Best wellbeing apps for kids

Me: A Kid’s Diary by Tinybop, £2.99, Apple

This interactive app will inspire your child to learn more about themselves and the people around them. It’s designed to build self-awareness, self-confidence, empathy and kindness through a range of different journaling techniques.

Children start by creating their own avatar, personalising it with their skin colour, hairstyle, eye colour, and so on. They then click the thought cloud, which unleashes a new question or prompt to encourage them to think about who they are and what makes them tick.

Prompts include: ‘this is my favourite place to hide,’ ‘this is my favourite book,’ ‘this is what I really want for my birthday,’ and ‘this is what my family will look like when I grow up.’ They can record their answers in a whole host of different ways, including drawings, photos, text, animations and voice recordings.

These are all stored on a ‘map’ of who they are, and they can click each pinpoint to read or edit their previous answers. There are hundreds of questions in all, allowing your child to build a fully interactive profile and grow in their sense of identity.

FOCUS On The Go!, free, Apple and Android

FOCUS stands for Families Overcoming Under Stress, and this app aims to teach resilience – a key part of mental wellbeing – to every member of the family. It helps your child develop five essential skills: problem-solving, goal-setting, communication, emotional regulation, and managing trauma and stress.

The Play section is where your child is likely to spend most of their time, with three different games, including Bear Necessities, where your child has to build a track to roll a ball from top to bottom of the screen, testing their problem-solving ability and perseverance, and Feeling Finder, where they have to find emotion words in a wordsearch and then rate them on a scale from positive to negative.

The Comic Creator function, where your child can build cartoon strips involving their own characters and storylines, will help them share their ideas and feelings.

There’s an extensive Resources section, with useful tools such as Feeling Foxes (expressive cartoon foxes with feeling words that help children name their emotions) and deep breathing and meditation exercises to work through with your child, along with videos and articles on subjects such as how to hold a family meeting.

The Resilience Surveys, which can be taken by you, your child, or the whole family, are also helpful in showing how you’re getting on with building resilience.

Three Good Things, free, Apple

Evidence suggests that if you write three good things down every day, your happiness and positivity increase. This simple little app is a great way for your child to record what they’re grateful for.

Each day, the app prompts them to think about what went well, with three boxes to type their comments in. They can add them all at once at the end of the day, or as they happen. They get to level up for recording their thoughts on streaks of consecutive days, and can look back at their history to remind themselves of the things they’re thankful for.

Over time, the app will train your child to look for things to appreciate and make the practice of gratitude a habit.

Headspace for Kids, £9.99 per month, £74.99 per year, or £399.99 lifetime, Apple and Android

Headspace is one of the UK’s best known mindfulness apps for adults, and it has plenty to offer children, too. The theory is that teaching them meditation at an early age sets them up for life.

You can select guided mindfulness activities according to your child’s age: under five, 6-8 or 9-12. You’re then given a range of categories to choose from: Appreciation, Balance, Happiness, Sleep, Calm, Kindness, Paying Attention, and Wake Up. There's also a Back to School collection to help ease classroom anxiety. 

The activities use examples and objects that are appropriate to your child’s age. For example, one meditation involves visualising a balloon tied to each limb and floating gently into the air; another uses their favourite toy as a prop, balanced on their stomach to help them focus on their breathing.

Meditations are short for younger children – as little as one minute – to reflect their limited attention span, and increase in length as they get older. They’re voiced by ‘Andy,’ who has a clear, no-nonsense manner that’ll help children understand what they need to do.

Your subscription also includes access to the full range of meditations for adults, so you can reap the benefits, too.

Moshi: Sleep and Mindfulness, seven-day free trial then £39.99 per year, Apple and Android

Moshi: Sleep and Mindfulness is designed to help children fall asleep, featuring a cast of cute Moshi Monsters: especially helpful for kids who struggle to settle at bedtime, or feel anxious about going to sleep.
 
The app has four different categories to help ease your child into sleep: stories, meditations, music and sounds. The stories have a variety of themes to appeal to children, including transport, animals, Vikings and mermaids, and are narrated by well-known voices such as Patrick Stewart, Goldie Hawn and Brian Blessed.
 
The music category features relaxing classical pieces, while meditations guide your child through exercises to help them feel sleepy. If you’d prefer your child to listen to calming sounds, you can choose from options like raindrops, waves and cats purring. There are also short meditative relaxations (Moshi Moments) that your child can use whenever they feel anxious, and deep breathing exercises.
 
Moshi: Sleep and Mindfulness is primarily an audio app to stop kids getting distracted by animations when they should be sleeping. Most recordings last around 30 minutes, so there’s plenty of time for your child to drift into sleep.