20+ yearsWorking with children, adolescents & families
100+ schoolsExperience with international schools across Asia
US-trainedPhD in Clinical Psychology · Ohio University
TrilingualEnglish · Cantonese · Mandarin
The challenge for schools
More families need support. Bilingual counseling capacity is limited.
As schools welcome growing Chinese-speaking parent communities, English-language resources alone may not meet every family’s needs. A small bilingual counseling team can face more parent questions than it has time to address.
A language gap
Parents may feel more comfortable discussing sensitive family concerns in Cantonese or Mandarin. Schools need ways to make everyday guidance accessible across languages.
Repeated everyday questions
Homework, routines, boundaries, and parent–child conflict can lead to recurring requests for support, alongside the counseling team’s work with students.
Limited time for follow-up
Helping parents try a strategy, checking how it went, and adjusting the approach takes time—particularly when bilingual staff are already stretched.
Where Ask Dr Minna aims to help: practical AI parenting guidance and structured follow-up, with English, Cantonese, and Mandarin support planned. The school pilot will explore whether this can help meet families’ everyday needs while complementing counselors’ work.
Hong Kong research highlights pressures at home and children’s mental health needs. Alongside international-school research on access to counseling, it helps schools consider how to support families.
Hong Kong · Parenting pressures70.8%
Everyday conflict is a major stressor
70.8% of primary-school parents and 55.3% of secondary-school parents selected conflict with their children over parenting matters—including communication, routines, and schoolwork—as a main source of stress.
CUHK Project CLOVER: 7,864 parent responses across 27 schools, September 2024–December 2025; published 2026. This question: 933 primary and 6,296 secondary parents; up to three choices. CUHK · Survey findings and charts ↗
Hong Kong · Student wellbeing24.4%
Children’s mental health needs
In a CUHK survey of 6,082 school-attending children aged 6–17, 24.4% experienced at least one mental health issue during the previous 12 months.
Survey conducted 2019–2023; findings published November 2023. Mental health conditions require appropriate professional care. CUHK Medicine · Survey findings ↗
International-school insight
Support must feel accessible
A 2026 interview study with nine international-school parents identified stigma, communication gaps, and fragmented collaboration as barriers to counseling support. Parents valued cultural sensitivity.
The Hong Kong findings are not specific to international schools. Project CLOVER participation was voluntary and anonymous; its results describe participating schools, not all Hong Kong families.
What does this mean for family loyalty?
NAIS’s 2026 Parent Perceptions of School Climate report examines how parents’ school experiences relate to school loyalty, including willingness to recommend, and perceptions of their children’s mental health. This makes the family experience a relevant leadership concern. Read the NAIS research overview ↗
These sources do not establish how much parental stress causes families to leave international schools. Recommendation and loyalty measures are different from actual re-enrollment. Ask Dr Minna’s pilot will explore parents’ experience of everyday guidance and follow-up; effects on wellbeing, counselor workload, or retention have not yet been established.
Ask Dr Minna offers everyday parenting guidance and does not treat mental health conditions or replace school counselors. The research above describes the need for support, not tested outcomes of this platform.
The parent experience
Support beyond the first suggestion.
A strategy is a starting point. Ask Dr Minna is being developed to help parents try, reflect, and refine their approach over time.
01 / Share
Describe the challenge
Parents chat with the AI coach about their child and an everyday parenting concern.
02 / Try
Take a practical step
The coach draws on Dr Chau’s parenting knowledge base to suggest strategies to try at home.
03 / Reflect
Share how it went
An email reminder encourages parents to log in and report what helped and what was difficult.
04 / Refine
Adjust the approach
The AI coach uses parents’ feedback to refine its suggestions and guide the next step.
Everyday family life
Real questions. Practical starting points.
The platform is being developed to help parents explore common challenges and put parenting guidance into practice.
AI-generated illustrative family scene.
Homework routines and procrastination
Bedtime and daily routines
Boundaries and responding to resistance
Sibling disagreements
Parent–child communication
Managing frustration in difficult moments
A closer look
Explore the interactive demo.
Meet Dr Chau’s digital guide. The demo offers a voice conversation of up to five minutes to explore a parenting question and find a video from Dr Chau’s approved library.
This preliminary demo illustrates part of the parent experience. The full follow-up journey is still in development.
