The "never mention" list: the parental control parents actually use

Parental controls in most apps are a settings page of switches: violence off, scary off, romance off. Parents turn them all off once and never look again, and the switches never cover the thing that actually matters to their child. Dreamify has a different control, and it is one text box.

Things to never mention

During setup, after the child's nickname and favourites, we ask: is there anything you'd rather the stories never bring up? Parents write in their own words. The story engine treats what they write as a hard rule, not a nudge, and the illustration inherits it.

What parents put there

• Fears. Dogs, thunder, the dark, doctors. Often the fear of this month, which will be gone by next month.
• Family situations. Things the family is working through and does not want to meet in a story at bedtime.
• Overused obsessions. "No more dinosaurs this week." A parent's request as much as a child's.
• Food, holidays, characters the family simply does not do.

Why a text field works where toggles fail

Because the list is specific to one child and one week, and no list of toggles could anticipate it. Writing it down also makes the parent feel the app has listened, which is the feeling the rest of the product depends on.

How the engine treats it

As a constraint that the story must satisfy, checked before the story is shown, not as a suggestion in the prompt. If a draft breaks the rule, it is rewritten. The parent never sees the draft that failed.

Make it easy to edit

The list lives on the child's profile and takes two taps to change. Fears change, situations resolve, dinosaurs come back. A control that is hard to update becomes a control that is wrong.

The principle

Ask the person who knows the child, in their own words, and then actually obey them. It is a smaller feature than a page of toggles and a much larger act of trust.