Named after a bird. Built by a parent who was living this every day.
Toroa is the Māori name for the albatross. When we were trying to land on a name, we kept coming back to how the bird actually lives — not just because it looked good on a logo, but because the more we read about it, the more it kept describing the thing we were actually trying to build.
It also has the widest wingspan of any bird alive, and at the nest that's what it's for — wrapping round the chick, not showing off in flight. Which is more or less how we think about limits: the point isn't to control a kid, it's to shelter them while they're still working out how to do it themselves.
And a chick takes the best part of a year to fledge. The parents don't rush that. We liked that too — building a habit that sticks takes longer than just taking the laptop away, but it's the difference that lasts.
One more thing, half practical: albatrosses barely flap. They ride wind gradients for thousands of kilometres on almost no effort. Once you've set the rules in Toroa Family, that's the goal — you're not back in there every day re-arguing the same fight. It just holds.
I'm Aaron. I didn't build this because screen time seemed like an interesting problem to solve. I built it because I've been dealing with it every day for over a decade now — since my kids were little, right through to having teenagers in the house.
So much of ordinary family life just ends up circling around it. The first fight of the morning is about it. So is the last one before bed. "Five more minutes" that's never five minutes. Being the one who has to say no, again, when honestly you'd rather just be their parent that day, not the referee.
It stopped being just an annoyance when my son was diagnosed with myopia — his eyes, from all that close-up screen time, weren't developing the way they should. That's when it got real for me. It's easy to nod along to "too much screen time isn't great for kids." It's different when you're sitting in an optometrist's office finding out it's already changed your own kid's eyesight.
It's had me thinking a lot about what's quietly gone missing. Not that long ago there was just more to a childhood — more boredom, more time outside, more making things with your hands, more doing nothing in particular. Screens haven't stayed in their corner. They've crept into everything, bit by bit, until there's a lot less room left for the parts of life that aren't happening on one.
I'm not against screens. I just wanted some of that room back — so screen time is something my kids earn and enjoy, not something that quietly eats the rest of the day.
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