Tadpoles Parent Reviews

I love the convenience of TadpolesParent for daily checkin (we used to manually fill this info out on a sheet of paper at drop off) and ability to keep all my kids daily records in one place (gives me the ability to go back and check sleep habits of my infant etc). HOWEVER it’s buggy and doesn’t always update properly. I usually can close TadpolesParent and reopen, but this doesn’t always fix the problem.
Ideas for future updates-I would love the “food provided” section to be more user friendly (allow me to select multiple food items at a time or store meals that I often send together. Also I’d like to indicate which meal the food is intended for- for example I’d like yogurt served at “lunch” or as a “snack”. Right now teachers don’t know what food should be served when and just have to guess. Also it would be great if teachers could add reminders to TadpolesParent that “pop up” for parents when filling out info for the next school day. For example when we are asked to bring in more wipes, that message appears on the daily report, but might be missed or forgotten by tomorrow. I’d like the previous day’s teacher notes to pop up the next day while filling out that days drop of notes. Maybe even with a check box to indicate it was completed. Hope that makes sense!

It seems like most people are complaining about not getting updates all day long, those people are probably the reason the center has decided to NOT give updates ALL DAY LONG! If one small thing got missed or entered late, that parent would be constantly calling and asking why-another great reason parents can’t send messages ALL DAY LONG. The people entering information are taking care of children and teaching! Also, many centers need to approve pictures that go home because of confidentiality and privacy of other families. I like to know pictures of my children aren’t going home with other people if that is my preference and there is someone overseeing that. The only thing I don’t like about TadpolesParent , it seems like in the last year it has gotten slower, when I enter drop off notes it takes a long time to update and I have multiple children to leave notes about. I also would prefer notes for items needed came through in a push notification rather than getting missed in the daily report.

I was honestly shocked by the redesign - one day TadpolesParent looked very old and the next very modern. But it appears there were very few new features. In some instances the new interface is easier to use - buttons are bigger, but in other ways it is harder - you now need to toggle between children instead of seeing them all on one page and I haven’t yet figured out how to get all photos to show up on the same memories feed so if that functionality still exists it is at least not intuitive. The update was likely a massive undertaking and it is encouraging that TadpolesParent is being worked on, so I look forward to seeing improvements that consider things like multiple children especially (the filtering, and maybe making it easy to assign the same pickup time without having to scroll through and assign the time twice) or things like “frequent pickup time” suggestions so I don’t have to type the same time every day.

TadpolesParent is seriously lacking some basic functionality, specifically parent teacher communication via messaging. The closest thing I can find within this very basic app are ‘Drop Off Notes’. You can send a message but only before your kiddos are checked in. After check-in, drop off notes is no longer available! It’s not TadpolesParent of choice for communication between teachers and parents throughout the day. I get a photo notification during the day and sometimes a message that is usually some kind of overall center announcement and that is all. I can’t send a message and I don’t see what the kiddos are up to all day until they are checked out. A very lackluster app when compared to other similar apps out there.

If I could give 0 stars I would! My child was at another daycare that used another app & I loved it so much that when I had to change daycares I made sure they had an app but this one looks the same but I don’t get real time notifications like the other one did. Not knowing how my child is doing throughout the day when I have known constantly every diaper change, feeding, how long the nap was & got to view photos & videos throughout the day of the activities that they all did as a class put me at ease. This instead does nothing for me. It’s useless. I don’t know if any of the information is true or if the teacher just quickly added in the details before the daily report was sent out. Which in the end is making me want to just change daycares completely because I need this reassurance throughout the day. Not just one notification that I dropped off my own child! This is completely pointless & useless!

I love the idea of TadpolesParent, and want to use it in my own classroom (I’m an elementary teacher) however it seems like there are silly oversights. It’s hard to change the time in the past, and when you go back a day (say to put in the last time my baby had a bottle was last night) you can’t make the time scroll past midnight, you have to decrease the time increments by 5minutes which is wretchedly annoying when you have to do it for food, drink, sleep etc. Also in the notes section it’s hard to format your typing. The return button on my keyboard does not create a new paragraph but instead drops the keyboard. I am giving it 2 stars for potential, but I won’t give any more until those things are fixed.

It would be more helpful if I could choose an alternate view of my baby’s schedule. As is, I see all diapers in one section, all meals in one, and all naps in another. To make the most sense of the info, I’d like to be able to see it in chronological order so I don’t have to piece it together. That would be helpful in trying to figure out, for example, why she didn’t eat for 3 hours and then look to the other sections to ascertain that she was napping, etc.
Also can be a wee glitchy and the swiping of pics generally doesn’t work. And it takes a long time for the reports to load/refresh.
Would like a way to communicate with the teachers real time. As is, we have to text outside of TadpolesParent if we have questions for one another.

