My Child New Beginnings choices are made through selectable dialogue options and through the ordinary decisions you take while parenting. They sit in three layers, and each one has a different reach: the opening attitude questions set the direction of the whole playthrough, everyday replies move the child's trust and mood, and the decisions inside a chapter decide which chapters you are offered afterwards.
On this page
The My Child New Beginnings choices, in three layers
Layer one - the opening setup. You pick the child, Klaus the boy or Karin the girl, and drag them into the photo frame. Then you pick a teaching direction by dragging one of three pictures into the frame - a lively one, a scholarly one, or a bold one. After that come the attitude questions:
How you treat the child when she is sick or injured.
Your attitude as a single parent with tight money.
Your attitude when the child is badly bullied at school.
What you do when the child holds on to or gives up a difficult friendship.
What you do when the child meets a difficulty or a challenge.
"When everything comes crashing down, how do you expect the child to be?"
What your biggest wish for the future is.
Layer two - the everyday choices. Whether to correct the child's diction when they misuse a phrase. Whether to fix a problem yourself or coax the child into learning the task themselves. Whether to take an overtime shift at work, which brings a little more money but takes time away from the child. Whether to push the child to go to school when they are anxious. And how you answer when they ask about their past.
Layer three - the chapter decisions. These are the ones the story turns on, and the values they move are reported at the end of every chapter.
Layer two: the everyday choices
A reply to the child is always a pick from several on-screen options, and the right one depends on the child's current emotional state - anxiety, frustration or anger. Encouraging responses build trust and raise confidence and openness, while blame and repeated scolding raise withdrawal and a refusal to communicate. Answering with honesty about the difficult realities rather than deflecting increases the child's trust in you.
That is the whole scoring system for the middle layer, and the daily care that keeps the child stable is here.
The chapter decisions and where they appear
| Chapter | The decision |
|---|---|
| Chapter 7 "Lucky Day" | You find 500 coins on the way home from school. Keep them or give them away. |
| Chapter 8 "A Musician is born" | The child comes home clutching a guitar lesson pamphlet, practically begging to sign up. Push them to stick it out or let them walk away. |
| "Far From Home" | How far the child is allowed to wander toward the forest is decided by you. |
| The bullying chapter | Reprimand the child for what happened, or let them open up about it. |
| "A Secret", when the teacher visits | "You will not skip any more classes and that is that", "You need to promise me to try", or "You can skip classes, but you will tell me when". |
| Talking about school | "Tell me what's going on with you. I can't help if you're not being honest", "We really need to talk about what the problem is with school for you", or "I don't think we need to talk about what the problem is for school because we already know what the problem is". |
| Setting a goal | Observe three other children, try to join in an activity, or talk to the teacher. The three classmates are a loud and lively girl, a quiet girl who reads and draws, and a boy who looks frightening. Learning one of their names adds them to the relationship list and unlocks a later chapter where the child befriends them. |
These are the chapter decisions, and the ones that quietly go wrong are listed here.
How choices change the story you get
Which chapters appear depends partly on your prior choices and on prerequisite steps - you cannot adopt a fish before buying an aquarium for it - and partly on the child's personality, because a child who really enjoys playing guitar is much more likely to be offered guitar chapters.
The world keeps a record of it. A notebook tracks drawings, advice and task prompts, and a photo album on the bedroom desk records past events, milestones and the people the child gets to know, including the new home, the neighbour's child Ali, and "Classmate Sarah and friends". Unlocking as many of the child's drawings as possible in that album matters for triggering later chapters.
At the end of every chapter the game reports the four values it tracks - Empathy, Optimism, Assertiveness and Trust - and compares your run with other players, so the cumulative effect of your answers is visible. How those values are read out is here, and the choices that quietly go wrong are here.
FAQ
What are the three need meters?
Entertainment, cleanliness and hunger. They sit in the top-right of the screen and turn red when a need becomes critical, and the child's mood is tracked on a separate axis.
Do I choose a boy or a girl?
You adopt one of two preteens, Karin or Klaus. The story follows the two of you two years after a series of traumatic events, as you move into a proper home in a new village in Norway.