When I gave birth, I spent a lot of my supposedly sleeping time googling information about baby stuff. I searched about breastfeeding, baby poop and many other concerns through sites and forums. It was a bit difficult because some forums were not very organized and most of them were from parents living abroad.
Sometimes, the advice or experience they would give are not applicable locally. For instance, when it came to baby food, some recipes have ingredients that are not found locally.
It is good that recently, I got to know about an app called Parenttown. It is a FREE parenting app that allows parents to post questions, share ideas and even baby pictures with other parents. Parents can also follow topics ranging from general parenting talk to family finances.
In my case, since I have a toddler, I am concerned about potty training. I asked the ParentTown community about needing a potty trainer and got one answer so far:
“We started by talking to him and showing him where the bathroom is and we came up with a code and a sign if he had to pee. We did it step by step. For us we did not use a small potty.”
I also got to read some advice on assessing a child’s readiness to be potty trained such as fairly regular bowel movements, waking up from naps, can follow simple instructions, and dislikes being wet and dirty. These are very helpful insights for me as a first time parent.
What I like about Parent Town
- The topics are timely and categorized well so it is easy to navigate. There are even unconventional topics such as traditional Chinese Medicine and blended families.
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- Parents can post anonymously. I think for sensitive or uncomfortable matters, this feature will allow them to freely express their thoughts.
- The photo booth feature allows parents to share pictures of their little ones.
- With the ParentTown TV, parents can join sessions to watch experts answer important parenting issues on a live broadcast.
- You can invite and find Facebook friends to join this growing parenting community.
While I think Parent Town is already a great parenting app, I also think it can benefit from adding snippets of the latest research about the topics or opinions from various field experts. In this way, learning is not limited from other parents but also augmented by research or expert advice. A feature where parents can share their wonderful and humorous stories would also be great.
If you’re a parent or know a parent who wants to learn from and with other parents, you can easily access ParentTown on Google Play for Android http://bit.ly/24gSq4f and the App Store for iOS http://apple.co/1SGBvD6.
Note: Screenshots were from my phone. Background was edited.
So, dear parents, what have you learned in ParentTown today?
