Adding a child to Achievabee takes an extra step that most apps skip. We show you exactly what we would keep about them, and then we send you an email. Nothing about that child is collected until you click the link in it.
That is more friction than a checkbox, and people do drop out at it. I still think it is the right design, and this is the reasoning.
A tap proves the wrong thing
Every app that asks a parent to confirm something with a button in the app has the same hole in it. The button records that somebody pressed it. It does not record who.
A tap in the app proves somebody is holding your phone. It does not prove they are you.
An unlocked phone on a kitchen counter is enough. So is a child who knows the passcode, which describes most children old enough to do chores. If the only thing standing between a nine-year-old and an account is a button on a screen they can already reach, then the consent is decorative.
An email is not perfect either. But it moves the question to something only you have, and it leaves a record of the address it went to and when it was clicked. That is a meaningfully harder thing to fake by accident.
What actually happens
You add a child. Before anything is saved, you see the list of what would be kept: their name, their age band, their avatar, and the points they earn.
We email the address on your account. Your child sits in a pending state and cannot sign in, and nothing about them is used for anything.
You click the link. That click is the permission.
If you never click
This is the part I want to be clear about, because "we will keep it just in case" is the normal answer and it is the wrong one.
If the link is never clicked, we delete what you entered after fourteen days and remove the child from the app. You do not have to email anyone, ask us, or find a setting. It happens on its own, and the link itself stops working at the same point.
Fourteen days because it should survive a holiday. Much longer and "we are holding this while you decide" stops being true.
The honest limitation
None of this proves you are the parent rather than an adult with access to your inbox. No consent flow available to a small app does. What it does is raise the bar from "someone touched the phone" to "someone reached the email account and acted on it", and make the whole thing expire by default rather than persist by default.
That second part matters more than the first. A system that forgets when nobody confirms is safer than one that remembers until someone complains.