4 Kids Anxiety Apps To Share with Parents

Kids anxiety apps are changing how parents help their children

Parents of young children suffering from anxiety will do anything to help them feel better. No one likes to see a child suffer, but when it’s your own, and you can do nothing to ease their pain, it’s excruciating. However, since there isn’t an operation manual for parenting, they often turn to you as their therapist for help. Since so many young children spend time with apps on their tablets or their parent’s phones, it may be helpful to suggest one or more of the following kids anxiety apps.

1. Calm Counter Social Story & Anger Management Tool

• iTunes: 2.99

Calm Counter gives a voice to children who may not know how or are too stressed to vocalize their feelings. It’s simple, without many bells and whistles, but can take an angry or anxious child to a calm state. The app opens up to an upset face that vocalizes “I need a break”. With every tap of the screen, the face becomes calmer. Children count backward from 10 and can manage their feelings without a parent or clinician’s help.

2. Positive Penguins

• iTunes: .99

Positive Penguins was created to help children identify and understand their own feelings. Children use pictures to identify emotions and work on expressing them via talking or typing. The app was created to help children understand that not all negative thinking or stories that create anxiety are true. The app helps children reframe their thinking and become more resilient in the face of anxiety.

3. Smiling Mind

• iTunes: Free
• Android: Free

Created by educators and psychologists, this app aims to bring balance into people’s lives. There are 72 modules, and 242 sessions that are directly related to education. Smiling Mind isn’t simply for kids who experience school-related anxiety either. While people of all ages can utilize it for stress relief, they’ve created age-specific modules to benefit children only.

4. Sleep Meditations for Kids

• iTunes: Free

For some children, the idea of sleep can be very anxiety producing. They may be unable to self-soothe and fall asleep on their own if they’ve developed bad sleeping habits. They may experience night terrors, insomnia, or feel scared to be away from their parents.

Created by Montessori teacher and Calm for Kids founder, Christiane Kerr, Sleep Meditations for Kids helps children to relax by blending storytelling with calming meditations.

Embrace An App the Child Enjoys

Does your child client watch the YouTube videos of people unwrapping plastic eggs to find out what’s inside? (Sounds different, but the kids love it!) Maybe he watches science cartoons on Netflix, or plays Tic-Tac-Toe against the “computer” on your phone. If a client finds stress relief in a kids app that might not be ideally considered a kids anxiety app, usage should still be encouraged.

One caveat: remind parents not to open apps that excite children. Playing Tic-Tac-Toe will calm and center one child, but Angry Birds or Temple Run may make him overly anxious. If you’re encouraging parents to allow their children to choose their apps, suggest they limit the choices to only the ones that will keep your client calm and collected.

These social anxiety apps will help your young clients when you aren’t around, but are you looking for an app that will run your practice for you? SimplePractice streamlines everything for you. Our interface lets you input the information you need, in just a few keystrokes. Try out SimplePractice today for free.