Hi PH, I'm Animesh, and I built an app for two-year-olds. I know how that sounds, and I'd roll my eyes too.

My daughter decided my phone was the best toy in the house. She didn't want to watch anything, she just wanted to hold it and press everything, like a QA engineer tasked with breaking it. My wife locked every app except the camera and gallery, but we still had to watch that she didn't delete our photos, and she mashed the camera button about 15 times a second. I found myself wishing for a 1 megapixel camera.

Taking the phone back was stressful for both of us. If she got distracted by something else, it went smoothly. If anyone tried to touch her dear phone, it was a big cry fest.

I don't really blame her. Almost everything on a phone is designed to hold your attention for as long as it can. The next video starts by itself, and there is always one more level to play. Plenty of adults can't put their phones down, so I'm not sure why I expected a two-year-old to. It ends up being the parent's job to stop it, every single time.

So I wondered what would happen if she had a phone of her own to press. What finally pushed me to build it was one more thought: what if this phone ran out of battery on my command?

Tadidum turns your phone into your toddler's phone:

Her own camera and gallery. Photos are saved in low resolution and stay inside the app, so your camera roll stays clean.
12 low-stim apps. These include pretend calls, drawing, music and simple games. None of them have ads, points or streaks, and they all work offline.
A battery that dies on purpose. You set how long she can play, say 5 minutes, and hand over the phone. A pretend battery on her screen drains over those 5 minutes. When it reaches zero, the screen goes dark as if the phone has died, and it stays that way until a parent unlocks it. Guided Access on iOS or screen pinning on Android keeps her inside the app until then, and Tadidum walks you through setting that up.

Nobody has to take the phone away. It just runs out of battery, like all devices do. My daughter walks over, hands it back and says "Battery finished, Papa." Another parent, the mom of a two-year-old, told me, "I was shocked how easily he handed the phone over when the timer was up." There's research pointing the same way: a study of 28 families found kids were less upset when the technology ended the session, for example when an iPad battery ran out, than when a parent ended it (Hiniker et al., CHI 2016).

What I didn't expect is that after three months, she has started asking for the phone much less. She is only one kid, so I can't tell you it will go the same way for yours. My guess is that a phone she is allowed to use, and that always ends the same way, stops being that exciting. I may be the only maker here celebrating falling usage.

I do worry about screen time, and I don't want Tadidum to add to it. If your family is at zero, you're better off that way, so please stay there. I built this for those of us who do hand over the phone sometimes and want that time to end without a fight.

If you have a toddler, I'd love to hear how you get your phone back today. And if you try Tadidum, please tell me where the setup confused you. I'll be here all day.