Technology Tips for Kids: Use Apps and Games to Prepare Your Child for New Experiences

Technology is all around us and is part of our daily lives. Your child will encounter technology at an early age, so building a healthy relationship with technology needs to start now. Our Tech Tip for Kids will help you set your child up for success. 

Today’s Tech Tip for Kids is: Use apps and games to prepare your child for new experiences

For your child, just about any experience they have early on is going to be a new experience. These experiences can be very unsettling, of even scary, for young children. However, you can use technology to talk through these sometimes difficult topics and help ease their fears by preparing them for what they can expect from the experience. 

New experiences can range from the mundane, like getting their first haircut or their first social experience, to the more intense, like going to the doctor and getting their shots for the first time or going on their first airplane ride. Apps and games can help give your child perspective on all kinds of new experiences, taking the fear away from what they don’t know and giving them an idea of what they can expect. 

Playing the game or using the app together with your child gives you the opportunity to talk with your child and talk about what is going to happen. The app will help your child associate the new experience with fun and your reassurance will help keep them just imagining the worst.  

Finally, be intentional about using technology for this purpose. Make sure you are available to supplement the app or game and able to answer your child’s questions about the experience both before and after. Just using tech as a distraction doesn’t help your child fully understand the new experience nor does it assuage your child’s fears. 

Nothing can replace a parents soothing words when a child goes through new experiences, but using the right apps and games can go a long way to helping them understand what is happening and helping them cope better.