Parent Sphere — User Manual

Last updated: August 21, 2026

The care loop, and how each part of it works.

What it does not do. Parent Sphere is not legal advice and makes no promise that anything recorded in it is admissible in any court. Developmental milestones are observations, never a score, a deadline, or a diagnosis — take concerns to your child's clinician. The app contains no covert location tracking and no child-device surveillance, and it never will.

Setting up

  • Add each child, with the details that matter day to day — school, clinician, routines, allergies.
  • Set role-based access: choose who can see health, school, contacts and routines. Default to the narrowest setting that works.
  • Add the custody pattern to the calendar so handoffs appear automatically.

The shared family day

One view holds custody time, appointments, school, activities and the next handoff. A change either parent proposes stays in a separate proposed state until the other agrees — so the agreed calendar is always the one both of you actually signed off, and a disagreement never quietly overwrites the week.

Preparing a handoff

  • Open the next handoff and fill the brief: sleep, food, mood, medicine, packed items.
  • Add anything the other parent will need in the first hour rather than everything you can think of.
  • The receiving parent sees it before pickup, not after.

Writing an update

Updates are one topic each, which keeps a disagreement about Tuesday from swallowing the note about the dentist. The pause-and-reframe check reads what you wrote and asks whether it stays child-focused. It never sends anything for you and never edits your words — you decide whether to change it.

Decisions and follow-through

Record the decision, each parent's response and the next action with an owner. Ownership is explicit so 'I thought you were doing it' has somewhere to be resolved. Reminders chase the action, not the person.

Expenses

  • Log the cost, attach the receipt, set how it splits.
  • Mark reimbursement when it actually arrives — the status is the point, not the ledger.

Development notes

Milestones are prompts to notice something, not a checklist to pass. Record what you observed in your own words; the app keeps it ready for the next well visit. If something concerns you, the app will say so plainly and tell you to contact your clinician — it will not offer a verdict.

The TV board

Family board on Apple TV shows the shared day and routines for everyone in the room. Private messages and sensitive health details are excluded by design and cannot be turned on.

If something goes wrong

Email [email protected] or use the contact form. Tell us the platform and what you expected to happen.