Not “have they tried it.” Could they do it — the laundry, the money, the doctor's appointment, the flat tire, the hard conversation — with nobody standing behind them.
Most of us assume this gets picked up along the way. It doesn't. So I wrote down all of it, split it across six ages, and gave every single skill one thing the kid has to actually do to prove it.
The whole thing, running live on this page. Add a child, open a category, tap a rung. Nothing is sent anywhere — everything you tap stays in this browser.
A kid hasn't learned to cook because they've stirred a pot. They haven't learned laundry because they've watched you do it four hundred times. The gap between has helped with and owns is where all the actual capability lives, and nothing closes it accidentally.
So every skill in here ends with a validation point — one observable thing, in the real world, with you out of the room:
Laundry. For eight consecutive weeks the child never runs out of clean clothes and no adult touches their laundry, initiates it, or mentions it.
Groceries. Independently plans five dinners on a set budget, shops it alone, handles an out-of-stock substitution, and cooks at least three of them.
Plumbing. From a cold start, with no hints, locates and shuts off the main water supply to the house in under 90 seconds.
“Understands budgeting” is not a validation. “Ran a $50 five-dinner grocery trip under budget” is.
Families stall in the same place, every time: the kid does everything well — when asked. That's not independence. That's a very polished ten-year-old in a sixteen-year-old's body.
The tracker is built around that ladder. Every skill runs from age 5 to 18, and the jump that matters isn't doing it better — it's the kid being the one who notices it needs doing at all.
Home & practical life · home economics · personal finance · technology · outdoors & self-reliance · community & relationships · learning & thinking · health & personal responsibility · work, transport & adult systems.
Each kid gets their own progress. Six rungs per skill, a validation stamp with the date and what actually happened, a not-yet log, and notes.
Independence, reliability, adversity, initiation. Recording a validation walks you through all four so a single good performance doesn't get mistaken for a skill.
Competence is perishable. First aid, CPR, fire, tire changes — flag them and they come back on the dashboard in a year.
Integration tests. Plan and cook a family dinner. Manage $100. Run the household for a week. Fix something broken. Handle a real dispute.
77 questions with a third column that matters most: never tested. Every item in it is an assumption, not a fact.
One HTML file. Download it and it works forever: no internet, no account, no login, no subscription, nothing to expire. Open it from your desktop, your phone's downloads, a USB stick, whatever. Your kids' progress is stored in that browser and never leaves the device.
ONE FILE · ~500 KB · WORKS ON PHONE, TABLET AND DESKTOP
It's yours either way — no gate, no upsell, no “pro” version. But if it earns a spot on your fridge, a coffee helps me keep building and giving away things like this.
Parents of 5–18s who want a plan rather than a nagging habit — and a way to know what's actually been handed over.
Parents starting late. If your kid is 16 and this is mostly untouched, start with the age-18 test and pick the ten items with the worst downside. Two focused years closes most of it.
Homeschoolers and co-ops looking for a practical-life scope and sequence that isn't academic.
Scout leaders, youth mentors and grandparents who want a concrete progression instead of a vague sense that kids should be more capable.
Yes. Download it, keep it, share it, hand it to your whole co-op. There's no account, no trial, and no paid tier. The Ko-fi link is a tip jar, not a paywall.
In your browser's local storage on the device you're using, and nowhere else. There is no server involved and no network request of any kind after the file is downloaded. That also means it doesn't sync between devices — use the built-in export to move a record or keep a backup.
Yes — clearing site data, using a private window, or switching devices will lose it. Open Children → Export now and again and paste the text somewhere safe.
Normal and expected. The ages are target competency levels, not developmental requirements — most kids are two years ahead in one column and two behind in another. Use the rungs, not the birthdays.
It's a map, not a schedule. The guide inside says the right number of skills in play at any moment is three to five. Four a quarter, for a decade, is more than the whole document.
Your call, and you know your kid. The ones I'd argue hardest for are water safety, CPR, fire, financial self-defense and consent — the ones where a first mistake can be a permanent one.
Yes, as many as you like. Each gets a separate record, and you switch between them from the header.
The tracker is built for a screen, but the underlying roadmap is a plain document and prints fine. The tracker's print view strips the navigation.