With thanks to Sam Yeung, Dr Minna’s fellow student, and Pui Ching Middle School for their support in building this preliminary demo.
Talk it through.
Try a fictional parenting scenario.
Open the interactive demo ↗Opens in a new tab · Microphone access may be requestedPlease use fictional details, without identifying a child. General educational support, not clinical care.
Early design preview
A first look at the platform.
See the proposed parent experience, bringing AI conversations, parenting videos, and practical resources together. Parents can choose how they receive support.
Swipe sideways to explore the designs, or open the full-size image to zoom.
Early design preview supplied by Dr Minna. Layout and features may change as development continues. Conversations are generated by the AI parenting coach; Dr Minna does not personally answer parents’ questions.
For school communities
Help shape support for your parents.
For schools serving Chinese-speaking families with limited bilingual counseling capacity, Ask Dr Minna is being developed as an additional source of everyday parent guidance and follow-up. The pilot will help us understand how it can fit alongside existing school services.
What we want to learn with schools
Parents’ confidence in managing everyday parenting challenges.
Whether parents find the guidance clear, relevant, and practical.
Parent engagement through login activity and returning to share progress.
How this support could fit alongside your existing services.
We welcome input from principals, counselors, and parent engagement teams.
Dr Minna Chau · Creator of Ask Dr Minna
The expertise behind Ask Dr Minna
Meet Dr Minna Chau.
A trilingual, US-trained clinical psychologist with over 20 years of experience supporting children, adolescents, and families—and working with more than 100 international schools across Asia.
Her specialisms include child and adolescent psychology, neuropsychology, parent–child interaction, and neurodiversity, including ADHD, autism, and specific learning difficulties.
Founder of Sprout in Motion in Hong Kong, Dr Chau holds a PhD in Clinical Psychology from Ohio University and is a Diplomate in School Neuropsychology with the American Board of School Neuropsychology.
Registered Clinical Psychologist, Hong Kong Institute of Clinical Psychologists – Accredited Register.
Full member of the Clinical Division, Hong Kong Psychological Society.
Former clinical supervisor for the University of Hong Kong’s Master of Counseling program and a psychology doctoral program in Hong Kong.
Clinical knowledge, delivered through AI. Dr Chau creates the platform’s parenting content with assistance from a large language model (LLM), using defined restrictions and red-flag guidelines. The programme is in development for English, Cantonese, and Mandarin. Conversations and suggestions are generated by AI; Dr Chau does not personally answer parents’ questions. Dr Chau will review every conversation periodically under her review guidelines; the review schedule and response arrangements will be confirmed before the pilot. This is not real-time emergency monitoring; parents should seek urgent help from local emergency services when needed.
Clear boundaries
Parenting guidance, with limits.
Ask Dr Minna provides parenting education and guidance for everyday concerns. It does not provide diagnosis, clinical assessment, therapy, or emergency support.
When a concern goes beyond parenting guidance, the coach is designed to direct parents to local professional services or emergency assistance.
AI responses can be incomplete or mistaken. Parents should use their judgment and seek qualified professional support when needed.
Privacy & data security
Family privacy. School confidence.
Schools need clarity about how family information is handled before introducing an AI parenting service. Privacy, data security, and local requirements are central to the pilot planning conversation.
Our pilot privacy commitments: parent chats are not used for model training, and school reporting is limited to an overview of common concerns. Hosting location, retention periods, and detailed security arrangements are being finalized before the pilot.
Parent chats stay out of model training
Parent conversations are not used to train AI models. The AI coach draws on Dr Chau’s parenting knowledge base to provide guidance.
Responses are generated by AI, not personally written by Dr Chau. Dr Chau will review every conversation periodically under her review guidelines. The review schedule and response arrangements will be confirmed before the pilot. This is not real-time emergency monitoring.
School insights, without individual data
Schools receive an overview of common parenting concerns one month after the pilot starts and again at its conclusion.
This reporting does not include individual parent or child data, or individual chat transcripts. Parents are encouraged to contact their school directly about concerns they want the school to know about.
Clear decisions before the pilot
Singapore, Malaysia, and Hong Kong are under consideration for hosting; a final location has not been selected.
Parents can withdraw at any time and request deletion of their account. Data retention periods and the timing and scope of deletion are still being finalized before the pilot.
