LightMap by Birch & Light — Parenting App with 7 Days Free
LightMap is a family insight app by Birch & Light, created by Tara Alison. It helps you log tough moments — meltdowns, shutdowns, refusals, or hard days at any age — then spot patterns over time and get practical, personalized suggestions for what might help. Use it for a young child, a teen, yourself, or anyone you care for. Your first 7 days are free with no card, and you can cancel anytime in Settings. After the 7 days it is $99/year or $12.99/month.
Why parents use LightMap
- Quick Log: capture a tough moment in about a minute, one-handed.
- Patterns: see what triggers, settings, and times of day are connected.
- Suggested Support: AI-assisted, non-clinical ideas based on your last 20 moments.
- Shared access: invite a co-parent or therapist with a secure link.
- Private by design: your data stays in your account.
- Installable PWA: works on iOS, Android, and desktop browsers.
About Birch & Light
Birch & Light is a children's emotional-wellness brand offering stories, songs, and simple tools that help kids reset and families reconnect. LightMap is the brand's companion app for parents.
Every hard moment has a reason. LightMap finds it.
Log a hard moment in about a minute. LightMap reads it alongside everything else you've logged and tells you what may be underneath and what to try next.
Watch: put LightMap on your phone in 30 seconds
Shown on iPhone. On Android, tap the menu in Chrome, then Install app.
7 days free, no card needed.
First visit? Start with one recent hard moment today. Your first 7 days are free, no card.
Mom's Choice Awards® Gold Recipient for the Birch & Light Method™ family resources. Judged by a panel of educators, parents, medical professionals, and other experts.
“I am loving being able to log every incident, so I can go back and see things that I can tell the therapist or the school psychologist.”
Amanda · LightMap parent
“It helped me see the patterns underneath the behavior.”
MaRanda Herring, PharmD, BCACP · Homeschool mom
Product provided for review.
“LightMap showed me patterns I wasn't connecting before. Things that looked random stopped feeling random.”
Shalee B. · Mom of five
Your first 7 days. Two things a day.
Look at your child's day and log two things you see. Any of these count:
A moment
Any hard behavioral episode.
A bright spot
Something that went well.
A context note
Background that helps explain things.
An evaluation upload
A neuropsych evaluation, for example.
In one week, you will have insights, answers and possible solutions to explore that you did not have before.
Start my 7 days free7 days free, no card needed.
Have an IEP or 504 plan? Find out what it's missing.
Upload it and LightMap checks it against your child, free, and gives you the questions to bring to the meeting.
Why LightMap
Why you needed LightMap yesterday
Not a tracker. A way through the nights that feel like they will never end.
01
“It's 6:40 and it's happening again, and you have nowhere to put it.”
Somewhere to put all of it.
Log it in the moment and it stops looping in your head. You get something to do besides react, and over time fewer moments turn into full storms.
02
“You lie awake replaying it, sure you handled it wrong.”
See the pattern. Drop the shame.
You were never guessing badly. You were guessing blind. Once you can see what keeps setting it off, you respond to what is actually happening, and the whole house feels different.
03
“Fifteen minutes with the pediatrician, and you cannot remember what March was like.”
Your child, explained to the whole care team.
One secure link shows the therapist, the OT and the school team what you have been living. You stop describing three months from memory.
04
“Why does she do this? Nobody has ever told you.”
What is really going on in your child's brain.
Every pattern comes with the science underneath it, in plain words. You learn why the meltdown happened, not just that it did.
05
“One of you says defiance. The other says anxiety. Dinner goes quiet.”
It settles the argument in your own house.
The log ends the debate. You are both looking at the same picture instead of two different memories of the same week.
06
“The day you are certain nothing is getting better.”
Proof that it is.
LightMap keeps the good stretches too. On the worst day you can scroll back and see the week that worked.
7 days free, no card needed.
Watch me use it
Watch LightMap in action
Start here: a quick intro to LightMap, then Module 1, logging a moment. Every part of LightMap gets its own short video, and the rest of the modules are coming soon.
Every moment you log makes the next one easier.
- 1Capture the momentLog the hard moment once it's passed.
- 2See the patternLightMap connects it to what came before — and surfaces what's underneath.
- 3Talk, informedA thinking partner that already knows your child — not a generic one.
- 4Relief in the momentCoaching that actually fits, exactly when you need it.
- 5The right toolsStories, guides, and education matched to this child's patterns.
Each moment you log makes the loop sharper — more specific to this child, every time.
The flagship of membership
Go Deeper with LightMap
Once you have a few weeks of real entries, LightMap reads all of it at once. Every moment, your stories, the health record, your bright spots, and any evaluation reports you have uploaded. Then it lays out the mechanisms that could be underneath the pattern, with the evidence for and against each one pulled from your own dated entries, the questions worth bringing to your care team, and what to log next.
It shows its work
Every hypothesis cites your own moments, by date, so you can check it.
It argues both sides
Evidence for and evidence against, because a pattern that only fits one story is rarely the whole story.
It travels with you
Export any analysis as a polished PDF for a co-parent, therapist, or doctor.
Deep analysis is hypothesis generation for you and your child's clinical team. It is never a diagnosis.
7 days free, no card needed.
Read a full sample report, section by section
Questions parents ask about deep analysis
LightMap reads everything you have logged for your child. Every moment, your stories, the health record, your bright spots, and any clinical reports you have uploaded. Then it proposes possible mechanisms that could explain the patterns, with the evidence for and against each one drawn from your own entries, questions to bring to your care team, and what to log next.
