Rehearse the tricky momentbefore they live it.

Photos are used only to generate your story. They are stored securely, never sold, and never used to train public AI models. You can delete your library anytime. For the full story, see our Your Photos page.

Totally fine — and a lot of parents choose this. Instead of uploading a photo, you describe your child in a sentence or two (hair, skin tone, glasses, favourite outfit, anything that helps them feel seen). Lionmain creates a warm 2D cartoon-style likeness and uses that on every page. It's still built around your child and the real people and places you name, still follows the same social story structure, and still arrives as both a printable PDF and an auto-playing video. Some families prefer the cartoon version even when they could upload — it can feel softer for sensory-sensitive kids who don't love seeing photos of themselves.

Yes. Every story is delivered as both a printable PDF and a gentle auto-advancing video — so on the days your child would rather watch than read, the same story still lands. The video plays on any phone, tablet, or TV; no extra app needed.

When your story is ready, you'll get a download button for an MP4 video alongside the PDF. It's a calm, auto-advancing slideshow of the same story pages — think of it like a quiet, self-running PowerPoint — with on-screen captions for every page. The file saves to your device's normal downloads folder, so you can play it from your camera roll, AirPlay or cast it to the TV, send it via Messages or email, or drop it into a tablet for the car. It's especially helpful for kids who lean on screens during dysregulation, are pre-readers, find sitting still with a book hard, or are having a low-energy day where watching feels possible but reading doesn't. Voice narration is coming soon; today's videos play silently with captions so you can add your own voice, or let your child watch in a quiet moment.

No. Lionmain is a parenting tool that creates everyday visual stories. We don't diagnose or treat anything, and we always defer to your child's therapy team and medical professionals.

You absolutely can ask ChatGPT to write a social story — but there are three reasons parents come to Lionmain instead. First, privacy: pasting your child's photo into ChatGPT or Gemini means it may be stored and used to train the next public model. Lionmain runs on a private developer pipeline that explicitly bans training on your child's data, so their face never enters a public model. Second, the output: ChatGPT gives you a wall of text you then have to format, illustrate, and turn into something a dysregulated child will actually engage with. Lionmain gives you a finished printable PDF and an auto-playing video, built on standard social story structure, with your child's own face on every page. Third, the cognitive load: there's no prompt engineering, no copy-pasting, no fiddling with image generators at 9pm. You answer a few gentle questions and the story is ready in 3 to 5 minutes — designed by a neurodivergent parent for the way our brains actually work on hard days.

Most social story tools use generic illustrations or cartoon characters. That genuinely works for some kids — but plenty of children can't see themselves in a cartoon, and if your child looks at a clip-art figure and shrugs, the story never lands. Lionmain creates photo-realistic scenes from a photo of your actual child: you add a photo, and they appear as themselves throughout the story — their face, walking into the dentist visit, the new classroom, the birthday party. For kids who need to see it to believe it's about them, that's the whole difference. (We also have an illustrated mode for families who prefer it.)

Free templates are a great starting point, and for some situations they're all you need. The gap is that they're generic: someone else's child, someone else's dentist, someone else's morning. Lionmain builds the story around your routine and your child in a few minutes — the specific appointment, the actual people, the real place — so there's no evening spent adapting a template that almost fits. It's the difference between a map of "a city" and a map of your street.

Never. Your first story is free, and after that you pay per story or per small bundle. Use it when you need it, skip it when you don't.

You change it before it costs you anything. The story generates, you read the whole thing, and you can redo any page you're not happy with. The credit is only used when you hit save, and saving is what unlocks the PDF and video downloads. Because the story is delivered straight away and you've already approved it before it saves, credits aren't refunded for change of mind or for not liking a saved result. If something goes wrong technically, email me and I'll sort it, usually by putting a credit back on your account. Nothing here limits your rights under Australian Consumer Law.

Lionmain runs on Google Firebase for accounts and storage, Stripe for payments, and Google AI to generate the story. That means some of your data is stored overseas, including in the United States, which is true of almost every app you use but you deserve to be told rather than reassured. Photos are sent to Google AI to make your story and aren't kept afterwards. Our privacy policy is written against the Australian Privacy Act 1988 and the Australian Privacy Principles, and if you're ever unhappy with how we've handled your information you can take it to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner.

Honestly, I don't know for certain. It may be claimable as a low-cost support depending on the plan and how it's managed, and I can't guarantee that. Check with your plan manager or support coordinator before you assume either way. I'd rather tell you I'm not sure than tell you something that turns out to be wrong at claim time.

3 to 5 minutes from start to finish, if you don't need to change anything. Most parents make their first one after the kids are asleep, just in time for tomorrow morning.

Most families use Lionmain for children roughly 3–10, but anyone who benefits from visual previews of new routines can use it.