Internal access: access to parent conversations is restricted to Dr Minna and authorized IT staff who have signed confidentiality agreements. Any processing by AI, avatar, voice, and hosting providers will be documented separately before parent enrollment.
For school review before participation: the final hosting and processing locations, AI-provider arrangements, access permissions, encryption, retention and deletion rules, and security incident procedures. Technical safeguards and any compliance requirements must be reviewed before launch.
Bring your school’s requirements.
We welcome questions from your leadership, counseling, IT, and data protection teams. Pilot availability remains subject to applicable AI and data protection requirements in your country or region.
School interest form: registration takes place in Google Forms. Dr Minna Chau uses the details submitted to follow up on your inquiry and pilot arrangements. Please do not submit information identifying a child or individual family. For questions about your response, contact drminna@sproutsmotion.ai.
Taking part · School pilot
A shared commitment. Two months of learning.
We invite schools to recruit 50 parents or caregivers of kindergarten and primary-school children for a free, two-month pilot planned to begin in February 2027. Parents use the platform; children do not participate directly.
No costFree school pilot
2 monthsPilot participation
30 minutesAI chat per parent, per month
Under 10 minutesFor each survey, before and after
The school’s role
The coordinator’s involvement is intended to focus on initial parent recruitment and consent.
Nominate a school coordinator.
Recruit 50 parents or caregivers of kindergarten and primary-school children.
Help distribute consent materials and coordinate completion before participation.
The pilot is open to parents and caregivers of kindergarten and primary-school children, subject to local availability requirements. The 50-parent limit per school reflects pilot costs, not a clinical selection process. The service remains limited to everyday parenting guidance.
The parent’s experience
Choose how you receive support. Browse Dr Minna’s parenting videos and practical resources at your own pace, speak with the AI parenting coach, or use both. No avatar conversation is required to access the resource library.
Sign in with an email address to return to previous progress.
Videos and resources are free throughout the pilot and do not count towards the 30-minute monthly chat allowance.
Use up to 30 minutes of chat with the AI parenting coach each month. Each session begins with up to five minutes of video with Dr Minna’s AI avatar, then continues by voice within the remaining monthly allowance.
Try relevant suggestions and return to share progress.
Keep the child’s name and other identifying details out of conversations.
Complete one survey before and one after the pilot, each taking less than 10 minutes.
Withdraw at any time and request deletion of the account.
Support and next steps
The IT team handles technical problems.
The review guidelines flag self-harm, suicidal thoughts or ideation, and suicide plans. Dr Chau will review every conversation periodically. The review schedule and response arrangements are being finalized; this is not real-time emergency monitoring or a substitute for urgent local help.
Local emergency support information will be selected using the school’s location or city. Parents who are elsewhere should seek help appropriate to their current location.
Parents are encouraged to alert their school directly when they want school support. The platform is not an emergency service and makes no diagnosis.
Parents’ feedback will help refine the full platform, planned for launch in August 2027.
We will assess parent confidence, engagement through login activity, and the perceived usefulness of guidance. Survey feedback helps improve the product; parent chats are not used for model training.
Email sign-in supports continuity, so participation is not anonymous. Avoiding a child’s name helps reduce identifying information but does not make a conversation anonymous. Account deletion procedures, timing, and data retention arrangements will be explained before participation.
We are speaking with school leaders and counseling teams as we prepare the Ask Dr Minna pilot.
Free two-month pilot · Planned February 2027
For 50 parents or caregivers of kindergarten and primary-school children per participating school. Includes 30 minutes of AI chat per parent each month, plus free access to parenting videos and resources during the pilot. Browsing resources and watching videos do not use the chat allowance.
Share your priorities and express interest in a demonstration or a conversation about the pilot.
Participation depends on local requirements. Any pilot is subject to applicable AI and data protection laws and regulations in the school’s country or region. Availability and eligibility must be confirmed before participation. Registering interest does not guarantee access, commit your school to participate, or create a purchase obligation.
School pilot sign-up
Register your school’s interest
Leave your details in our short Google Form. We will follow up about participation and the free, two-month pilot planned for February 2027.
Opens Google Forms in a new tab. Registration is an expression of interest, with no purchase obligation or guarantee of participation.
Dr Minna Chau will use your details to follow up on your inquiry and pilot arrangements. Please do not include information identifying a child or an individual family.