Your child's reports are private. They are stored encrypted, only your account can access them, and they are never shared or made public. Privacy
What using it looks like
How LightMap actually works
Four steps. The whole thing lives on your phone.
Log a hard moment in about a minute
Open LightMap, tap what happened, tap what was going on around it. That is the whole log. One-handed, works while you are still standing in the hallway. No essay, no journaling.
Patterns start surfacing after about three logs
LightMap begins connecting triggers, times of day, and settings almost immediately. By the third or fourth entry you are already seeing the shape of what has been happening.
Ask LightMap anything, grounded in your child
Talk is your private thinking partner inside LightMap, not a generic chatbot. It has read every moment you have logged for your specific child and answers with that context. Ask what a pattern might mean, what to try before pickup, or how to talk to a teacher. Calm, non-clinical, always in your corner.
Hand a report to your child's team in seconds
Generate a secure, read-only pre-session brief for pediatricians, therapists, OTs, teachers, or a co-parent. One link. Revoke it anytime. See a sample report →
Where we fit
The space between appointments.
Most families don’t move straight from everyday challenges to intensive care. Birch & Light sits in the in-between: real understanding, clear guidance, and tools you’ll actually use, right when you need them most.
What families handle on their own, before anyone else is involved.
- • Big emotions and meltdowns
- • Sensory overwhelm
- • The 4pm after-school crash
More examples
- • Anxiety and transitions
- • School refusal or struggles
- • Food and mealtime battles
- • Sibling and family conflict
- • Bedtime, mornings, and routines
- • Googling late at night for answers
- • Facebook groups and Reddit threads
- • Parenting coaches and programs
Professional help brought in while your child still lives at home.
- • Weekly therapy
- • OT and speech therapy
- • IEP and 504 plans
More examples
- • Developmental pediatricians
- • Neuropsychological evaluations
- • Child Study Team meetings
- • Psychiatric care and medication
- • Intensive outpatient and partial hospitalization (IOP, PHP)
- • Group therapy and social skills groups
- • ABA and behavioral support
- • Specialist consults (neurology, GI, immunology)
Running alongside both, every day
Birch & Light
Traditional support happens once a week. Parenting happens every day. Birch & Light is the layer in between: understanding what sits beneath the behavior, tools for the hardest moments, and a record that makes every appointment count. It works toward a calmer home, and helps challenges settle before they grow.
- Why it keeps happening
- Talk it through with LightMap
- Help in the moment
- Parent regulation
- Stories children absorb
- Reports for your care team
Working toward fewer families ever needing what comes next
Care that takes a child out of the home.
- • Inpatient hospitalization
- • Residential treatment centers
- • Crisis services
More examples
- • Psychiatric hospitals
- • Therapeutic boarding schools
- • Wilderness therapy programs
- • Emergency interventions
What it costs
Free for 7 days. Then $99 a year.
Membership is $99 a year, our best value, $56.88 less than paying monthly, a 36% saving, about 27¢ a day, or $12.99 a month if you would rather go month to month. Seven free days is enough for LightMap to start learning your child's patterns before you decide. Paid members can cancel anytime in one tap from Settings.
Birch & Light Membership includes
- ✓ LightMap with unlimited logging for every child in your care
- ✓ Pattern insights, weekly recaps, and Talk: your private thinking partner
- ✓ Shareable read-only reports for the care team
- ✓ Foundations: The Birch & Light Course, eight video lessons, a $79 training included at no extra cost
- ✓ Every workbook in the Toolkit: the full Fast Brain series plus the What's Underneath field guide, $30 of downloads included
- ✓ The full story library, all 32 titles, with Deep Dive podcasts for each
- ✓ Every story download, printable, and parent guide
- ✓ Installs as an app on your phone and desktop
$109 of courses and workbooks are included with membership, before you count LightMap itself.
Start my 7 days free7 days free, no card needed.
Your 7 days are free with no card. To keep going after that, add a card at checkout and your membership starts then. You can cancel anytime in Settings. After that it is $12.99/month or $99/year.
Questions parents ask
Before you start
Is this a medical or clinical tool?
No. LightMap supports emotional wellness and helps you spot patterns. It does not diagnose or treat anything. For clinical concerns, work with a qualified professional. LightMap is designed to make those conversations easier by giving you a real record to bring in.
Is my child's data private?
Yes. Your data lives in your account. Never sold, never shared. You choose when to hand a read-only report to a therapist, teacher, or co-parent, and you can revoke access anytime.
How is LightMap different from ChatGPT?
ChatGPT can remember things you’ve told it. LightMap has your child’s whole history. It can work from the moments you’ve logged — including what happened, when, what came before it, what helped, and patterns across time. It’s not just memory. It’s a structured history built specifically around your child.
Do I have to log every day?
No. LightMap is built for the moments that matter, meltdowns, refusals, shutdowns, bright spots. Log when something happens. Patterns emerge from a handful of real entries, not from perfect daily discipline.
Can more than one parent use it?
Yes. Invite a co-parent, caregiver, or therapist with secure read-only access from Settings.
Every hard moment has a reason. LightMap finds it.
Start with one moment. 7 days free, no card.
Start my 7 days free7 days free, no card needed.
Create your free account, no card, and your first 7 days of full Birch & Light Membership are included. Everything you log is saved to your account.