Starting Mightier with one of my kids, I’ll let you know how it goes here

I’ve got a kid who’s got problems self regulating emotions. I could go into details but it boils down to hulk smash. One of the stories I do feel I can relate involves her first school kicking her out over 20 times (yes, illegal, I know now) as well as putting her with a teacher in a parking lot because the entire school could hear her screaming. Smart kid, emotional control lacking and at the age she’s at now it turning more self destructive.

But you rush to point out that an app isn’t a therapist and the two therapists who have tried and so far failed to help her control this agree. This is something we’re trying in addition.

I’m not sponsored by them, didn’t get the app for free, and expect nothing at the moment. Far as I know I have no PR ties with them but I have not investigated. We’re using it on a tablet I own and not a version they sell which based on reviews is not particularly good.

My wife bought it, or bought a subscription to it, I’m actually not sure at the moment how it works but we got a box with a pulse checking wristwatch and a squishy ball and some cards and basically I have no idea beyond that as once the app was up and going kiddo chugged along playing games and collecting items.

May 28, 2024

Day 1 has been uneventful other than my kid claims it’s her favorite game ever. Knowing her I suspect this was a ploy to just get screentime but we’ll see. Very little going on today to set her off.

I am of the idea this will not help personally. I would love to hold out hope an app could help but it seems a bit too simplistic of a solution.

Kid 1 who it was purchased for finds it neat, Kid 2 is going to try it later.

Kid 2 I decided to install it on a different tablet because part of Kid 1’s anger issues involve sharing her stuff, which I understand you give kid 2 anything and it comes back unpleasant. While Kid 1 has no issues letting her play and sharing the watch, the watchband they used almost caused a hulkout with Kid 1 attempting to help kid 2. Watch band is not multi-kid friendly.

May 31, 2024

At this point the two kids have fought over almost every aspect of this… who has the watchband, who has the best avatar, who played it first, and at least at the moment this has caused significantly more trouble than any gains. Some of this may be because we have one watch, but it reached the point I just had to tell the younger kid we got this for the older and in any cases all involved would probably rather Kid 1 use it.

June 1, 2024

After constant fighting both between the kids and with the watch to recognize and more trouble than it’s worth the tablet it was on was broken (appears to be stepped on) and that is that. I’m not getting another tablet to use it on, they are not using my tablet, and as such this is the end of the experiment.

I don’t think the tablet being stepped on was a result of Mightier, that probably was an accident. The kid who needs it doesn’t take care of her stuff so that’s simply the end as there will be no replacement.

I had it far shorter than I would have expected it to have any effect in, but what I did observe was a never level of fighting between my kids so there’s that. I would not have offered it to Kid 2 had I known the nonstop headache is was going to be.

Game looked cute

June 6, 2024

Evidently when my wife went to cancel the subscription they offered to send her a tablet it would work on for $10. She took the bait. We’re waiting on the tablet to arrive at this point.

While I am not sure if the game loss plays any factor in it or not, the amount of arguing has gone down markedly. We have also been taking them to activities any free time they have so that may be part of why it’s gone down though.

June 7, 2024

Tablet arrived yesterday – it’s an Android Go tablet slightly larger than the phones they have (that they don’t have this week(. I didn’t have anything to do with setting it up, my wife did, and then I noticed that all it would take is an accidental tap and they’re in her email.

Funny thing about the tablet is it does not have Mightier installed.

We are refraining from handing the tablet over until I remove my wife’s account and place the tablet under the control of one of the child accounts, which I will probably do later today. I would have today but forgot to bring it to work.

Tablet does not handle the USB-C chargers we use for all the phones… this does not bode well because the only tablets that don’t are pretty garbage. I will have to plug it in elsewhere, which yeah, something is cheap.

June 17, 2024

After removing Kim’s account and adding the kiddos we ran into a problem of it being unable to turn on location services, even though they were on. As this happened right after switching to a child’s managed account I found the location services in Family Link and enabled them for that device.

Finally with location services it was able to access Bluetooth and we went to try and play again and it refused to recognize her heart rate and at this point the frustration level was sufficient that stopping attempting to play this was necessitated.

I attempted later and managed to get my pulse picked up, we might give it another shot but honestly this is not working and it seems to mostly have the effect of making me increasingly annoyed.

Trying to play Mightier and a tablet branded Mighter and shipped by Mightier should not be a fight to get things working. Maybe a little note in the location permissions that if you’re on a child’s account you may need to modify some settings in Family Link… perhaps a warning to parents that whatever Google account you use is going to give your kid complete access to that account and maybe don’t use yours unless you want your kid to be in your email and with access to anything in the Play Store.

So, 10 days with not playing it since last update.