If you’re a parent to young children, you’re probably wondering how everyone coped before phones. You’ve no doubt already worked out that your phone is the perfect emergency entertainment for kids – whip it out, load up the best kids games, and buy yourself a few minutes of calm in a hectic day.
But phones can help out in other ways, too. Whether you’re tracking a pregnancy, worried about your child’s health, or simply trying to remember when you last administered Calpol, there are apps to help you stay on top of everything. Which are essential? Find out in our guide to the best parenting apps.
BabyCenter – Pregnancy Tracker
Price Android Pregnancy App & Baby Tracker
iOS BabyCenter – Pregnancy Tracker
Mozillion rating
Why install?Useful week-by-week advice for pregnancy and young children
Why avoid it?You’ll need to create an account
If you’re looking for the best pregnancy tracker, this is probably it. Millions of expectant parents use the BabyCenter tracker to follow along with their child’s development. It’s an invaluable source of information, explaining things such as how your child is growing in the womb. Endearingly, it even manages to come up with a different fruit or vegetable for nine months’ worth of weekly size comparisons.
More seriously, the tracker helps you understand a child’s growth, and how they develop through the different stages of pregnancy. It offers help for common issues including morning sickness, and community discussions that can really help when you’re struggling, or simply need a little advice from others who’ve been through it already.
The BabyCenter tracker doesn’t stop with birth, either. It’s a great source of information about newborns and toddlers, helping you get your head around feeding, changing and sleeping. It also helps you track your child’s ongoing development as they discover you and the world around them. While there’s no substitute for friends and family during pregnancy and the early years, this app can certainly help – especially in the early hours when nobody else is around.
Baby and child first aid
Price Android Baby and child first aid, Free
iOS Baby and child first aid, Free
Mozillion rating
Why play?Authoritative first aid tailored for babies and kids
Why avoid it?We hope you never need it
This is a brilliant parenting app that we hope you never need. Based on the Red Cross’ general-purpose first aid app, Baby and child first aid is specifically made to give parents first aid advice. Most importantly, it’s designed to help you act fast in an emergency, providing immediate aid and getting the extra help you need when things go wrong.
Enhanced with short videos, Baby and child first aid’s emergency section uses short, clear instructions on what to do for various injuries and ailments. There are helpful touches – such as an integrated 20-minute timer for treating burns under cold running water. In what can be scary circumstances, the app is a great help, guiding you through effective action when it’s something you can treat yourself, and letting you know quickly when you need to get help.
But while it’s easy to think of this as just an app for emergencies, in fact much of its value is as an educational tool. Explore it and you’ll find a wealth of useful guides, along with a section to help you test your knowledge. Invest a little time and you’ll learn what you need to deal with common emergencies before the worst actually happens, helping you act more quickly to help your little one when they need it.
Baby Connect
Price Android Baby Connect, Free with in-app purchases
iOS Baby Connect, Free with in-app purchases
Mozillion rating
Why install?Simple, but incredibly useful
Why avoid it?Now requires a subscription
Looking after young children can be an ordeal of feeds, nappy changes and medicine. Throw sleep deprivation into the mix and it’s all too easy to lose track of whether your little one is eating, pooping and resting enough. More importantly, you need a way to share records with other caregivers, and make sure you aren’t doubling up on Calpol or other medicines.
Baby Connect is a comparatively simple app to help you stay on top of it all. It makes it fairly easy to record feeds, sleeps, nappy changes and other useful information, along with vaccinations, growth, and the exact doses and timings of any medications. At the least, that makes this app a brilliant aide-memoire for the baby-brained, but it can also provide useful records when you need to discuss your kids’ health with a professional.
This app can be particularly useful when two or more carers are sharing the load. By adding a partner or grandparent, you can ensure that all feeds and medications are recorded, helping reduce the chance of accidentally missing a dose. With a clear record of when a baby or child last had Calpol, whoever’s on duty can quickly see when it’s safe to give the next dose.
Baby Connect is ad-free, but it now costs £3.69 per month for families with up to five children. It’s worth it – after a bit of initial fiddling to change the default American units and terminology (such as ‘diaper’), you could find it handy for years.
White Noise
Price Android White Noise £0.89
iOS White Noise £0.89
Mozillion rating
Why install?Invaluable at bed time
Why avoid it?Doesn’t work on all children
If you’re the lucky parent of a child who sleeps when they’re meant to, you can look away now. If not, the chances are you’ll try anything to get your little one to have some shut-eye. Bedtimes and nap times can be a nightmare, but for many children, simple white noise can make a massive difference. Put it on to drown out audio stimuli like street noise and the TV, and you might find them drifting off more easily – and staying asleep for longer.
There are loads of white noise apps available, but many are shamelessly overpriced, while others are blighted by ads. Our favourite is by TMSOFT and, while there is an ad-supported free version (White Noise Lite), the full version linked here costs just 89p.
White Noise offers the usual features, such as a wide range of rain, wave, and flowing water sounds. There are less typical soundtracks including cats, birds and frogs, crowds, heartbeats, and even a Tibetan Gong. You’ll also find true white, brown, pink, blue, violet and grey noise, but if you want more sounds you can download from the separate White Noise Market app.
White Noise lets you mark favourite sounds, create mixes or playlists, and set alarms and playback timers. The latter is the perfect feature if your child benefits from white noise at bedtime, only to get woken up by it during the night. But in fact, this app isn’t just for kids. Many of its sounds are soothing for stressed out adults, trying to grab their own rest in whatever time’s available. If you or your children are struggling to sleep, this app is unbeatable value.
AppClose
Mozillion rating
Why install?Helps you cope when things haven’t gone to plan
Why avoid it?Won’t suit everyone’s circumstances
Being a parent can become even more challenging when you’re doing it by yourself, or co-parenting with an ex-partner. AppClose exists to help lone parents, separated parents and other guardians and family members manage and share the responsibilities of bringing children up.
AppClose provides several features to help people stay on top of parenting when a relationship has broken down. Its comprehensive calendaring feature lets you map out your own time privately, while supporting shared schedules to manage shared custody and visits. You can also plan and share your children’s needs, such as healthcare and school dates, events, and even legal deadlines.
This app features its own chat platform, providing a dedicated space for carers to discuss parenting, care and other issues. It also integrates a secure payments system, through which parents can request and send money – unfortunately this part only works with US-based bank accounts. Even so, AppClose can be a useful way to formalise and manage caring for your children, particularly when circumstances are difficult between the grown ups in their lives.