10 BEST PARENTING APPS FOR ANDROID

From general knowledge, parenting is more or less the method of assisting, guiding and supporting both the intellectual, physical, emotional, psychological, social and even the spiritual evolution of one's child from the very stage of infancy right up to the age of maturity and adulthood even sometimes past that. In today's clime parenting has gone a notch higher as babies these days need a higher level of care, stability,
and a nurturing environment. Parents these days are adequately looked unto as a positive force in the right upbringing of the child. Parents are looked up to give the growing child adequate moral, psychological and spiritual positive direction in life, a progress report on how this has affected the child can be seen in the said child's general behavior and disposition to life.

Today newbies to parenthood can learn and have a lot to learn by first taking to heart their unique style of parenting. At birth, even during pregnancy, would-be or newbie parents have by heart or through some form of coaching adopted certain patterns which tow along the line of psychological set rules which follow standard strategies laid out by parents over the years to give their growing offspring a qualitative upbringing.

A deeper look into parenting/child upbringing shows that many parents do not know the right way to go about rearing their offspring the right way. This article sheds light on Android Apps that could guide and tutor parents on the best parenting methods while they also have the levity to keep a close watch on their children's whereabouts including their online activity.

Etched in the study of Psychology are four main renown parenting styles which are:

1. Authoritarian
2. Permissive
3. Neglectful
4. Authoritative

When closely accessed, each of the above-mentioned parenting styles has its own adverse effects on the growing child. Today's parents are advised to carefully pick which adequately suits their way of life and dogma. Away from core parenting values, the advent of massive technological advancements has also affected parenting in so many ways and one major positive impact will be ineptly discussed in this article. Nearly every adult parent today caries about a smartphone and a closer look also reveals that a third of these devices are powered by the Android Operating System. It is no wonder that the Android OS is today the most widely used smartphone operating system. Its fluidity, high customization, and interactive features make the Android OS an endearing productivity tool for phone users the world over. Parents now have the levity to interact, monitor and sharpen the course of their children's lives via the touch, swipe and gestures of their Android mobile phones.

Below are 10 Android apps that every parent using a smartphone should have:

1, PREGNANCY TRACKER AND BABY DEVELOPMENT COUNTDOWN: One of the most widely used parenting apps today, this is more concerned with the beginning of the whole parenting journey. The app boasts of being used by a profound 400 million expecting parents worldwide. The BabyCenter app guides expectant parents on a day-to-day, week-to-week and month-to-month pregnancy calendar basis to follow-up incisively on the development of their incoming offspring. The app's pregnancy calendar offers expectant moms useful tips and videos that showcase the exact stage of the users growing fetus. The app on installation will request for the baby's due date and if users do not know there is an in-app pregnancy calculator to help out with that. BabyCenter Developers work hand-in-hand with experts to provide innovative content for the expectant mother while all content on the app is strictly reviewed by Top-ranking members of the Medical Advisory Board. With a classy and fun interface, the app is easy to use as it boasts of interactive tools like 1.  Bumpie Photo Diary. 2.  Baby Names Finder 3.  Contraction Timer 4.  Birth Plan Checklist 5.  Baby Kick Counter 6.  Daily Baby Calendar 7.  Birth Clubs and Community Groups signup 8.  Baby Registry Checklist 9.  Lullaby Music and Sleep guide for infants 10. Breastfeeding tips and baby feeding formulas 11. Mother and Child activity suggestions 12. Incisive Baby Care tips 13. Baby Health and Safety videos and tips 14. Pregnancy Calendar with vast tips 15. Fetal development videos 16. Real-to-life inside-the-womb interactive videos

2. BABY MANAGER:

This simple interface yet interactive app assists parents to achieve the following: 1. Allows parents to follow-up on real-time trends and routines that have to do with their baby's growth. 2. Alerts which allow parents to control events happening around their child from the comfort of their smartphones while they are anywhere. 3. The app keeps a detailed record of the child's temperature, moods, feeding, medications and even baths. 4. Through the BABY MANAGER dedicated server parents can exchange and sync crucial data with their partner in less than a record 4 seconds. 5. Daily reports on the child's health and growth rate. 6. Breastfeeding mothers can know their child's appetite and feeding rate through in-app interactive charts. 7. In-app alarm system for mothers to feed their babies at the right time. The BABY MANAGER App also allows parents to share pictures, videos, and text with each other via social media platforms. Users are allowed to share their bay's progress with family and friends via Facebook and Email. The app has been proven to bond parents even closer due to the energy they both have to put into in-app activities during their child's growth.

