Best Apps to Help Kids Stay Focused

Choiceworks is a great app for helping kids manage daily routines and understand and control their feelings while moving through the flow of the day. This app is especially useful in situations when kids must wait for something by giving them options to fill in wait time.

Choiceworks was created with the support of leading hospitals and child development specialists. It’s designed for caregivers, so they can provide clear and consistent support to foster a child’s independence, positive behavior, and emotional regulation at home and in the community. It can also be customized for teachers to use in a school setting.

Recommended Ages: 4 and up

Devices: iOS

Forest: Stay focused, be present is a productivity tool designed to help users stay off their devices and fully engage with the task at hand. Though it's designed for people who have their own devices, parents can use the app as a timer for younger kids as well.

Forest: Stay Focused — for iOS and Android — is an app that’s specifically meant to keep you productive. By planting a seed in Forest, you’ll watch it gradually grow into a tree. But if you leave the app to answer a text message or check Twitter, then the plant immediately dies and you’ll have to start over again.

Recommended Ages: 12 and up

Devices: iOS and Android

Habitica turns habit building, habit breaking, and productivity into a gaming experience. The app rewards you when you maintain good habits and break bad ones, and it subtracts points when you slip. If your kids are motivated by racking up points on video games, beating enemies, and checking leaderboards, Habitica may be a good option.

Using the motivators on this app, they can put forth effort and persevere to earn points, develop new habits, and eliminate unhealthy or unwanted habits.

Recommended Ages: 13 and up

Devices: iOS and Android

RescueTime comes with both free and paid features, as per its official site. The app helps kids or adults keep track of how much or how little time they spend in their activities. Like 30/30, it's also a time management app. It has online blocking features, set at particular times in the day, which users say is good for managing distractions.

Before you start shutting things down, get a sense of what's up. Designed to improve work-life balance, this plug-in tracks how much time you spend on certain sites, generates reports about productivity, and lets you set limits to either totally block sites or allow a set time for certain activities. 

Recommended Ages: 11 and up

Devices: iOS and Android

Stop, Breathe, and Think Kids is the sister app to the popular Stop, Breathe, and Think MyLife Meditation. With over a dozen free meditations (and 30+ premium ones available!), children ages 5-10 can learn more about identifying and connecting to their emotions through fun emojis, games, and animations. Whether your child is dealing with overexcitement, disappointment and sadness, or having trouble sleeping, this app is chock full of guidance.

Recommended Ages: 5 and up

Devices: iOS

Any.do has been around for a while. And, it’s clear why this award-winning app is so popular. It’s streamlined with everything you need to stay focused on the tasks you need to do. Any.do lets you add and share a project. So, this is a great app to help kids stay focused on projects when working with friends.

Kids can also add a task and break the task into sub-tasks. It’s perfect for helping kids stay focused through long projects like a term paper or science fair project. Kids can set reminders for things like “take out trash” or “practice piano” so they can become responsible for these items on their to-do list.