Decisions School is the membership where your kid practices responsible decision making, in preparation for real world challenges - from fake profiles to peer pressure to persuasive content.
Decisions School teaches 9–14-year-olds to pause, spot what's happening and decide what to do next without needing an adult beside them.
The moment
A fake profile asks your daughter for photos.
A group chat you just heard of turns out to have existed for months.
Your son repeats a conspiracy theory at dinner in the same tone he'd use for the weather.
And you almost miss the days when you'd take the phone away and you only had to deal with rage or tears.
Then a friend brings up a documentary about how influencers and filters warp how kids feel about their bodies...
... and remember your preteen has been skipping meals...
... and your stomach twists again.
You've read the recommendations, set the limits, maybe even discussed some of the content they see and yet...
What it costs you
behind.
That other parents have somehow worked this out and you haven't.
That if something happens, it'll be because you didn't do enough, or didn't catch it in time...
even though you know perfectly well that no parent can supervise everything forever.
The same argument about screen time, every day, with no resolution.
Flare-ups when the phone is taken away.
And you as the only line of defence, which means the protection only exists while you're in the room.
A room that gets harder to be in every year.
What you've already tried
Most parents arrive having done the sensible things: delayed the phone, installed the parental controls, explained the dangers that lurk online. Then they adjusted the number of hours, looked for a better blocking app, and re-negotiated the same rule again every Tuesday.
All of that is amazing and helpful and I wouldn't tell anyone to stop. But every one of those decisions is a rule about access, and a rule about access only governs what happens while you're watching.
Things go wrong in the hours when nobody is watching.
Almost nobody prepares for what the child will do once they're left to their own devices.
What we build instead
What if critical thinking became the thing your child reaches for first, without being asked?
Not a lecture about the internet.
Way beyond media literacy.
A toolkit for making decisions when nobody's there to guide them.
And a practice we repeat... until spotting manipulation, pausing before reacting, questioning what they're seeing, reasoning through the options, and deciding what to do next becomes easier, even under pressure.
Inside a session
1
Practical self-regulation exercises that prepare the brain for critical thinking and decision making.
A child who is worked up can't evaluate anything, so we start here every time.
2
Stories built around situations kids actually encounter: pressure from friends, persuasive content, suspicious requests, often brought up by the kids, their parents, or me as coordinator.
They learn to detect and deflect what's trying to influence them while it's happening.
3
Brainstorming, evaluating, and rehearsing decisions out loud with other kids before the situation is real.
What would you do?
What makes you think that?
What else could be true?
What would you do next?
Every semester we hold a workshop on communication techniques, where kids and parents come together to practise asking for what they need, disagreeing without escalating, and talking about difficult situations.
So that even when shit hits the fan, your kid feels safe to come to you first.
The proof
We go beyond play-based exposure and teach the thinking tools directly: pausing, questioning, evaluating evidence, considering alternatives, and explaining a conclusion.
→ Abrami, P.C. et al. (2008) — meta-analysis on explicit instruction and critical thinking, referenced via parentingscience.com
We start every session with a real story a child can recognize before naming the concept behind it.
This mirrors how Finland, the country ranked #1 in Europe for resilience to misinformation, sequences media-literacy learning for young people.
→ Finnish National Curriculum media literacy policy (2013, updated 2019) — via EAVI.eu and Finland Toolbox
Groups reasoning out loud together, then having to defend their conclusion, is a recognized way to build reasoning skill, used internationally by Philosophy for Children.
→ Systematic literature review, critical thinking in preschool classrooms (ScienceDirect, 2015–2021 studies)
→ Lipman, M. — Philosophy for Children / Harry Stottlemeier's Discovery
The membership
Two sessions a month, and a parent channel where you can tell me what your child is running into: a difficult friendship, something they saw online, a confusing claim.
A private WhatsApp group & open DMs. You send me what your child is struggling with. I turn the situations into anonymized stories for future sessions. Details are changed so the child involved, and the other kids in the group, can't recognize the situation or person.
Kids practice together and families keep some flexibility: each child can attend any 2 sessions held for their age group throughout the month.
We practise in the same digital environment where your child will encounter persuasive content, social pressure, and manipulation; and there's no commute for you.
What it costs
Membership
97 EUR
per month, per child
Two sessions a month for your child's age group
Access to the private parent community
The communication workshop each semester, for kids and parents together
How enrolment works
Come to an info session. Two of them run before we officially start, for interested parents. Bring your questions.
