My Heddy: The Room, the Shelf, and Dressing Your Owl

My Heddy is your child's own little room inside the web tutor — the place their Heddy Points live. In it they see their owl level, browse the reward shop, look over a shelf of everything they've unlocked, and — the bit children love most — dress Heddy the owl in the outfits and scenes they've earned. It runs in the web tutor your child already uses, so there's no separate app and no child wallet; browsing is free, but any actual spend still goes through you. It's where the effort of a study week turns into something a child can see and enjoy.

Heddy is the snowy-owl mascot of aitutors.me. The My Heddy room makes her your child's Heddy — wearing what they've earned, standing in a scene they chose.

Where it lives

My Heddy sits inside the web tutor at aitutors.me — the browser-based tutoring surface your child signs into to study. It's a "room" alongside the tutoring rooms, so your child's points live exactly where they learn, with nothing extra to install.

There's a deliberate design point here worth knowing: because the web tutor runs in your family's signed-in browser session rather than a separate child account with a spending balance, your child can look at and want anything in the shop, but can't actually spend without your approval. That's what makes free browsing safe. The approval side is covered in Ask-to-Claim: Approvals That Keep You in Control.

The four things in the room

Once inside, your child has four calm places to go:

No area has a timer, a streak, or anything that punishes not visiting. A child can pop in for a minute after a session and leave — nothing decays while they're away.

Dressing Heddy — the heart of it

If there's one feature children come back for, it's this. Every reward your child unlocks isn't filed away in a list they forget about — it's worn. A scarf goes round Heddy's neck; a graduation cap sits on her head; an oak branch or a library appears as the scene behind her. Then, every time your child opens the room, there's their Heddy, dressed the way they made her.

Dress-up works in slots — head, neck, scene — and only shows items your child already owns, so it's a screen of pure play with no selling happening. Tap to wear or swap, and it saves automatically. It's the reason the rewards feel meaningful: the thing you earned is the thing you see, not an abstract number.

This is quietly deliberate. Research on what actually motivates children points again and again to identity and ownership — "this is my character, and it looks the way I made it" — which is why the reward you can wear beats the reward you can only count.

The shelf — a trophy cabinet, never a checklist

My shelf is the calm, proud view of everything your child has collected: the little sticker badges, the owl-level badges from the ladder, and any set-completion frames they've earned. It's laid out so that what they have is celebrated, and what they haven't yet reads as a shape waiting to be filled — a soft outline, never a padlock.

That framing runs right through the child-facing surfaces. The shelf shows subjects and achievements, but never a "struggled" rating next to your child's name — the honest performance read stays on your side of the glass, in your dashboard. A child sees encouragement; you see the full picture. (That two-views split is explained in Two Views, One Account.)

What the room deliberately avoids

The room is calm on purpose. So it doesn't have:

• No confetti-and-fanfare. A level-up is one warm line in the tutoring chat, not an interrupting popup or a sound.
• No countdowns or "only today". Prices are fixed; there's never urgency pressure.
• No mystery boxes. Every reward is exactly what it says — spend the points, get that item.
• No comparison. There's no leaderboard and nothing that pits your child against a sibling or anyone else.
• No down arrows. Nothing your child sees in the room ever goes backwards — no decay, no "points lost", ever.

The whole room follows the same rule as the points behind it: recognise effort, keep it kind, and never turn a quiet week into a loss. If you want the philosophy in full, How Heddy Points Reward Effort, Not Just Right Answers is the companion piece.

FAQ

Does My Heddy need a separate app or login for my child?

No. My Heddy is a room inside the web tutor at aitutors.me — the same browser your child already uses to study. There's no app-store download and no separate child wallet. It runs in your family's signed-in session, which is exactly why spending still needs your approval.

What can my child actually do in the My Heddy room?

See their owl level and points, browse the reward shop and ask to claim items, look at their shelf of unlocked badges and levels, and dress Heddy in the outfits and scenes they've earned. Dressing up is free play with things they already own — no spending happens there.

Is dressing Heddy up a distraction from studying?

It's designed to be a small, calm reward, not a game that competes with learning. There are no timers, no daily-login mechanics, and nothing that decays if they don't visit. Most children pop in for a minute after a session, then get on with their day.

Related reading

• The Seven-Owl Ladder: What Each Level Means
• Ask-to-Claim: Approvals That Keep You in Control
• How Heddy Points Reward Effort, Not Just Right Answers

Duke Harewood built aitutors.me for his own KS3-aged daughter. My Heddy is where a week of quiet effort becomes an owl in a scarf, standing in a library the child chose — small, and worth it. Updated 09 July 2026.