Best Parenting Apps to Use in 2020
Parenting is a wonderful and rewarding experience. It’s a way to influence the next generation and share infinite love with a new member of your family.
There are also lots of challenges you need to learn to overcome when you become a parent, from figuring out how to protect your children from illnesses and germs to providing them with as many learning and growth opportunities as possible.
The good news?
You don't have to tackle the complexity of parenting on your own.
In fact, the digital world has opened up a slew of new opportunities for parents who want to learn and grow every day, through a multitude of impressive parenting apps and mobile tools.
From apps that help you monitor your child's growth from a baby to toddler to boisterous teen to apps that you can use to organize your schedule and spend more time with the kids, here are some of the best apps for parents you can access in 2020.
Parenting Apps for Baby Care
Since there are so many different kinds of smartphone apps available today, we thought it would be best to separate some of your choices into different categories, starting with the tools you can use to track your baby's health and wellness during the first few months of life.
BabyGogo (Android)
BabyGogo is a parenting and mother care app perfect for those first-time parents that need a little extra assistance figuring out how to give their little one the best possible start in life.
The app comes packed with valuable information about caring for your child, with hand-picked articles from parenting thought leaders, insights from pediatricians and doctors, and even community guidance from other parents.
You can use BabyGogo to:
- Find information about pregnancy, vaccination, childcare and more
- Browse through articles on a wide variety of parenting topics, including nutrition, behavior, and potty training.
- Check useful charts on important things like baby sleeping patterns, growth, and nutrition.
- Get involved with regular competitions and chances to earn rewards
Price: Free
Baby Sleep Sounds (iOS)
One of the toughest things you'll need to learn how to do as a new parent is to help your child drift off to sleep. Babies have a habit of trying to stay awake - even when all they need is a good night's rest.
Fortunately, there are apps for parents that can help with this complex task.
The Baby Sleep Sounds app allows you to support your child in a wonderful snooze with some relaxing sounds to help them sleep.
You can adjust the volume of the sounds that you play, and choose from a range of 80 high-quality options, including basic shushing sounds, music, and more.
Features include:
- White noise sounds, lullabies, loops and shushing sounds
- Volume management and sound mixing
- Soothing animations custom-made to help your child sleep
- Airplay support to play from your Apple TV
Price: Free
Cloud Baby Monitor (Android and iOS)
The Cloud Baby Monitor app is one of the best parenting apps available for new parents who need to keep an eye on their bundle of joy. With this unique digital tool, you can transform your smartphone into a baby monitor at the touch of a button.
Image courtesy of Cloud Baby Monitor
There are several attractive features to help your child sleep too, including live noise, motion alerts, and music.
You will need another device with the same operating system that you download the baby monitor system to if you want to monitor your child.
Features include:
- Noise and motion alerts
- Easy to use monitoring with instant sound notifications
- Two-way video talk to help calm your baby
- Music
- Various connection options
Price: $3.99
Parenting Apps for Child Development
Some of the best apps for parents available today are the ones that allow you to track your child's development as they grow and thrive.
These applications offer insightful information to put your mind at rest and give you more useful guidance that you can use to be an amazing parent.
Baby + (Android and iOS)
Baby + is an all-in-one smartphone app that parents can use to capture important moments in their child's life, monitor routines, create custom graphs, and track growth.
Image courtesy of Health & Parenting website
Aside from providing some useful information on what you can expect at different stages of your baby's life, this app also offers a number of daily activities that you can do with your child and allows you to save pictures for a complete visual map of your youngster's growth.
With Baby+ app, you'll have access to all the information you need to find out how well your child is progressing, and the system is incredibly easy to use too.
Features include:
- Routine building graphs and monitoring
- Track your child's growth and development
- Capture and store important moments
- Access guides and information on child development
Price: Free
Baby Connect (iOS and Android)
Baby Connect is a comprehensive application for tracking baby development and growth.
You can use this simple app to access graphical reports on how your child is progressing over time, and even measure your child's diet and growth against benchmark averages.
There are insights into everything from vaccines that your child needs, to what kind of nutrition they should be getting.
For those who respond best to visual information, Baby Connect also comes with a wide selection of trending charts and graphs to explore.
Because you can store the information you collect on the cloud, you don't have to worry about losing vital data either!
Features include:
- Automatic syncing to the cloud and multiple devices
- More than 30 graphs to explore
- Useful categories of information
- Reminder alarms and times
- Benchmark analysis
Price: $4.99
Peekaboo Moments (iOS)
Sometimes, the best parenting apps are the ones that help you to maintain a deeper relationship with your child through the years.
Peekaboo moments is basically a digital photo album where you can track your child's development through meaningful videos and photos.