We have a call. I speak with every parent, both parents where possible, before a child is enrolled. This one isn't negotiable, because the community has to be a safe space for kids and parents alike.
You pick a time. The final schedule is announced on 9 October, with at least two class-time options for each age group.
Payment reserves the spot. Groups start mid-October. You can pay monthly but the minimum commitment is 6 months, one semester, so the group stays stable for every child in it.
Questions parents ask
The groups are flexible. Your child can attend any 2 sessions held for their age group throughout the month.
No. It's skills practice: regulation, influence detection and rehearsing decisions. It isn't treatment and isn't a substitute for treatment.
No child is put on the spot. Quiet kids usually start by watching the role play and saying what they noticed. Speaking up comes later, once the group feels safe to them.
Once a semester, in the communication workshop, together with your child. The rest of the sessions belong to the kids, and the parent community is where you and I stay in contact.
No, six months is the minimum. Kids only start talking honestly once the group has stopped changing shape every few weeks.
A laptop or tablet with a camera, and a room where your child can talk without the rest of the family chiming in.
Keeping the group safe
Decisions School is a group environment, so every child needs to be able to participate in a way that is safe and respectful for themselves and the other kids.
Before enrolment, I speak with every parent to make sure the group is an appropriate fit. If a situation comes up where a child is unable to participate safely or appropriately, I'll speak with the parent first and, where possible, work with them on a way forward.
If the child continues to be unable to participate safely or appropriately in the group, I may ask the family to leave the programme. This isn't about punishment or getting a child in trouble. It's about protecting the group's ability to be a place where kids can speak, disagree, practise, and make mistakes without feeling unsafe.
I'll handle these situations directly with the parent rather than discussing them with the group.
Who runs it
Every story we work on comes through me, whether it came from the kids in the room, from the parent community, or from a case I bring in. That's also why I speak to every parent before their child joins.
I'm Cathy. I've spent more than six years in marketing and I'm currently doing an MSc in behavioural economics, which is a polite way of saying I know how persuasion is built because I've built it.
Request an info sessionHow I teach
I've taught children before, and some of my favourite moments happened as they took something we'd practised and started using it somewhere I hadn't taught them to use it.
Once, I showed my kindergarten class what happens when you put a pen in a glass of water: the way light refracts can make the pen look bent or displaced.
I explained the ways sun-rays can either do that or reflect like a mirror.
A while later, we were reading a story about a bunny shocked at what it was seeing in a lake.
One of the kids, K., stopped and said it was the bunny's image in the water. Then he explained why: the rays and how light can behave in such a way.
He was 6.
He recognized the pattern himself and used it to make sense of something new.
The final year of kindergarten didn't include afternoon naps, and the kids were often exhausted by the afternoon.
So I taught them some simple breathing and meditation exercises to help regulate themselves.
D. had some health issues that sometimes made his ears hurt.
One day, he started using the breathing technique by himself when his ears hurt.
With zero prompting.
He remembered a tool we'd practiced together and reached for it when he needed it.
That's the part that matters to me: when the adult isn't there to supply the answer, the child still has something to reach for.
01
I taught the applied IT and business mathematics classes at FH SWF in Soest, Germany, while I was still a student myself.
02
Ages ago, I taught 2 generations of 5 years olds and helped them get into private or public German schools in Romania.
03
I've travelled alone on three continents, slept in the jungle in Thailand, hitchhiked in India and flown a paraglider in Colombia.
04
Married since 2019 and still very much in love with my husband, Alex, whom I learn something new from most weeks.
05
I've worked on more than ten digital offer launches for personal brands in the US, the largest of them making over $140,000 in sales.
06
I came across Kahneman at university, got thoroughly hooked, and have read everything I can find since about how we make decisions and why.
Groups start mid-October
There'll be a new app next year, and another one after that.
The platforms will change. The group chats will change. The ways people try to influence your child will change.
The ability to think critically and make their own decisions is what carries over.
to the next app, the next platform, the next group chat, and eventually, life beyond your supervision.
Request an info sessionInfo sessions before we start. Schedule announced 9 October.
97 EUR a month, six months minimum.
This is a parent-only session where I'll show you some of the influence tactics kids are exposed to, why they're difficult to spot, and how we practise responding to them in Decisions School.
I'll also explain why critical thinking matters beyond the internet, walk you through how the groups work, and leave plenty of time for your questions.
At the end, I'll explain how enrolment works if you decide you'd like your child to join. There's no need to decide during the session.