Is your child ready for high school?

The car audio is the whole thing for me. I've got a 25-minute run to work and I've done eleven lessons in the car without ever sitting down in front of a screen. I'd written off the idea of doing a parenting course because I don't have a quiet hour anywhere in my week. Turns out I don't need one. Also — the ten-second pause. I've used it maybe six times. Four of those it completely changed what happened next.

Thirty-one videos for thirty-five dollars felt too cheap and I almost didn't buy because of it. I assumed it'd be thin. It isn't. Swallow the reminder alone has changed our mornings — I counted fourteen reminders on the Monday and four by the Friday, and he got to school with everything. Raise the price. I'm serious. At $34.99 I thought it was going to be rubbish.

Start here told me to pick the topic that happened in our house this week and ignore everything else, and that one instruction is why I'm still doing it. Every other course makes me feel behind by lesson three. This one gave me permission to skip most of it. I did Big Reactions, all nine, and I haven't touched Independence yet and I don't feel guilty about that.

The after-school fall-apart lesson explained twelve months of our life in seven minutes. I'd been meeting her at the gate with questions about her day and getting a storm every single time. Now it's 'good to see you' and nothing else, snack first, questions later. The difference was immediate. Not gradual — immediate, the first afternoon.

Three kids, one payment, and the eldest two are in different schools. Everything else I've looked at either charges per child or assumes you've only got one. The weather report has been the unexpected winner. My middle one won't talk about feelings at all but she'll tell me 'foggy' from the back seat, and that's enough for me to know how to handle the afternoon.

Dad here, bought by my wife, so take the demographic for what it is. The two-minute start has ended the homework war in our house. Not reduced. Ended. Book open, two minutes, then I walk away — and he's never once stopped at two minutes. I've watched nine of these now and the thing I'd say is they're short enough that you actually watch them. Seven minutes is the right call.

Didn't know I had the book for about four days. It comes in its own email and mine went to promotions, so I only found it because I went looking. When I did find it, 232 pages, free, is ridiculous value. But I'd bet a decent number of buyers never open that email at all. The program itself: no complaints. Lesson about letting them get it wrong was the one I needed and didn't want.

My son does not have a phone and will not be getting one this year, so I was expecting half of this to be useless to me. It wasn't. Everything works on my phone or the family iPad, and the bits that need no device at all — the dinner question, the code word, the Sunday check — are the ones we've actually used. The bag check we do on paper. You built this for families like mine without making a point of it. Thank you.

Lesson about the free pass. We said it out loud at dinner — you can always call, I'll come and get you, I won't be angry — and my daughter went quiet and then said 'really?' She's twelve. She's never been anywhere she'd need it. But she needed to hear it, clearly, and I hadn't ever said it in those words.

Signed up Sunday night, watched Start here in eleven minutes, picked Homework & Screens because that's what our fights are about. Why screens win was the lesson. 'To you it's a screen, to them it's a place.' I've stopped calling him off the game mid-round and started asking how the match went first, and the whole tone of the evening is different. I've never finished an online course before and I'm nineteen lessons in.

Good program. Two small things. First, the tap tools. Add to Home Screen defeated me on the first one and I had to get my son to do it, which rather undercuts the surprise. Second, and this is a compliment buried in a complaint — there's so much here that I keep finding things weeks later. I only discovered the one-screen summaries yesterday. Tell people they exist earlier.

The lesson on when you lose it too. I'd yelled at my daughter on the Tuesday and I watched that lesson on the Wednesday and apologised properly for the first time in my life — for how I said it, not whether I was right. She looked at me like I'd grown another head. Then she hugged me. I've recommended this at netball three times.

I'm raising my grandson. I'm not great with technology and I was worried this would be beyond me. It wasn't. The videos play, the audio plays in the car, and when I got stuck the lesson told me the no-device version — ask the question at bag time, write the rules on a note. There's a way through for people like me in nearly every lesson. Whoever thought to put that in, thank you.

Four stars and the missing one is my fault more than yours. I binged eleven lessons on the first Saturday because I was excited, and then did nothing for two weeks. The lessons each end with one thing to try this week, and you can't try eleven things in a week. Maybe say that somewhere. 'Don't do what I did.' Content is five stars.

I've bought three of these parenting things over the years and this is the first one where the advice is specific enough to actually do. Not 'connect with your child.' Actual words to say, where to stand, what to do when it goes wrong. 'What's the stuck bit.' 'Show me how you'd do it.' 'I'll be in the kitchen when you're ready.' I wrote four of them on a note in my phone. That's the whole review.