, search, and edit like any other file.
• What is captured lands in the Growth dataset, which lives at Data/Growth in your vault — yours to open, search, and edit like any other file.
• What is captured lands in the Health record dataset, which lives at Data/Health Record in your vault — yours to open, search, and edit like any other file.
• What is captured lands in the Milestones dataset, which lives at Data/Child Milestones in your vault — yours to open, search, and edit like any other file.
• What is captured lands in the School reports dataset, which lives at Data/School Reports in your vault — yours to open, search, and edit like any other file.
• What is captured lands in the Feeds and sleep dataset, which lives at Data/Feeds and Sleep in your vault — yours to open, search, and edit like any other file.
• The Your children dashboard reads from the dataset and shows, at a glance: this child · measure the children · due and overdue · weight · height · head circumference · coming up · health record · what this is · your children.

The wiring, in one breath: Wren holds Child capture · Child capture writes to Children · Children shown by Your children · Your children kept fresh by Childhood sweep · Childhood sweep files into Health record · Child capture logs into Growth · Child capture keeps Milestones · Wren holds Report filing · Report filing writes to School reports · Wren holds Appointment prep · Wren runs Growing up · Wren holds Immunisation schedule · Wren holds Feeds and sleep · Feeds and sleep writes to Feeds and sleep · Wren holds Memory book.

Getting the most from it

A kit earns its place when it changes what you look at and what you say, not when it is installed. This is the rhythm that makes it pay.

• Put each child on the register once — name, date of birth, sex at birth, their doctor or health centre — and say the measurements as they come: "10.8 at the check-up". The growth charts draw from the first reading and every one after it, against the published reference for their age, which runs from birth to five years; after that the chart keeps the line and drops the shaded range. Read a chart for where a reading sits and which way it has moved, and take that question to your child's doctor or nurse: the board names the source of its bands, but it never says what a position means, and neither does Wren. That is deliberate.
• Say the jab, the temperature, the fall, the appointment in passing — one sentence, and it is on the health record against the right child. With two children Wren asks which; it never guesses.
• Drop a school report in the vault and say whose it is. Report filing keeps the teacher's comment whole rather than summarising it, and files the term as a row you can find in a year.
• Before a check-up, ask Wren for the brief. It comes back with the recent measurements and their direction, everything logged since the last visit, what is outstanding and the questions worth asking — facts to take in, never conclusions.
• Keep the firsts in your own words. "Said dog at the park, pointing" is a milestone; a reflection about how you felt watching it is a journal entry. Wren keeps the line between the two.
• Measuring at home? Press Start on Measure the children. It comes up one child at a time: type the weight, height or head you took, leave the rest blank, and each child lands on Growth for today, the same as if you had said it. A reading taken at a check-up is just as easily said to Wren.
• Ask to see the immunisation schedule and Wren looks up the official one for where you live, names its source and the date it gives, and lays it beside what is on the record in a note under the child's folder. A blank line means only that nothing is written here, because the child's doctor or health service keeps the official record, and Wren never says a child is behind.
• In the early months, say the feeds and sleeps as they happen, "fed at three", "down at seven, up at two", and Wren keeps them on Feeds and sleep in your words, so at four in the morning you can ask when the last feed was. It never says whether a feed or a night was enough: that is a question for your baby's doctor or nurse, and Wren can put it on the next brief. Ask what is usual at their age and Wren says what a named source gives, gently, with a caveat.
• Hand over a photo with a first, the first day at nursery or the first haircut, and it is kept in the child's own folder with its place on the milestone. Say a new clothes or shoe size when you buy one and it shows on This child, as you said it, for the next time someone asks.
• When you want something to keep, ask for a memory book: the first year, or everything so far. Wren gathers the firsts in your own words with their photos and, if you like, the birthday measurements and the teachers' comments, into a document in your vault. It adds nothing you did not say.

Make it yours

Nothing here is fixed. The pieces are ordinary agents, routines, datasets and dashboards, so anything you know about shaping those applies. Retire whatever earns nothing.

Things people usually change first

Say any of these in chat, or edit them on the kit’s page in the app.

• Which channels the sweep may read, if any — the school, the nursery, the doctor's practice — each enabled or disabled by name.
• Which measurements you keep. Head circumference matters in the first two years and most people stop after; the chart simply stops with you.
• How you want a child referred to — a nickname, a middle name — said once and remembered.
• When the Monday sweep runs, and whether you want the quarterly card at all — or just the board.
• The register itself is yours to edit: a new school, a new year or grade, a doctor you have moved to.
• Which country's immunisation schedule Wren looks up: said once, and changed whenever you move.

Your first run

Installing starts a short setup conversation — not a form. Answer roughly, correct later.

1. It opens with a conversation, not a form. Before it asks you anything, Wren starts from what 1Presence already knows: what you have told it before, and any photos of your child's health record book (by whatever name it has where you live), vaccination summaries or check-up letters in your vault. It offers what it finds for you to confirm, only the kind of facts this record keeps, and asks only for the gaps.
2. Wren says once, plainly, what this record is — yours alone, never shared, never a judgement on a reading — and then goes through the children one at a time: what to call them, date of birth, sex at birth (the growth reference is published for girls and for boys, and that is the only reason it is asked), school or nursery, their doctor or health centre, allergies. Each child goes on the register as you speak, and you can stop whenever you like.
3. Then, lightly, whatever you have to hand from the earliest days — a birth weight, a length, a head circumference, the jabs you can read off their health record book. The checks and jabs matter most, because the due list can only draw from dates the record holds; if the book is not to hand, a photo of its pages added later does the same. Anything you don't have is simply left blank.
4. Nothing reads your email or your calendar out of the box. If you mention that the school or the doctor's practice write by email — reports, appointment letters, immunisation reminders — Wren offers that one specific check by name, and only what you switch on is ever read, going back two years the first time so the record gains its history.
5. From the first Monday, the Childhood sweep recomputes what is due and overdue for each child and stays silent unless something needs you. Once a quarter, Growing up sends one card per child — what is outstanding, which way each measurement moved, what was logged since last time. Until there is a child on the register, both stand down.
6. Skip the conversation, or stop part-way, and the door stays open: whatever is still missing (a date of birth, the checks and jabs, a first measurement) waits on the Kit page with a way back to Wren, and Wren offers it once the next time you talk. Tell it a part does not apply to you, or that you have finished setting up, and it stops asking.

Watch the first pass, then tell it what you would have done differently — that correction teaches it more than any setup could.

The essentials

Learning, preferences and run costs work the same in every kit — so they are covered once, in the Kits guide.

Living with a Kit — the Kits guide →

← All kits