5 Apps Every Special Needs Parent Needs
Being a parent always comes with challenges. Even the most well-behaved child is going to present difficulties and change the life of their parents in many different ways. Parents of children with special needs tend to find that these challenges and changes are exponentially higher than for other parents. Getting help from every available source is essential, and in this technological age, apps can play a large role.
Here we have compiled a list of some of the best apps available for helping parents of special needs children. These apps can make life easier for both parents and children and allow them to thrive.
Baby Connect
Baby Connect is an app that allows you to track your child’s developmental progress on every front. The app makes it so that you can have all of the information about the developmental milestones, health, immunization, and moods together in one place. The app also provides you with data and graphs that allow you to compare the development of your child, against both national and international standards.
Another key feature of this app is that it makes it easy to store information about your child’s daily care, including times and directions for feeding and naps. It is easy to share any of the information with others, specifically a partner, therapist, or babysitter.
Cozi
Cozi is a scheduling app that helps parents to coordinate everyone’s schedule in one place. This app can be helpful for any family but is especially useful for families with special needs children. In addition to the extracurricular activities of other children, children with special needs are likely to also have doctor’s meetings and therapy sessions to coordinate.
Cozi helps keep the whole family informed of everything that the others have going on for the week, as well as themselves. The calendar is color-coded and can send alerts for any events that family members may need. The app also allows users to keep track of to-do lists and record memories of special events.
Speech With Milo
This program is a fun language learning app for children with language delays or those who need extra help with speech. The app entertains children while teaching them with the use of an animated mouse. There are multiple apps in the series that go beyond speech improvement to helping children with vocabulary and storytelling concepts. The app was created by a licensed speech-language pathologist.
Speech Journal
This apps is highly customizable and allows parents and teaches to create various speech activities for children with special needs to practice various aspects of their speech development. You can make lessons unique by adding your own photos and creating a voice recording to go along with them, or you can choose pictures available through the app.
The app also has a text-to-speech feature, which can help children with limited verbal abilities to communicate effectively.
Proloquo2Go
For special needs children with limited or no speech ability, Proloquo2Go is an extraordinary app that helps children of all ages to communicate despite any speech limitations. The app is symbol-based and empowers children with speech issues to communicate by using on-screen buttons to convey their thoughts and wishes.
The app allows for custom images and can be tweaked to adjust to motor-skill issues that the child may have. The app is also equipped with a text-to-speech mode, with several different voice options. The app is currently available in both an English and Spanish language version. The only downside to this app is that it runs on the expensive side with a price tag of over $200.
Financial Costs
While Proloquo2Go and some of the other apps available for children with special needs may be expensive, they are a drop in the bucket compared to many of the other costs that parents of children with special needs typically incur.
Finding a way to afford the high costs that go along with various therapies and developmental or mobility aids can be difficult. If your child’s special needs developed in connection with a birth injury, you might be eligible to receive compensation. Talk to a birth injury diagnosis and treatment lawyer to discuss your case and whether a physician was responsible for the injury.
Having the financial means to afford the best tools for your child to be successful, can make a huge difference in their lives and your own. If your child was harmed due to negligence, make sure to hold the responsible party accountable and get the financial compensation that you need to provide your family with the best life possible.