Terms of Service
Plain-language version · Version 2026-05-09 · Effective 2026-05-09
The short version
Birch & Light makes children's stories, songs, podcasts, and a private parent-only reflection tool called LightMap™. These Terms explain what you can expect from us, what we ask of you, and the limits of what our tools can and cannot do. If you don't agree with any of this, please don't use the service.
1. Who can use Birch & Light
You must be at least 18 years old to create an account. If you are logging information about a child inside LightMap or any other Birch & Light product, you confirm that you are the child's parent or legal guardian (or another adult caregiver, co-parent, or professional you explicitly invite through the platform's sharing features) and that you are responsible for the choices you make based on what you see in the app.
Children do not create or hold Birch & Light accounts. The stories, songs, and podcasts may be enjoyed by children with adult supervision, but the account itself — and any data logged inside LightMap — belongs to the adult account holder.
2. What Birch & Light is — and isn't
Birch & Light is a creative and reflective resource for families. It is not medical advice, not mental-health advice, not therapy, not a diagnostic tool, and not crisis support. Our stories, songs, podcasts, and LightMap insights are designed to help families feel seen and notice patterns — they are not a substitute for evaluation, diagnosis, or treatment by a qualified professional.
Use of Birch & Light or LightMap does not create a therapist-client, doctor-patient, counselor-client, or other professional relationship between you and Birch & Light, its founders, employees, or contributors.
If you are worried about your child's safety, mental health, development, or behavior, please consult a licensed clinician. If there is immediate danger or a crisis, call 911, 988 (Suicide & Crisis Lifeline, US), or your local emergency number.
3. AI-generated insights and chat
LightMap uses artificial intelligence to surface patterns, suggest reflections, and power the in-app chat companion. AI output may be inaccurate, incomplete, biased, or out of date. AI-generated output may sound confident even when it is incorrect. Treat AI suggestions as a starting point for your own thinking, never as professional advice or a diagnosis. Always use your own judgment as the parent or guardian and consult a qualified professional when something matters.
LightMap Chat does not store conversations to train any third-party AI model. Chat transcripts are stored privately under your account so you can return to them; you can clear them at any time from the chat screen, or delete them entirely with your account.
4. Parent / guardian responsibility
You are the expert on your child. You alone are responsible for the parenting, medical, educational, behavioral, and safety decisions you make — including any decision influenced by something you read in a story, hear in a song, see in a LightMap insight, or read in a chat reply. Birch & Light is a companion, not a decision-maker.
5. Subscriptions, free trials & auto-renewal
LightMap is offered on a subscription basis. New subscribers may begin with a 2-week free trial with no credit card required. Near the end of the trial, if you want to keep going, you'll be invited to add a payment method. If you add a card and do not cancel before your trial ends, your subscription will automatically convert to a paid subscription at $12.99 USD per month (or the then-current price), charged to your payment method by Stripe, and will continue to renew monthly until you cancel. If you never add a card, nothing is ever charged and your account simply pauses when the trial ends.
A reminder email will be sent before your trial ends. Founding members and other promotional cohorts may receive different pricing as described at sign-up; those terms control for that cohort.
6. Cancellation & refunds
You can cancel at any time from Settings → Subscription inside LightMap, which opens your Stripe billing portal. Cancellation stops the next renewal; you keep access until the end of your current paid period or trial.
Because subscriptions are delivered digitally and used immediately, paid subscription fees are generally non-refundable, except where required by applicable law. If you believe you've been charged in error, email [email protected] and a real human will look into it.
7. Your content & the license you give us
The moments, notes, reflections, child profiles, and chat messages you create inside LightMap belong to you. We do not own them and we do not sell them.
To make the service work, you grant Birch & Light a limited, non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free license to store, process, transmit, and display your content solely for the purpose of operating the service for you — for example, syncing your moments across your devices, generating your insights, sending your chat messages to our AI provider so it can answer you, or producing a report you've asked us to make. This license ends when you delete the content or your account, except where we are required by law to retain limited records.
8. Acceptable use
Please don't:
- Use Birch & Light to harm a child, an adult, or yourself.
- Attempt to reverse-engineer, scrape, or resell our stories, songs, podcasts, or AI output.
- Upload anything illegal, abusive, or that infringes someone else's rights.
- Share your account credentials, or use someone else's account without permission.
- Use the service to provide professional medical, legal, or therapeutic advice to others as if it came from us.
We may suspend or terminate accounts that violate these rules.
9. Account termination
You may delete your account at any time from Settings → Delete account inside LightMap, or by emailing us. Deletion removes your child profiles, moments, bright spots, story notes, chat history, reflections, and account record. Active subscriptions will be canceled. Some backup copies or legally required records may remain for a limited period before deletion.
We may suspend or terminate your account if you violate these Terms, if your payment fails repeatedly, or if we are required to by law. We'll try to give you notice when we reasonably can.
10. Limitation of liability
To the fullest extent permitted by law, Birch & Light, its founders, employees, contractors, and partners are not liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary, or punitive damages, or for any loss of profits, revenue, data, goodwill, or other intangible losses, arising out of or related to your use of (or inability to use) the service, including any decisions you make based on stories, songs, podcasts, AI insights, or chat replies.