 3. BABY DAYBOOK: Lots of parents who use the Baby Daybook App enjoy the levity of closely monitoring their baby's feeding, diaper-change, sleep, growth and being able to sync all of this information between both parents securely via the app's dedicated server. With a notification widget which works even while users phone is in lock screen mode, parents can know what exact time to feed their babies as the app stores the routine of the baby for easy interactive purposes. All baby information stored on the app can be shared between multiple caregivers e.g between both parents, nannies, grandmas etc. The app allows users to easily sign-in using either their Facebook or Google accounts. The following are offered to users of the Baby Daybook App:

• Daily Baby progress summary
• Event Reminders
• Baby Growth Tracking
• Real-time in-app sync
• Sticky Notes widget
• Multiple Baby profile

The App which is highly customizable also comes complete with various mother-child activities and in-app tips like, the:

• Bottle Formula
• Solid Food Formula
• Medicine routinE
• Sleep routine and guide
• Breastfeeding tracking
• Breast enlargement info and pumping
• Liquid (drink) routine
• Diaper change routine
• Potty time routine
• Bath scheduling

All baby data stored on the app's server can be exported and printed in hardcopy format. The app boasts a backup and restores data function via its dedicated server.

 4. FAMILY SAFETY AND LOCATOR: Offering a simplified way to parenting, the app makes connecting with parents and children quite effortless. The app is more like a parenting social media network platform as it comes with an inbuilt chat pane where parents alongside family members can send and receive text, photos, audio and video for free. With an active timeline, multiple users of the app in a family can check out what each other has posted to their various timelines. Users can easily create and customize their own groups in-app. With an in-app speed limiter, family members can be sent alerts when another member of the family reach an extremely high-speed limit and the person's precise location can be easily tracked in-app. The ingenuity of the Family Safety App is vastly numerous as other family members who are users of the app can see what another's current battery status, current location, and address, The app has been translated into 10 major languages worldwide, so its users can break the language divide to communicate as a family circle using the app. It enables other family group users to access location history of each other when needed. The app immediately sends a panic alert via phone call and SMS  while it provides accurate GPS coordinates to distressed users address.

 5. WACHANGA (PARENTING GUIDE) Wachanga is a powerful must-have tool for parents as it tutors them step-by-step methods of rearing their children. Embedded with tons of in-app tasks and activities to properly orientate parents on proper child upbringing. Wachange allows parents to be a part of their children's psychological, emotional, intellectual, social, spiritual and physical developmental process. Tasks are doled out to parents in-app according to their child's age, thereby allowing parents the levity of keeping records and reports on their child's growth. Parents can also share their child's journal with members of their family who use the Wachanga app. More like a social platform, the app provides users with a timeline where other users who belong to the same family can check out stuff about each other via posts and uploads.

 6. CALMEAN CONTROL CENTER: With this App, parents have their eyes in every of their child's activity. Calmean furnishes parents with useful information on how their children use their mobile phones and what places they frequently go to. The app which is for children of a more advanced age (from 8 years upwards), who are exposed to the workings of the internet and smartphones. The app which works symbiotically with its parent app the Calmean Parental Control allows parents to closely watch their kids access to both the internet and mobile phones.

 7. TINYBEANS: This app allows parents to securely share photos of themselves and their children with close-knit family members away from the glare of social media. The app comes with unlimited storage to share tons of cute family photos among family members. More like a platform for sharing nostalgic memories, the app offers a digital flashback cache for users to make reference to in the future.

 8. IWING: The IWING App is more of a hands-on fun-filled educational approach to the child's upbringing. The app allows parents to pick a book which they wish to read with their child(ren) such as fiction, short stories, fantasy, sci-fi, history etc., then read on the app while it records the session in the parent's voice. The recording in their parent's voice is then played to the child's hearing, this from research has proven to bond parents and children coercively over a period of actively using the app. These recordings can be streamed online or shared with as many people as possible. Children will always love to hear their parents read them bedtime stories but when the parent has a busy schedule, they can in their free time record their child's favorite stories and playback to them during upbeat situations.

 9. SAFE SURFER (PORN BLOCKER): This App is a must-have for parents to install on their children's smartphones as it restricts their ability to access pornographic content on the internet when using their smartphones. Aside from blocking porn websites, the app is also designed to block all harmful websites and files including worms, malware, phishing, unauthorized intrusion, and spams. With its Safe Search option, the app runs conveniently in the user's background. Once installed, the app automatically and thoroughly scans through user's web browser/history to block all incoming harmful content even when the smartphone is switched off. As it cannot be overridden or stopped when installed using Device Administrator permission, the app also has the power to stick fast and can not also be uninstalled.

 10. KID'S AUDIO PLAYER: Specifically designed for children who have attained the age to be in full control of a smartphone, the app is an audio player loaded with tons of kiddies songs as the parent will not find it necessary to scour the length and breadth of audio content designed for their children's hearing pleasure.