Nurturing our children during their earliest years

Parenting in today’s world can be hard. We’re short on time. We have less family support than parents have traditionally had. We sometimes feel information overload — we can Google any question under the sun only to find a thousand conflicting answers. We want trusted resources. We want information that we can act on. We have high expectations of ourselves. And above all, we want our children to be happy, healthy, well-rounded, and set up for success.

The question is… HOW? How do we help our kids reach their potential? What are we supposed to be doing day to day?

Playfully was created to make it simpler and more fun for all of us to get the expert information we need to nurture our child’s growth, and put it into practice in ways that are tailored to our child’s stage of development.

I started Playfully because I needed it.

Playfully is an app I wish I had since my daughter Anya, who is now 3.5 years old, was born. Each night, I’d come home from work and want to spend quality time with her. My husband and I usually had about 30 minutes of free time between dinner and bath, and often found ourselves wondering what to do with that time. As new parents, we heard so much about how the time period from 0–3 years old is so critical for our daughter’s development, and we wanted to do everything we could to support her growth, but we often found ourselves wondering, “what are we ACTUALLY supposed to be doing?”

Our pediatrician didn’t have too much advice for us. So we would be left playing the same games over and over again, or reading the same books to her, and all the while wondering — isn’t there something more that we should be doing?

The light bulb moment for me came during a visit with an Occupational Therapist.

Anya is a preemie and because of her age and weight at birth, we qualified for follow-up visits with specialists. We would go in for a 2.5 hour appointment where we met with a Physical Therapist or Occupational Therapist, a Speech-Language Pathologist and developmental pediatricians. I remember at her 5 month visit, the Occupational Therapist said to me, “She must be banging on things all the time.”

I shrugged and said, “Yea, I thought that was just random baby movements — is that a problem?”

She responded, “No, that’s great! That’s her early way of attempting to pick up an object. Right now all she can do is use her whole hand to try to grab. Eventually, she’ll turn it to the side and scoop things towards her. And finally, she’ll be able to use her fingers to actually pick something up.”

I was floored. Wow — what she was doing was actual growth and not random? She was trying to pick something up? She can do that??

In those 2 minutes, the OT had completely changed the way I viewed my daughter and understood her intentions. As the evaluation proceeded and I watched the way she interacted with my daughter, I realized they were playing mini games that I could be playing at home. I left with a deeper appreciation for my daughter, tons of new ideas for how to play with her, and the confidence and ability to engage in a back and forth interaction with her that I never would have attempted before.

I found myself wishing I could visit the clinic more often — we almost paid for extra therapy that she didn’t really need, just to have more contact with these specialists. It was then that I realized how much I valued the wealth of knowledge they have, and believed it should be available to everyone, not just us. It took me 6 more months of thinking about the idea and pondering what I would do with it until I left my job to build Playfully. But once that spark had been lit, I knew I had to follow through.

We wish you more moments of connection and purposeful play.

Our sincere hope with Playfully is for all parents to feel the “aha” moment of connection and understanding with their little babies that we felt with Anya, time and time again. We work with child development experts to bring you research-backed tips and activity ideas that grow with your child week by week from 0 to 3 years old. All of our curriculum has been created to help you be more intentional with your play, to boost their physical, language, social/emotional and cognitive development, and to help you instill in your child the values you hold dear that will set them up for a lifetime of happiness and success. Best of all it’s EASY to do, in simple ways that fit into your existing lifestyle and routines.

Check us out on the App Store. Coming soon for Android.