Our total cumulative liability to you for any claim arising out of or related to the service is limited to the greater of (a) the amount you paid Birch & Light in the twelve (12) months before the event giving rise to the claim, or (b) one hundred US dollars ($100). Some jurisdictions don't allow these limits, so they may not apply to you.
11. Indemnity
You agree to defend, indemnify, and hold harmless Birch & Light from any claims, damages, losses, liabilities, and expenses (including reasonable attorneys' fees) arising from (a) your misuse of the service, (b) your violation of these Terms, or (c) your violation of any law or the rights of a third party — including, where applicable, the rights of a child you are responsible for.
12. Disclaimers
The service is provided "as is" and "as available", without warranties of any kind, whether express or implied — including the implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, non-infringement, and any warranty arising out of course of dealing or usage of trade. We do not warrant that the service will be uninterrupted, error-free, or that AI output will be accurate, complete, or appropriate for any particular child or situation.
13. Changes to these Terms
We may update these Terms from time to time — for example, if we add a new feature or are required to by law. When we do, we'll update the "Last updated" date at the top of this page. If the changes are material, we'll ask you to re-accept them inside the app. Continuing to use Birch & Light after a material change means you accept the new Terms.
14. Governing law
These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of New Jersey, without regard to conflict-of-law rules, unless applicable consumer protection law requires otherwise.
15. Contact
Questions, requests, concerns, or anything you'd like us to fix? Email [email protected]. A real human (usually Tara) reads every message.
Please also see our Privacy Policy for how we handle your information.
16. Intellectual property, copyright & permitted use
Birch & Light, LightMap, and everything we publish under them — including all stories, illustrations, characters, character names, songs (lyrics and sound recordings), podcasts, parent guides, bonus resources, LightMap support content, site copy, and AI-generated insight templates — are © 2026 Enchantra, Inc., all rights reserved, except where a third-party credit is shown. "Birch & Light" and "LightMap" are trademarks of Enchantra, Inc. (™ — registrations pending). Our book titles, character names, logos, and branded series identifiers are protected under trademark, common-law, and other applicable intellectual property rights.
When you buy or access an ebook, song, podcast, parent guide, or other Birch & Light resource, you receive a personal, non-transferable, non-commercial license to:
- read, listen to, and view the work on your own devices,
- print one personal copy for use inside your household, and
- share it with the children and co-parents in your own household.
You may not, without our prior written permission:
- resell, sublicense, rent, or redistribute any Birch & Light work,
- post the full text, full audio, or full PDF publicly (including on social media, blogs, file-sharing sites, or AI platforms),
- use the work to scrape, ingest, index, train, fine-tune, evaluate, ground, or otherwise develop any machine-learning or generative-AI system,
- reverse engineer, extract, replicate, recreate, or commercially imitate the underlying prompts, frameworks, emotional classification systems, structured guidance logic, or orchestration methods used within LightMap,
- create derivative works, adaptations, translations, fan-fiction sequels, or merchandise based on our characters or stories,
- use the work for classroom, therapeutic, library, daycare, or other group settings without a separate educator or professional license (please contact us, we're happy to set one up),
- remove, obscure, or alter any copyright, trademark, or attribution notice.
What is OK: quoting up to ~100 words from a story or guide with clear attribution to Birch & Light, posting screenshots of a single spread or cover for an honest review, and recommending us by linking to birchandlight.com. Thank you — that's how small studios like ours grow.
The moments, notes, and reflections you create inside LightMap remain yours, as already described in Section 7. This Section 16 is about our creative work.
17. Copyright complaints & DMCA
We respect the copyrights of others and ask the same in return. If you believe a Birch & Light work has been copied, posted, or used in a way that infringes your copyright, or if you believe content hosted by us infringes your copyright, please send a written notice to our designated agent under the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), 17 U.S.C. § 512(c):
DMCA Designated Agent
Tara Oporto, Birch & Light / Enchantra, Inc.
Email: [email protected] (subject line: "DMCA Notice")
A valid notice must include all of the following:
- your physical or electronic signature;
- identification of the copyrighted work you claim has been infringed;
- identification of the material you claim is infringing, with enough detail (URL, screenshot, page number) for us to find it;
- your contact information (address, phone, email);
- a statement that you have a good-faith belief the use is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law; and
- a statement, under penalty of perjury, that the information in your notice is accurate and that you are the copyright owner or authorized to act on the owner's behalf.
We will review valid notices and may remove or disable access to the material, notify the user who posted it, and, in appropriate cases, terminate repeat infringers. If you believe content of yours was removed in error, you may submit a written counter-notice to the same address containing the elements required by 17 U.S.C. § 512(g)(3). False or bad-faith notices may result in liability for damages, including costs and attorneys' fees, under 17 U.S.C. § 512(f).
Note from the team: this is a plain-language draft. We're working with counsel to finalize the limitation of liability, indemnity, dispute-resolution, and jurisdiction-specific subscription disclosures. Some sections will become more formal as a result. Certain legal provisions, including dispute resolution terms, may be updated after counsel review.