You can capture the growth of your child from birth to the moment you decide to share the album with them.
Adored by millions of parents around the world, Peekaboo moments are less about graphs and charts, and more about giving you the step-by-step visual record you need for your child's growth.
Features include:
- Private sharing with your family
- Smart photo collections based on a child's age
- Easy to use interface
- Cloud storage for extra security
Price: Free
BabyTime (iOS)
Keeping kids safe and healthy isn't always easy. That's why many of the most popular apps for parents are the ones that make it easy to access crucial information instantly.
Image courtesy of Baby Time website
BabyTime is a recording and analysis app that you can use to track your baby's development and activities.
You can use this app to find out what your child needs at different stages in their life, and even share your child's story with other parents in a similar situation.
Analyzing your child's growth, eating, and sleeping patterns is easy with a selection of easy-to-understand charts to browse through. You can even use the app to keep track of your baby's calendar by adding information about hospital visits and vaccinations.
Features include:
- Sync with your partner's app
- Share your story online and connect with other parents
- Analyze patterns over daily and weekly graphics
- Access useful sounds to put your child to sleep
- Manage your baby's health with schedule tracking
Price: Free
Parenting Apps for Parental Support
Parenting is a wonderful experience, but it can also be extremely tough. Whether you're a first-time parent, or you're onto your third child, there will be times when you'll question your decisions, and need a little extra guidance.
These apps for parents can offer you the insight you want when you need it most.
Parenting Cue (iOS)
Looking for a little extra guidance on how to be the perfect parent?
Parent Cue could be just the tool for you.
Image courtesy of Parent Cue website
Parent Cue helps you to understand the influence you have on your child's growth and development as they move through life.
You can use it whether your youngster is a newborn, a toddler, or even a teenager, and access useful information on the right things to say to your child when they're struggling.
One point to note is that this is a heavily religious app, with a huge focus on Christ and God. If you're not raising a religious family, then you might want to look elsewhere for guidance.
Features include:
- Informative stories to share with your child
- Useful insights on the right things to say when your youngster is struggling emotionally
- Information on the developmental stages your youngster goes to
- Community syncing with your church
Price: Free
Winnie (iOS and Android)
Winne is an app designed to give parents "superpowers," according to the developers. It provides you with all the information you could possibly need to support your youngsters during their early years.
That includes giving you insights into local daycares, preschools, and fun activities for your children to take part in.
You also get an opportunity to join a huge community of like-minded parents.
Winnie is all about collecting and sharing information in your local community.
Features include:
- In-depth insights into local childcare providers and daycares
- Guidance for finding family-friendly places to visit and local activities
- Opportunities to interact with a growing community of families
- Tips and articles on parenting
Price: Free
WOW Parenting (iOS)
We all want to be the best parents that we can be.
However, figuring out how to support our children through every stage of their lives isn't always simple. Fortunately, parenting apps like WOW Parenting exist to offer some extra help.
This general parenting app is focused on giving parents the insights and knowledge they need to become more effective at guiding their children through lives.
You can learn how to properly deal with things like behavioral issues, temper tantrums, school schedules, and more. You can even get insights into how to help your children with peer pressure.
Features include:
- Videos covering crucial topics like sibling rivalry and discipline
- Articles on everything from relationship issues to handling failure
- Tips on how to help children develop positive habits
- Get expert guidance delivered by thought leaders
- Use cases and real-life studies from other parents
Price: Free
Parenting Apps for Child Education
For most parents, parents rely on their children's schools to offer the majority of their early education. However, you can also play a significant part in your youngster's introduction to the academic world at home.
There are plenty of apps for parents out there that can help you to strengthen the bond between your child and their educational growth.
PBS Parents Play and Learn (iOS and Android)
Designed by the team at PBS Kids, this simple but effective educational app is all about supporting the initial interactions between children and their parents.
There are a bunch of great games included in this application that is designed to get children and parents engaged, and they're all based on themes that are comparable to everyday scenarios, like shopping at the store or playing in the garden.
This unique parenting app isn't just about teaching your children new things - it's also about strengthening your bond, and celebrating the joy of education.
The PBS Parents Play and Learn app is designed to build on the natural curiosity that your child already has about the world around them.
Features include:
- A range of games that automatically adjust in a challenge to a child's level
- Bilingual experiences for Spanish teaching
- Parent "teachable moments" included in each game
- New activities added every week
- Hands-on activities for fun bonding moments
Price: Free
Khan Academy Kids (Android)
Finding a way to make learning fun from an early age can be very difficult for any parent.
However, with the Khan Academy Kids app, it's easier than ever to introduce your children to everything from the wonders of spelling, math, language, and social-emotional development lessons.