TadpolesParent is so unbelievably basic and has very few features. It’s nice that we can get picture and video updates throughout the day, but it would be really great to get real time updates of meals, diapers/potty, and sleep. As a parent you want to know how your child is doing with these things throughout the day. It’s very frustrating that you don’t get a full report of these things until the teacher signs them out at the end of the day. I often don’t know how my child ate until late at night after she has been home for a few hours. Pick up can be very hectic and you can’t get all the updates on your child with everything going on. Please. Please. Pleaseeee have real time updates for all aspects of TadpolesParent .

As many people have already said the ability to communicate with your child’s teachers throughout the day is more beneficial than getting everything all at once at the end of the day. His previous school would give us messages and updates throughout the day so that I had peace of mind that he was doing well but also they would let us know if he needed any new diapers or sunscreen or anything like that and then I could bring it when I picked him up instead of needing to remember for the next day that I dropped him off it was much more convenient, he also doesn’t go to school every day so if they gave us a notification that he was out of some thing it might be a couple days until I was at the school again and we need to remember to bring it

TadpolesParent is sorely lacking in basic functionality. There are three options in TadpolesParent : drop off notes (which you can enter, but can’t even view once the child has been dropped off), daily report (which is only available after the child has been picked up), and memories (for photos and PDFs from the center). There is no real option for communication (like a chat or email feature) and no way to check in on the child’s progress throughout the day; even though the teachers are presumably entering the information in real-time to go in the daily report at the end of the day. I know the choice of which app to use is up to the facility, but since Tadpoles appears to be widely used in childcare facilities, the company should improve/update TadpolesParent ’s basic features.

I haven’t read the reviews so I don’t know what prior complaints are about but for us, TadpolesParent works well for what it does. I like having all of my daughter’s drop off notes and fun photos from her day in one place and I also like being able to mark/report absences with a button touch. The ability to write daily notes is also nice. I’m deducting one star because the navigation is a little painful ie not as intuitive as perhaps it could/should be but TadpolesParent works well for the function it’s designed for in my opinion and as I’ve never had the ability to use an app for this purpose before I think it’s really cool.

I enjoy being able to have an app to receive pictures and log my child’s daycare information but I really want to be able to see real time updates instead of a published view once a day when they are picked up. It doesn’t add any value to me when it’s only published at pick up because that’s all info i could get from the teachers when i pick my child up. In order to add value i would want to be able to see these updates throughout the day when I’m not there talking to the teacher. This is especially true for infant parents who want to know how naps and feeding are going. Praying for an update with this addition to come.

It’s GLITCHY EVERYDAY. After a short period you have to pay for TadpolesParent . While I pay every month, I feel that it should work better then it does. Everyday I add stuff or the teacher adds stuff and it’s wrong or doesn’t show at all. Checks them out at 5pm at pick up and I don’t get a report until 7,8 or even 9. At that point I’ve already had to ask the teacher when my baby last ate/changed/got meds. It’s awful! On the days it does work, it’s nice and I love having the reports to check for trends in her bathroom habits but awful when I have to wait hours for the summary. They are quick to turn off TadpolesParent when you don’t pay, so why aren’t they quick enough to update it. Plus paying per kid and not a family membership is also stupid. Get it together.

We love the tadpole app because we it enables us to see what our little one is up to during the day. Well, most of the time. I hate that we have to wait for school to approve and release the photos/videos before we can view them. Kind of makes you feel like there’s something to hide. Also, I have an iPhone and for whatever reason, which I hate, I can never hear any audio on videos. I also wish this the daily report would update in real time for parents so you know exactly what’s going on rather than having to wait for a daily report to be release. TadpolesParent has such great potential...it could definitely use some tweaks. I

It’s great to see pics throughout the day of my little one. However, I wish I could comment on the pics or have general communication with my child’s teacher’s through TadpolesParent throughout the day. I have used the KinderCare app at a different KinderCare location and preferred it. I’m not sure why this particular location uses Tadpole instead. With the KinderCare app Teachers and the Director were able to send important messages and give me updates throughout the day and even gave reports on diaper changes and feedings. Unfortunately, this Tadpole app doesn’t have that same capability. The “drop off” communication section just doesn’t cut it.

Our 8 month old baby recently started preschool and they use Tadpoles. From a mom and dad perspective, we love it. Getting the pictures through the day are a joy (and a relief in knowing she’s doing well). And seeing the tags to the learning objectives is awesome (her former-teacher grandmother loves see those each day). And then getting the Daily Reports at the end of the day are oh-so-helpful in knowing when and how long she slept, how she ate, what skills she worked on learning, etc…. From a dad of an 8 month old bundle-of-awesomeness, Tadpoles is fantastic and we love that her center uses it.

For families with two users, the Tadpole folks introduced some kind of change that results in one parent getting certain notifications and the other parent getting other notifications. This happens with communications sent from teachers/admins via TadpolesParent as well. I don’t receive any of the emails. My wife gets them all. We used to both get them. They’re not in spam and we both have email accounts with Microsoft so it’s not an issue on the receiving end. I get notifications of drop-off. My wife doesn’t. My wife get app notifications of pickup and day-summaries. I don’t. I like TadpolesParent a lot but I’m incredibly frustrated by this CRITICAL bug that has existed for many months now and is experienced by most parents at our school.

