Saying no kindly
Every story idea is read before a word is written. The interesting part is not what we refuse. It is how the refusal is worded.
Ruth Delacroix
Trust and Safety
About one idea in ninety is turned down. Most are obvious and take no judgment at all. The interesting ones are the near misses: a story where a pet dies, a story about a bully, a story where nobody comes to the birthday party. None of those contain a banned word and all of them need care.
Two passes, on purpose
The first pass is a word list. It is fast, it costs nothing, and it catches the obvious. It is deliberately short, because a list long enough to catch every unkind idea also refuses the brave little baker who fights a dragon, and a dragon in a cozy story is fine.
The second pass is a model, asked to sort an idea into cozy, needs a gentler hand, or no, and to explain itself in one sentence a parent can read. Tone is not a keyword problem. That is the whole reason the second pass exists.
The wording matters more than the ruling
A parent typing a story idea at nine in the evening is doing something hopeful. Being told no by a children's product should not feel like being told off. So our refusal never repeats the idea back, never implies anything about the person who typed it, and always offers the next move: something lost and found, a small brave thing, a friend made in an unlikely place.
I read every refusal the system sends and rewrite the ones that sound cold. It is the part of this job I would keep if I could only keep one.