The app comes packed with open-ended activities, stories, games, and more to encourage creativity and self-expression in your child.
This brightly-colored and engaging app is completely free to use, with no subscriptions or in-app purchases required. What's more, the Khan team is constantly adding new features and content to keep children of all ages entertained.
Features include:
- The robust curriculum of math, language, executive function and logic, reading and literacy
- Adaptive learning paths to suit your child's pace
- Independent or team learning options
- Books and activities that children can use on their own
- Emotional and physical development strategies
Price: Free
Scholly (iOS and Android)
As your child starts to get a little older, you may start to think about how you can improve their chances of success in the long-term by giving them an opportunity to enroll in an amazing school.
Since college is an expensive endeavor for any parent, it's useful to have an app on your smartphone that you can use to track down potential scholarship options.
Scholly is a search application that allows you to track down potential money that you can use to pay for your youngster's future education.
You can enter some vital information about your child, including what kind of topics they're interested in and what talents they have, and Scholly will provide a list of personalized scholarship options.
Features include:
- AI-powered writing assistant for college essays
- Mathematics assistance
- Lists of personalized scholarship opportunities
- Insights into grants and application processes
Price: Free
Parenting Apps for Everyday Life
Finally, sometimes the best apps for parents are the ones that make your everyday life with your children a little easier.
These are the tools that you can use to manage your schedule and make sure that you're spending meaningful moments with your youngsters.
These apps can also include the solutions that you use to stop your children from watching dangerous content online or track their whereabouts when they're exploring with friends.
OurHome Organizer (iOS and Android)
OurHome is a chore organizer application for Android and iPhone. This comprehensive platform gives you the environment that you need to manage and organize all the tasks that your family needs to get done on any given day.
There's access to things like a shared grocery list, and even a family calendar, so your whole crew can keep track of important days that are coming up in your schedule.
There are also built-in rewards available to help you encourage good behavior from your children.
If you've got a family full of people who are constantly rushing around and trying to remember what they need to do each day, then this is a parenting app that will help you to reign in the chaos.
There's even the option to add rewards to targets for your children, so you can motivate them to accomplish their goals over time.
Features include:
- Task progress tracking
- Shared family calendar and grocery list
- Exchange messages with your family
- Create goals for kids and deliver rewards for completion
- Schedule and assign tasks and chores
Price: Free
FamiGuard (Android)
FamiGuard is one of the most compelling parenting apps on the market today for parents who want to keep an eye on their children's everyday activities.
In the digital world, it's becoming increasingly common for children to have their own tablets and smartphones that they use for communication, information, and education.
However, the internet can be a dangerous place, which means that some parents need a little help tracking what their kids do online.
The FamiGuard parental control app allows you to keep track of what your children are doing on their phones, without stepping over the line when it comes to their privacy.
You can track your child's location with the app, set personal geofences, and even limit the amount of screen time that your little ones get if you need to.
Features include:
- Real-time location tracking and geo-fencing
- Screen time restrictions and app blocking
- Web filtering and blocking
- Insights into web and app activity
- Summary reports and graphs
Price: $4.99 with a free trial
Find My Kids (iOS and Android)
If you're looking for an app that allows you to track the whereabouts of your kids when they're hanging out with friends or going to and from school on their own, then Find My Kids could be the perfect solution.
Although as parents, we often try not to be overbearing with our children, it's difficult not to worry about your youngster's safety, particularly in today's unpredictable world.
This easy-to-use parenting app allows you to find exactly where your children are in real-time by tracking their phone.
You can even set up alerts that ensure that you're the first to know when your children are leaving an area or heading home from school.
Price: Free
Yummly Recipes (iOS and Android)
As a parent, you have a lot of hats that you need to wear.
You’re the teacher that your child relies on to give them their first lessons in life, the security guard that stops them from getting into trouble, and even the nurse that helps them to recover after an illness.
You also need to be a chef, producing healthy meals that your youngster actually wants to eat every day.
If finding inspiration for a picky eater is one of the biggest challenges you have as a parent today, then the Yummly app could help. You can use this simple tool to find and create spectacular dishes for the whole family.
There are options to adjust your search according to dietary needs and preferences, and every recipe comes with step-by-step instructions.
Features include:
- Easy recipe search and storage
- Recipes for specific diets and allergies
- Personalized recommendations
- Easy meal planning
- Shared grocery shopping list
Price: Free
Parenting: There's an App for That
Parenting is a tough job; it requires a lot of effort, consistent growth, and hard work.
Fortunately, the digital world and the rise of mobile apps has made it easier for people from all backgrounds to get the help they need when raising their kids.
The apps above will give you a wide range of tools to choose from to protect, enlighten, and support your children.
What are your favorite parenting apps for 2020?
