I was losing the daily "chore battle," so I teamed up with my 11-year-old to build a game to fix it.
My house had become a constant cycle of nagging. I’d ask for chores to be done, get ignored, and then end up frustrated and hovering. I realized I was stuck in a "parent-as-manager" role that I hated, and the kids were just tuning it out.
Instead of fighting about it, I decided to take a different approach. I sat down with my 11-year-old, and we started brainstorming how to gamify the process.
We ended up building a small app, ChoreQuest, to handle the tracking and rewards for us.
For me, the win wasn't just the app itself—it was the collaborative process of building it with her. We went from fighting over who cleans what to actually collaborating on the UI and the logic. Now, we use it daily with my 11 and 6-year-old, and the dynamic has completely shifted. It turned "chores" into "game mechanics," and the nagging has pretty much stopped.
I’m curious how other tech-minded parents here handle the chore struggle? Do you use a custom system, a paper chart, or have you built something similar?
If anyone is interested in the technical side or wants to see how we set it up, the app is here: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.andriusdijokas.chorequest&hl=en
I’m happy to share what worked (and what failed) during the build process if anyone is looking for a project to do with their kids!
And we have like small video how it looks: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_j6N2VSEpE