Psyche logo

Mindfulness and Relaxation Apps for Kids with Anxiety

These are the best apps for kids with anxiety to help calm them down.

By Jennifer VioletPublished 6 years ago 6 min read
Like

Having anxiety is terrible as it is, but when children go through it, it's the worst. Since their young minds can't always find ways to cope, it can really affect them. There are many ways for adults to cope with anxiety, but it's sometimes still not enough. Anxiety overall can be controlling; affecting your mind, behavior, and your body. That's why children with anxiety should be helped at their youngest age.

And there are tons of ways for children to overcome their anxiety. It just all comes down to what exactly works best for them. Many kids actually calm down when watching TV, playing video games, and even playing on the iPad. There are apps that help kids overcome anxiety and they're ideal for many young age groups. These app creators mastered the work of getting the kid's attention and managing to distract them from their anxiety. If your child struggles with anxiety, consider installing any of these great apps for kids with anxiety. Talk to your child's doctor for other solutions, as well.

If your child loves Sesame Street, then this free app is perfect for her. The app is designed to help your child's skills like problem solving, self-control, planning, and even task persistence. Taught by the colorful and funny monsters from Sesame Street, your child can calm down and solve everyday challenges.

She can touch and tap the monster friend to take deep breaths, think of plans, and try them out. The silly and humorous animations are exciting and distracting with playful interactions with the friendly monsters. She will also be taught important emotional vocabulary, calm breathing techniques, personalized encouragements, and much more.

From the best apps for kids with anxiety, DreamyKid is a meditation app that gives meditation methods, guided visualization, and affirmations curated ideal for kids and teens. The techniques that the app features shows the child how to live a happier and more mindful life.

The free app offers programs like dealing with sleeping problems, schoolwork, relaxation, focus, sports-preparation, ADHD/attention deficit disorder, and many more. It’s very simple to use, too. There are new meditations added monthly, so your child can always update their methods on how to stay calm and relaxed. As a plus, there are daily inspirational quotes and calming background music or nature sounds.

Mindful Minutes is one of the top apps for kids with anxiety to install on either the iPad or iPhone. It features a series of relaxing meditations that are mainly designed to help children calm down and focus on one simple activity while dealing with anxiety. It can help your child learn his own emotions, improve concentration, and also get into healthy habits from an early age.

While the app is $1.99, it comes with beautiful illustrations and pleasant music. The whole point is to hold either the star, fish, gem, or balloon and see if you can hold it for a minute without letting go. While doing this, soothing music plays in the background and your child can start to feel relaxed from his anxiety.

This app includes a five-minute guided meditation for children to learn how to sit, relax, and get rid of the thoughts that come to their heads. Positive Penguins also shows strategies to children to understand an event or situation and create an emotion for it, determining that an emotion is wrong or right in the situation. And once they acknowledge the emotion, your child can examine the thoughts and stories and help solve the situation’s problem.

The app also features full sound and text for your child to read. It can also pick up record responses instead of typing them in. Based on negative thoughts or negative stories, your child can overcome those situations and find the solutions to them. They can also apply what they learned from the app to themselves and their own problems.

Calm is seen to be the #1 app for mindfulness and meditation for anyone, even children. There are many reasons to use the Calm app. The app brings more clarity, joy, and peace to your daily life, and now it can do the same for your child with anxiety. Your child can sleep better, overcome their anxiety, and learn methods for great meditations with Calm.

As for one of the most useful apps for kids with anxiety, it’s the perfect app for beginners in meditation. It features hundreds of programs for both intermediate and advanced users. Some of the topics from the app are calming anxiety, focus and concentration, happiness, deep sleep, self-esteem, forgiveness, commuting to work or school, and much more. There are even sleep stories to help your child fall asleep faster, nature sounds for relaxation, and breathing exercises.

Daniel Tiger's Grr-ific Feelings is a really fun and adorable app for kids with anxiety. This app teaches children all about their emotions. They can sing, play, and learn all different types of feeling with Daniel Tiger from the PBS series Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood. While the app isn't free, it features games like Trolley Game, Feelings Photo Booth, Sing-Along, and Drawing Easel.

Your kid can practice calming down, count numbers, and laugh with Daniel. She can also sing along to 18 songs that are featured on the app, encourage self-expressions, and even pose in the feelings photo booth. For any child who's a fan of Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood, this is seen to be one of the best apps for kids with anxiety.

Here’s another great meditation app that’s created by psychologists and educators to guide people and children’s lives into the right balance. The app features programs for all ages, from seven to nine years old and even grown adults. But among the apps for kids with anxiety, this is an amazing app that works very well with children.

Your child can focus on meditation strategies and also keep track with his emotions. The app mainly focuses on providing accessible, life-long tools for mindfulness meditation. It’s helped hundreds of individuals suffering with a lot of stress, pressure, and anxiety.

Yoga is one of the many methods of calming the mind and body. And this app guides children into practicing yoga for relaxation and distracts them from any form of stress and anxiety. Kids Yoga Deck features clear pictures and step-by-step instructions of yoga poses that are both very entertaining and relaxing at the same time. Designed for children from ages two and up, the child-friendly app helps kids strengthen their muscles and minds to relieve anxiety and any worried thoughts.

Through a 52 card deck filled with child-friendly yoga poses, the easy-to-follow methods and sequences can entertain your child and get them into practicing yoga often. Your child can easily flip through the deck and find which poses they want to try out.

Among the most helpful apps for kids with anxiety, Breathing Bubbles is an app that guides children into practicing how to release any tension and worries from their minds and leaving nothing but good feelings. It’s easy to use; your child can pick an emotion and rate how strongly they’re feeling that emotion. Then they can choose to either release a worry or gain joy.

When picking "Worry" and typing it in the bubble, your child can watch the bubble drift away while he’s breathing deeply with Manny the Manatee. But choosing "Joy," your child can type it into the bubble and the bubble will float toward your child while also breathing deeply. The free app teaches kids how to release any worries and receive joy!

Lastly among the best apps for kids with anxiety is emotionary. The free app guides all users through five primary emotions to discover the proper category of feeling. It also includes definitions paired back to the essentials and displayed so they can be compared. Your child can learn the vocabulary of emotions and apply it to themselves to express themselves better.

This quick and easy app to learn emotions features hundreds of simple definitions with full-sized expressive emoticons, and easy-to-compare definitions to find the right feelings. Your child can easily tell you what she's feeling once getting the hang of this amazing app.

product review
Like

About the Creator

Jennifer Violet

Bakes sweets ever Thursday and donates them to her local homeless shelter. Is an owner to five pugs and can count to 500 in French.

Reader insights

Be the first to share your insights about this piece.

How does it work?

Add your insights

Comments

There are no comments for this story

Be the first to respond and start the conversation.

Sign in to comment

    Find us on social media

    Miscellaneous links

    • Explore
    • Contact
    • Privacy Policy
    • Terms of Use
    • Support

    © 2024 Creatd, Inc. All Rights Reserved.