Breath, Think, Do with Sesame Street is another app that I use frequently in my child life practice. I love all the really great things that Sesame Street is doing right now as an organization to support kids, especially kids with Autism Spectrum Disorder. This app is just another reason that I have found to love the fun wacky characters that support kids. Breath, Think, Do aims to help kids problem solve by helping the little monster on screen in a multitude of situations. What I use this app for though is the breathing component and to help kids calm when they are nervous in the emergency environment. Here are a few of my pros and cons for using this app as a Child Life Specialist.
Pros: This app is perfect for the young school-age kids I work with. Many of them are already familiar with the Sesame Street characters and the app is interactive in a way thats really helpful. Kids have to manipulate the screen in order to encourage the monster to breath, which I have found helps them engage in deep breathing themselves. Another reason I like using this app is because of the "thinking time" in which the child pops bubbles on the screen to help the monster to problem solve. Popping bubbles is calming for kids and often I'm able to talk with children about what they might do in the monster's situation. I think it's pretty great to promote problem solving skills while at the same time working towards the calming goal that I started out with. Lastly, I really appreciate that this app can kickstart conversation about feelings. This app creates a really organic approach to the emotion conversation with patients, sometimes they even offer up situations in which they have felt the same way as the monster. It is always better for kids to think the idea for a conversation came from them, when really that was something you were aiming to discuss anyways.
Cons: What sticks out to me the most is the limited age range of kids I can use this app with. I typically have been able to pull it out for kids between 4 and 7/8ish years of age, once it gets beyond that kids think Sesame is little kiddish. This is a bummer for me since some of those upper elementary ages are some of the kids who could benefit a lot from something like this app. I do have a different app that I use for older kids/teens, but I feel like the mid school-agers kind of get lost in the gap. What would be really great is if there was a way I could manipulate some of the content to change scenarios to broaden the age ranges I can use it with. When it comes to the deep breathing part of my practice nothing holds a candle to the actual things like pinwheels and bubbles that actually need the child to blow in order to cause a reaction. This app comes close like I said with the physical interaction, but some kids just won't engage beyond touching the screen. Often in this case I have one of those other tools with me to use in tandem. The last con I have for this app is the timing. I have sometimes used it during poke procedures to encourage the deep breathing at the time of the poke. However, this takes a lot of effort to get the timing just right. Using this for distraction can be not as beneficial if the breathing part doesn't happen during the poke. I have had times where this is SUPER helpful to kids during a poke procedure, they may still cry but they continue to engage in the breathing technique until the poke is done. Other times.... well there are always those times when a kid can't attend to distraction and is unable to utilize coping mechanisms other than crying, but good news is crying is still coping right.?
All in all I like using this app with kids and I enjoy the conversations that it starts, even when they are conversations about what other kind of monsters there are in the world.
- K
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