Launch HN: Joon (YC W22) – A mobile game that teaches kids to build good habits
&gt; One of the hardest parts of parenting (and of growing up!) is getting kids to do things that they don’t enjoy.<p>This sounds like &quot;eat your wheaties&quot;, and I think this is a faulty premise &#x2F; self fulfilling prophesy &#x2F; you&#x27;re asking the wrong question. To echo some of the other comments on this thread, chores should not be viewed as &quot;eat your wheaties&quot;, but rather are an opportunity for meaningful connection and a way for child to bond with family and community.<p>I&#x27;d go even further and say children given the right environment and at the right age <i>want</i> to do chores. Chores can and should be enjoyable and meaningful. For evidence, take a look into the Montessori method and in particular Montessori Practical life. I think you&#x27;ll find the following:<p>- A wealth of anecdotal examples of children doing chores on their own for fulfillment and to demonstrate their independence. (No daddy, let me do it <i>myself</i>!)<p>- Children want to do chores because that&#x27;s what they see their parents doing, and also because they have a drive towards their own independence. (corollary: the same goes for smartphones and other addictions)<p>- Where this goes wrong is when parents either help too much (not giving the child opportunities), or when parents overcriticize (not giving the child space to learn). The root problem is not one of incentives, but of either miscommunication, lack of communication, or too-high or too-low expectations.<p>A caveat here: Montessori Practical Life is oriented towards 3-6 year olds. Based on your origin story if you&#x27;re thinking about the age where you were playing video games, you were probably older than 6, and maybe that&#x27;s the age group you&#x27;re targetting.<p>Given what I see as the root causes of chore distaste though, I don&#x27;t feel that incentivizing things via a video game will solve the problem even for older children--I predict dependency on Joon and habits going away as soon as that crutch is removed.<p>But maybe I and others are being too negative. Maybe there&#x27;s a path to bootstrapping from Joon to more meaningful connection and weaning off of the game? Given that you have the will and energy to throw at the problem, maybe you can discover a solution to this weaning problem. Maybe you can discover a path to bootstrap from Joon to meaningful child-family and child-community connection.<p>Since you have energy and interest, here&#x27;s some exposure to my viewpoint sources, in the interests of converting you to what I see as a healthier worldview, so that as you spread your worldview it&#x27;s tempered with mine. I&#x27;d recommend you look at a few of the following resources:<p>- Talk to your local Montessori community. Find an AMI-certified school and talk to the staff about Montessori Practical Life, and how it compares to or might relate to Joon.<p>- Ask them to refer you to the article &quot;Stop Saying Good Job To Your Kids (and what to say instead)&quot;. I&#x27;m finding a few articles with that title but can&#x27;t find the particular one that I&#x27;m thinking of. Your Montessori guides will know.<p>- Read &quot;Taking Charge&quot;: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;smile.amazon.com&#x2F;Taking-Charge-Caring-Discipline-School-ebook&#x2F;dp&#x2F;B006VJIYOS" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;smile.amazon.com&#x2F;Taking-Charge-Caring-Discipline-Sch...</a> . Not Montessori, but a similar vein, and I feel like it tries to tackle the same problem you&#x27;re tackling--building up &quot;good&quot; behaviors. Goes at it more from a Maslow&#x27;s hierarchy of needs perspective, but I think all these life philosophies are in the same family, and a healthier counterpoint than the &quot;Eat your wheaties&quot; philosophy I see reflected in your post.<p>---<p>Tangentially, I find the &quot;eat your wheaties&quot; mentality distasteful even for adults, but maybe this is just a quirk of my own psychology. Any time I perceive something as &quot;I should do this because it&#x27;s good for me&quot; rather than &quot;I do this because I enjoy it&quot;, I just fall into a procrastination loop. I literally lack the ability to take the &quot;force myself through&quot; path, and in the long term this has been a blessing. To &quot;correct&quot; my habits (I did, like you, grow up also playing many thousands of hours of video games, and I didn&#x27;t exercise enough and tended to stay up late to boot), I&#x27;ve always had to find intrinsic enjoyment in my new habits, whether that be cleaning, eating more vegetables, getting more exercise, etc. In the end I&#x27;ve made the happy discovery that my tastes are very malleable, and this is the best tool in my belt for self-shaping.<p>An informal support for my way of doing things being more widely applicable: there seems to be a lot of research floating around supporting that procrastination is due to negative emotional associations.<p>In that light, it seems what Joon does is try to paper over that negative emotional association by providing a counterbalancing positive emotional association. I&#x27;d imagine where you&#x27;ll see success here is incidentally--Joon might overcome initial resistance and sometimes if a person does the chore enough the original negative association might fade towards neutral, at which point the bootstrapping problem is half-solved. I&#x27;d imagine this doesn&#x27;t happen in all or even a majority of cases though.<p>---<p>To draw another analogy-- because of how you frame chores, I have a hard time imagining Joon being able to frame chores as anything greater than grinding mobs for XP. Grinding mobs is a boring chore, but XP is rewarding, so that makes grinding mobs fun, right?? <i>Hecka</i> no! XP is just a number on a screen, and grinding mobs is boring as all heck.<p>No, I play RPGs for <i>challeging dungeons</i> and <i>boss fights</i> and <i>hard mode</i>. Bosses do drop more XP, but XP and loot are not what make boss fights fun. Boss fights are enjoyable for the <i>intrinsic challenge</i> and the <i>satisfaction of growing to meet that challenge</i>. In Joon, what would constitute a boss fight? And how would you motivate it?<p>More generally, where in Joon is the feeling of personal skill progression? In the best games (and in life), this goes deeper than just my on-screen character gaining skills-- <i>I personally</i> get better at the game, and can feel it. What is the analogous feeling in Joon? Given your focus, I&#x27;d imagine this would have to be some form of getting better and faster at the chores themselves and eager to further test my skills in real life.