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Our goals library is designed by our team of clinical psychologists who specialize in children with behavioral and developmental disorders. Their expertise includes autism, anxiety, ADHD, sensory issues, emotional issues, and trauma responses.

The idea behind behavioral goals is a framework called Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT). This therapy is based on the notion that our thoughts, emotions, and behaviors are all connected in a way summarized as: ‘What we believe is how we feel, and how we feel is how we behave.’

This means that the goals themselves focus on behaviors, making it easier to track progress and celebrate achievements.

The standard rewards are all ‘clinically’ appropriate, but we recommend working together with your child to understand what would be the most motivational.

Great goals are usually ‘SMART’ goals, which stands for: 

• Specific – goals should be clear and without any ambiguity. Helpful questions to answer here are: ‘What exactly needs to be done?’, ‘Where does it take place?’, ‘Who is involved?’, etc.

• Measurable – in order to track progress and stay motivated, we need to understand when the goal has been achieved. This means we need to know what its completion looks like and how we measure it.

• Achievable – goals also need to be realistic and attainable to be successful and motivational. It is important for kids to build confidence and stretch their abilities by achieving goals. However, setting unrealistic goals can be very defeating and have the opposite effect.

• Relevant – make sure the goal you are setting matters to you and your family, and that it aligns with your other goals. Some helpful questions to determine this may be: ‘Does this seem worthwhile?’, ‘Is this the right time?’, ‘Does this match our other efforts/needs?’

• Timely – every goal needs a target date so that you have a deadline to focus on. In Manatee, you just need to set the ‘expiration date’ for your goals, which range from 30 to 90 days.

1. Navigate to your family tab and go to ‘child goals & rewards.’

2. If you have multiple children on your family account, select the appropriate child in the drop-down menu.

3. Tap the ‘assign goals’ or ‘manage’ button. From here, you’ll have access to our goals library, or you can create your custom goals. To assign or create a goal, tap the ‘+’ button.

You can also read or customize our premade goals by tapping on their names and selecting ‘copy and edit.’ From here, you can also set reminders for your child to complete their goal.

We recommend setting 2-3 goals at a time. More than 3 goals may be overwhelming for your child. To optimize the effectiveness of any intervention, it is important to focus on a few key behaviors at a time.

When your child is logged into their account:

1. They’ll see their goals listed on their home screen. There, they can tap on any goal and then the ‘I did it!’ button to mark their goal as completed.

To approve a goal that your child marked as complete:

1. You’ll see a notification on your device and/or in the Manatee app by tapping the notification icon (🔔).

2. There, you’ll see which goal your child marked as complete. If task completion is verified, you can approve it; otherwise, you can reject it. Either way, the child will receive a notification bubble on their dashboard informing them if their goal was approved or not.

3. If approved, the child will be awarded the assigned points. Yay!

You can also mark a child’s goal as completed on their behalf. To mark a goal as completed as a caregiver:

1. Navigate to your ‘family’ tab.

2. There, you’ll see each child’s goals listed. Swipe to the goal you wish to mark as complete and tap the ‘mark done’ button.

3. Now your child’s goal has been marked as completed and approved all in one go! 

We encourage you to approve the goal as soon as you are able. In the beginning, you may need to establish trust by checking in and having a conversation prior to approving. However, as time goes by, you may feel more comfortable approving a goal without any additional evidence. Either way, the sooner, the better!

We recommend working together with your child to pick out something that is personalized and most exciting to them. Moreover, we believe that the best rewards encourage bonding time with the people we care about, such as game nights, baking cookies, or going on an adventure together.

We recommend setting about 2-4 rewards. It’s important to mix up easy rewards (5 points) with harder rewards (>20 points). This way, your child can receive near-instant rewards while also looking forward to and working towards something bigger.

1. Navigate to your ‘family’ tab and go to ‘child goals & rewards.’

2. If you have multiple children on your family account, select the appropriate child in the drop-down menu.

3. Tap on the ‘manage rewards’ button.

4. Select the custom reward option marked by the edit icon (✏️).

5. Assign the reward a self-explanatory name, a description (optional), points required (to claim the reward), and finally a colorful relevant image. All this will be visible to the child when assigned.

6. Tap the ‘save reward’ button. The custom reward has now been created and saved permanently.

By default, it is assigned to the active child’s profile, but feel free to unassign it if needed. This custom goal will also be available as an option for all other children on the account, but not automatically assigned.

While your child is logged in:

1. Tap the ‘view rewards’ button at the top of the home screen to view a list of their possible rewards.

2. If your child has enough points to redeem a particular reward, they will be able to claim it by tapping the blue ‘claim’ button and confirming their choice.

3. Parents will then receive a notification about this claimed reward.

4. Parents will have the ability to approve or reject it from their own notifications. If approved, the child will be notified, and the respective points will be deducted. If rejected, the child will still be notified, but their points stay the same.

If your child does not have enough points for a particular reward, it will have a lock icon (🔒) in the corner and show a progress bar with how many more points are needed.

We encourage you to give or carry out the reward as soon as you are able. For example, if your child has redeemed ‘Pick out what is for dinner tonight,’ it is highly recommended to honor the reward that same evening. Keep in mind that there are also rewards that require additional planning, in which case it is advisable to start planning the reward as soon as possible.

The satisfaction of achieving and receiving the reward at the same time will increase the effectiveness of the reward system moving forward.

The chatbot functionality is only enabled for the child app and is based on helpful conversations and exercises built by our clinical psychologists. 

This means that when your child is ‘chatting’ with Manatee, they are actually engaging with a conversational chatbot that derives its intelligence from Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. At this time, there is no ‘free text’ option, meaning that the conversation functions like a multiple-choice quiz. 

Based on your child’s answer, the chatbot will provide the most relevant and helpful content. After every exercise, we ask whether the conversation was helpful or not—we will use this information to make our chatbot smarter!