Harmony at Home App Launches!
Harmony at Home is a family-centered app designed for parents, caregivers, and kids to enjoy together! Build relationship skills, deepen connections, and create healthy routines with playful prompts, animated storybooks, and research-backed tools that make everyday moments more meaningful. The app:
Offers Tips & Strategies for Busy Parents: Enjoy bite-sized content, activities, and guided routines that help you connect with and support your family.
Designed for Shared Use: Explore expert-crafted tools that prompt meaningful conversations and play as you build skills with your kids.
Supports Connection in Real Life: Strengthen family bonds with activities designed to turn screen time into real-world connection.
In the app, you’ll discover:
Do Togethers – Hands-on, real-world activities that families can enjoy together.
Daily Practices – Short, guided practices that build healthy routines and create intentional, off-screen moments for bonding and growth.
Animated Storybooks – Kid-friendly stories that teach healthy ways to navigate challenging, real-world situations.
Conversation Starters – Quick prompts that spark real talks on the way to school, at the dinner table, or anytime families are together.
Family Goal Setting – Interactive Family Meet Up activities that guide families in setting, monitoring, and celebrating shared goals.
In-App Journal & Daily Notes – A shared digital space for saving meaningful insights, drawings, and memories to reflect and share with other family members — wherever they are.
You can find Harmony at Home app here:
Here’s just a sample of one of the Skill Builders providing support for parents on family routines.
Sample Skill Builder: Making Family Routines Fun and Meaningful
Skill Builder: Making Family Routines Fun and Meaningful
With three kids and a dog, the Olstein family had a full house with a packed schedule most of the time. This year, the children were in two different schools with the same starting times. Getting ready in the morning with only one bathroom, a slow-to-wake preschooler, and two forgetful school-age children was enough to create significant chaos in an otherwise (fairly) organized household. At times, the preschooler would end up in tears when being pushed to move, move, move! Mom (Charlotte) and Dad (Greg) felt guilty about their situation and knew they could do better. But the time and patience never seemed possible for them.
Typical family routines can be incorporated:
- In the morning, by setting an intention for the day, checking in on emotions, or charting the order of who gets to use the bathroom
- After schooltime by doing a quick family activity or establishing a standard time to do homework
- During dinnertime by having a Family Meet Up or a targeted conversation
- At bedtime by reading storybooks or sharing gratitude for the day
Research has shown that consistent routines where children know what to expect, understand their roles, and identify how they are contributors can offer a child safety, comfort, and a calm mental and emotional readiness for their school day (Spagnola et al., 2007). It can enhance their ability to sleep at night. And it can also create more family cohesion, trust, and connection. Additionally, daily routines are an important opportunity for children to take responsibility for ways in which they can have their own needs met while also building essential skills.
There are specific added benefits for a child’s development when considering daily routines. For example, having a consistent bedtime routine can ensure that a child gets the sleep they require to focus their attention well the next day—an important executive function skill they are working to develop (Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University, 2011). The family dinner routine also contributes in numerous ways to a child’s development if we seize the opportunity.
This all points to the fact that it is well worth some time and effort to examine your family routines and co-create a structure that works for all.
1. Plan Together When Not in the Routine.
Our daily routines are oftentimes pressure cookers. So, take some time out when you are not in your routine to discuss it as a family. For example, you might introduce the topic and then consider together how it goes. For instance, for your typical morning, you’ll want to consider:
- What are the basic steps of your mornings, including waking up, getting dressed, making breakfast, etc.?
- Do you have enough time for each task of the morning routine?
- What is going really well? Why? Who contributes to it going well?
- Does everyone have a responsibility in the morning and a clear role? Do they understand how to perform their roles?
- What is not going well? How can you collaboratively solve problems to figure out a better way?
This is a perfect opportunity to use the Family Meet Up structure!
2. Child Draws or Writes Plan
Have a poster board at the ready with markers or crayons. Here are some considerations as you write your plan:
- Ask your children to write and/or draw the morning routine in the simplest terms. For example, Step One: Wake Up, Step Two: Get Breakfast.
- If you have a larger family like the Olsteins, be sure that you are clear about who is responsible for which tasks.
- Make sure that you place “business” first, and any enjoyment second.
- Also, be sure to include a caring connection point in your routine.
- Hang up this poster board somewhere the whole family can refer to it during the morning routine, for example, inside a kitchen pantry door.
- If one of your struggles is the packing up “stuff” to take to school, or the dressing in winter gear required, create a checklist of items that need to go in the backpack or on a child’s person.
- Post that near where you are preparing to leave.
- After you are all ready before you go out the door, start a routine of appreciation and love, perhaps giving each other high fives or hugs. After all, you’ve worked as a team and are ready for the day ahead!
3. Practice, Empower, and Notice
If you’ve problem solved together and made changes to your typical routine, particularly if you have younger children, try out a dry run sometime when you do not have time pressures. Act it out. Share fun snacks instead of breakfast. Make sure you’ve modeled and worked alongside your child if they are tackling a new task—from tying shoes to pouring a bowl of cereal. Ensure that those tasks you’ve assigned are developmentally appropriate for them to perform. Instead of slipping into nagging, use your plan to remind and empower children during the routine. You might say, “What comes next on our plan after breakfast?” Help your child lead the way. Be sure and notice when they are trying to use the plan, take responsibility, and work as a team. You might say, “I noticed you brushed your teeth without prompting. That’s taking real responsibility. Great work!”
4. Establish Parent/Caregiver Self-Management Habits
Being responsible for getting a family out of the door on time in the morning is stressful. So, it’s important to plan for managing your own stress to extend your patience and understanding as you lead your family through the daily routines. Waking up minutes earlier can make a difference in giving you some quiet moments before all are awake and require your attention. Taking a mindful minute to take some deep breaths, read some wisdom literature, or get some fresh air outside can also help extend your patience each morning.
Our daily routines—morning, homework, dinner, and bedtime—can become times of day in which our children learn essential skills, work as a family team, take responsibility, and connect in meaningful ways with us. But it will take a bit of planning, practicing, and reinforcing because our children are learning. Yet, that time and effort are so worthwhile. It might just be one of the best ways we can partner with schools and contribute to students’ ability to focus on learning at school. And certainly, we’ll feel a sense of accomplishment and connection as a family working together.
Congratulations to Harmony Academy of National University and the expert team they built to create this app including our very own Jennifer Miller of Confident Parents, Confident Kids!
References
1.Spagnola, M.,, & Fiese, B. H. Family Routines and Rituals: A Context for Development in the Lives of Young Children. Infants & Young Children 20(4):p 284-299, October 2007. | DOI: 10.1097/01.IYC.0000290352.32170.5a
2. Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University (2011). Building the Brain’s “Air Traffic Control” System: How Early Experiences Shape the Development of Executive Function: Working Paper No. 11. Retrieved from www.developingchild.harvard.edu.
3. Aukrust, V. (2002). “What did you do in school today?” Speech genres and tellability in multiparty family mealtime conversations in two cultures. In S. Blum-Kulka & C. Snow (Eds.), Talking to adults: The contribution of multiparty discourse to language acquisition (pp. 55-83). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
4. Blum-Kulka, S., & Snow, C. (2002). Talking to adults: The contribution of multiparty discourse to language acquisition. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
