Nigel Latta: 'There's a lot of AI-based parenting stuff out there'

Nigel Latta has been working on developing the Parentland app for many years, he says.

“It's actually been a 20-year journey. I had the idea of delivering personalised advice before there were smartphones and apps even.”

Last month, Latta, who had been given a year to live, announced his cancer is in remission.

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“There's still a little bit of stuff going on there, but basically, I'm going to be around for a long time,” he told RNZ’s Afternoons.

Parentland delivers advice specific to the age, temperament and individual needs of each child, Latta says.

“We use a thing called temperament, we call TQ, we all get hard-wired with a temperament when we're born, a little personality, and so we can personalise the advice so that you're getting different advice for a very persistent four-year-old compared to an easy-going 11-year-old.”

The app focusses on common areas of strife in the family – such as picky eating, sleep routines and boundary setting - and offers evidence-based strategies to deal with them.

“I think that the important thing for people is to get evidence-based advice, there's a lot of AI-based parenting stuff out there, which is just dangerous.”

Eating is one area where bad advice can cause a lot of harm, he says.

“We've got tools to help them [parents] broaden the picky eating, because eating is one thing that’s really serious.

“A picky eater, if they get they get too picky, it tips into ARFID [Avoidant/restrictive food intake disorder] which is an eating disorder.”

There's a tool to see if your child has an actual eating disorder, he says.

“The big thing for us is making sure the advice that people are getting is evidence based, rather than just stuff you pluck out of the air.”

While the app has tools to help with boundary setting, in the area of picky eating he doesn’t advocate the use of consequences.

“What you need to do is have a calm, settled atmosphere at dinner time.”

A fraught dinner time will make things worse, he says.

“What typically happens is kids don't eat, it drives everyone crazy, mealtimes become unpleasant and stressful and long, and the first thing that happens if your child starts to get stressed or upset or angry, is all that fight or flight stuff kicks in. And what that does is it kills your appetite.”

The app includes something called the good-parent-o-meter, he says.

“Am I a bad parent? Am I a good parent? You just go into this thing and you can find out if you are.”

There is a stack of evidence about what makes for good parenting, he says.

“It's things like, are there moments in the day when you would just enjoy being with them, just having those little moments?

“And it doesn't have to be hours, just moments in your day when you delight in what they're doing and you make them feel like you're delighted in what they're doing.”

The tool draws on this decades long evidence-base, he says.

“What the parent-o-meter does is you can measure yourself, there's an evidence base that goes back 70 years saying these things actually are really important.”