CBT Tools for Kids – Veronica Cregg

Fitness Mania – Help your child or adolescent learn what they can do to feel better! CBT Tools for Kids is a unique app designed to help children and adolescents increase their emotional self-awareness and management of their feelings. CBT Tools allows children to learn and use effective strategies for understanding and managing their thoughts and feelings. These strategies are based on the principles of cognitive behavior therapy (CBT), a scientifically-supported and well-established treatment for improving mood and managing emotions. CBT was developed by Aaron Beck in the 1960’s and is widely used by therapists around the country. CBT Tools was also designed as an addition or supplement to therapy, with the goals of encouraging greater compliance with self-monitoring homework and the use of CBT skills outside of the therapy office. CBT Tools is recommended for use by children ages 8 through 18. CBT Tools was developed by a clinical psychologist Ph.D. who specializes in the use of cognitive behavior therapy in practice with children and adolescents.

FEATURES:

Emotion Tracker: The emotion tracker allows kids to 1) identify their current emotion; 2) rate the emotion’s intensity using a thermometer with various levels of intensity; 3) identify the situation that triggered the emotion by browsing categories or creating notes about the trigger situation; and 4) identify body sensations associated with the emotion.

Emotion Graph and History Log: Colorful, simple graphs allow kids to view changes in the intensity of each emotion over the past week, past month, and past year. Kids can also view a full history of the emotion information they have entered. This allows children to make connections between the situations in their lives and the emotions they produce, as well as learn which situations result in stronger emotional responses.

Relaxation Skills: The Relaxation Skills tool provides kids with five different audio clips that they can listen to during or after stressful situations to help them become calmer and manage stress. Activities include calm breathing, muscle relaxation, positive imagery, and awareness meditations. Kids can save their favorite relaxation activities to their Favorite Tools page for easy access.

Thinking Skills: The Thinking Skills tool helps kids challenge negative thoughts related to a specific situation by first having kids answer a number of questions about the negative thought they currently have. Based on their answers, advice is provided that is specific to the distressing thought. The guidance provided helps kids question the accuracy of their thinking and challenge negative thoughts. Advice also gives ideas for positive actions they can take and more realistic and adaptive ways of thinking about the situation. Kids can save the advice they like best to their Favorite Tools page for easy access.

Positive Actions: The Positive Actions tool provides kids with a list of positive actions and behaviors that can help them improve their feelings in the moment, reduce stress, or distract them from a problem that they cannot solve right away. Kids can save the positive actions they like best to their Favorite Tools page for easy access.

Email My Therapist: Email My Therapist allows kids to send their entered data over the past week to their therapist, school counselor, or another individual of their choice. Data sent includes the emotion, emotion intensity, situation that triggered the emotion, child’s notes about the situation, and any body sensations endorsed. This allows therapists quick and easy access to the child’s self-monitoring of their emotions, and can enhance compliance to self monitoring activities during therapy.