But TadpolesParent is essentially unusable at this point. Whatever update happened was very bad and I can’t even use this anymore. I rely on email notifications and open them up in a browser instead. I had zero problems with TadpolesParent for the first 4 months using it. Then something happened and it started directing me to the parent version as I was somehow now using the employer version? But the parent version is this and it’s just utter crap. It’s stuck on November 24. Will not show me any other date and has no ability to do such. Nothing works or is responsive to tapping except the same stupid articles that never go away and have been there since. How has this not been fixed

Where to start... TadpolesParent looks like it was developed by kids at the daycares that use it. User interface is clunky and barely functional and looks like it was designed in Windows 95. Super basic functionality is missing (Teacher messaging, user options, notes after check-in, changing primary contact, push notifications) and what functionality is actually there barely works or doesn’t work at all. I’m considering changing daycares just because of how bad TadpolesParent is. Seriously, if I could give negative stars I would. And if the developers of TadpolesParent are reading this - contact me directly, because I’d love to tell you even more how much I hate this poor excuse of an app.

Well TadpolesParent does work in terms of the user friendliness it is terrible. It needs to have a better graphic user interface that is laid out in a way that is efficient. It’s just kind of mucky. It’s basically split into three parts which is tiled across the page: first is the “Drop Off Notes” were you add notes and health screenings. The second tile is the report for the day and the third is labeled as “memories” and should just be labeled as “photos”. Some of the photos are also in the daily report labeled as “snapshots” but are unscrollable, unlike the ones in “Memories”. Heirarchy of info can be better as well as navigation .

Tadpole allows me to stay connected with my son during my work day so I don’t miss special moments. What would make TadpolesParent better is improving the notifications and notes to make sure I don’t miss important reminders, asks or health updates. On several occasions I’ve missed notes for supplies. Notification should be more persistent. We are inundated with notifications from various apps all day. How can we make Tadpole standout? Give us the option to if necessary have to check a box or confirm receipt of note. Given the matter, I think parents would be okay with better features.

It seems that every update TadpolesParent gets worse and worse. It used to be a splendid app. That is quickly going downhill. Because of the recent iPhone X updates, older iPhones like my 7 got left behind. I recently got a replacement phone and because of the iPhone X photo updates. TadpolesParent no longer request access to photos properly on the iPhone 7. So the memories feature of TadpolesParent is worthless to me. I can download any of my kiddos photos because of it. Every time I try to download a photo, when a normal app would request access to photos and you’d click allow. TadpolesParent just crashes. Pitty. It used to be good.

Our daycare began using this when our first was about 9 months old. She graduated pre-k there last spring and no one told us that all her photos would just disappear 90 days later. Luckily I was able to have our provider make her an active student again so that I can save more photos and videos of her (within 90 days).. BUT, it would be ideal if the photos would stay in TadpolesParent indefinitely as a digital scrapbook/memory book. This way they’ll continue to stay in one place, nicely organized by month and year. And when she’s older she can scroll through these precious photos of her daily life in preschool.

Absolutely needed feature: teacher’s notes that diapers or wipes are gone should be a prominent message on the home screen, not buried in notes from a daily report. On numerous occasions we have had to run to the store after dropping her off.
One bug I’ve noticed is that some photos from TadpolesParent have the download button visible and others do not.
It doesn’t seem very user friendly from the teacher’s side, since the number of ounces of formula drank and the number offered is entered in different ways or isn’t complete, leading to incorrect information or confusion.

I have been using TadpolesParent for over 4 years. It have been great, consistent and always improving. My only wish was that there was a way to groups download photos and videos. My kids have recently graduated from preschool and so I’d like a way to capture them without having to save each one separately. I’d also like to be able to save videos where there are other kids too after a certain number of years passed.

Update: app stopped working, telling me I need to download the Parents app, which I've been using all along. Reinstalled, again, same error: can't access anything any more. This keeps getting worse. One star. Thanks for entertaining me with a few fake 5-star reviews, though.

Original entry (two stars). TadpolesParent looks like it was designed as a toddler classroom project - or maybe it's a Windows 3.1 program? Everything from design to functionality is awkward and looks like an alpha version. How about learning basic UI design? Why must I sign in through Google with my Google email? No right to privacy? Whoever did the pitch for this at my daycare got lucky for getting the contract.

TadpolesParent is ok but could be so much better. The one thing I really wish it was able to do is to show real time info on naps and meals. There are days when I might slightly adjust my pick up time if he is napping, for example. The ability to get push notifications on this would be great but at a minimum it would be nice to be able to see the daily report as it is in process rather than only at the end of the day when the teacher sends it.

TadpolesParent is very helpful in keeping teachers and parents on the same page. I have been using it for about 3 months now. Only one small bug I have noticed within the past few days is when I try to update the contact info for that day, TadpolesParent doesn’t update. I have been adding that info in the “Notes” section but it would be great if that feature was working again. Thank you for the great app!