Bottom line: Tame Your Thought Monster is designed to help give kids (or even adults) the tools to learn to deal with fears or concerns by using positive self-talk. It could also be used as a tool to help encourage better behavior and social skills. This app includes opportunities for coloring and drawing to help a child express themselves, along with several options for kids to answer questions and fill in blanks to explore their thoughts.
If you'd like to purchase Tame Your Thought Monster ($1.99, iPad), please use the handy link below so they'll know who sent you.
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No ads, no in-app purchases, no external links
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Tame Your Thought Monster is an app that offers coloring, drawing, and interactive questions coupled with tips on how to learn positive self-talk to help kids (and adults) cope with items that are causing them anxiety or to help address behavior issues. There are characters that introduce different methods for kids to deal with issues that concern them and to help them learn to express the thoughts that they have.
Throughout the app there are cute characters and drawings that can be colored in by your child using the very basic coloring tools provided. Kids are also given the opportunity to draw independently and give form to their own "thought monster". There are also many places in the app where children are given the opportunity to answer questions and express their own thoughts in words, guided by the activities set forth in the app.
Watch Ellie bring this app to life here:
I felt like the concept of this app was to help kids learn to express themselves. By giving them an outlet to relay their thoughts, some of the fear and anxiety that they might be lessened. I support this concept and feel like if you are able to put it into practice that you might be able to help a child who is having difficulty communicating their worries otherwise. With a great deal of hand-holding I was able to see a bit of that with my own child, but independently this app didn't hold his interest for long. I do see this app more as a tool for teachers or parents than one that would be as effective independently.
What I liked:
- I'm fond of any app/book/game/etc. that helps kids learn how to communicate about their thoughts and fears. Learning to recognize and address the things that cause a child anxiety is essential.
- I thought that the illustrations that were provided were cute and probably would appeal to kids as something that could be out of their imagination.
What I liked less:
- I found the coloring function to be cumbersome. Without the use of a stylus, it was difficult to stay in the lines. This is certainly an app that could benefit from a fill function as a coloring tool.
- While this app might be a good tool for teachers/parents/counselors to use as part of a communications strategy to help kids deal with fear and anxiety, I think that this app would be difficult for kids to stay engaged in independently. My son (age 9) was uninterested in continuing with any of the exercises if I was not right there encouraging him.
- I was disappointed by the amount of "interactivity" in this app. True, there were some elements that responded to touch, etc. But mostly I felt like this was just a plain digital version of the book form of Tame Your Thought.
Overall, while I certainly support the concept of this app, I felt like it would require a little too much direct supervision to be an effective tool for kids to use on their own. If that is the intention of the user, that's fine. But my experience was that it was not quite engaging enough as an app to keep a child independently engrossed.
*****
Kelli is tired of the rain. Smart Apps for Kids was paid a fee to complete this review.
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