Bedtimes used to be a struggle, but not anymore. We spoke to parents using the Super Chill app.

From school stress to social pressures, kids these days face lots of challenges that previous generations might not have experienced. However, at a young age, it can be hard to put those emotions into words. That’s where Super Chill comes in. Super Chill helps children to identify the emotions they’re feeling and then offers playful exercises to help them work through them. Whether it’s struggling to wind down in the evening or feeling anxiety around going back to school, this app has been helping children and parents alike. We spoke to two parents about what their experience with Super Chill has been like.  

Parent: Rene, 42 

After downloading Super Chill out of curiosity, Rene started using the app at the end of last summer, when his daughter Liz (8) was struggling with back-to-school nerves. “She had a pretty hard time adjusting coming from summer vacation back to school,” he explained. “There was a little bit of anxiety, starting a new school year again, going to fifth grade. A little more pressure from school and a little bit of homework. She had some trouble adjusting, and that resulted in not sleeping so well at night.” 

Super Chill provided an easy way for Liz to process her feelings and unwind before bed. The app features interactive exercises designed to help kids manage their emotions, and Rene had Alice choose the ones that resonated with her. “I let her go through the app and point out what she was feeling. That was a big learning for me too - letting her put words to what she was feeling. We got to the relaxing exercises, and one she still does now without the app is putting her fingers behind her ears and making circles. It helped the same night to get her to sleep.” 

The exercise Rene is referring to is Sleep Well. Based on acupressure, this exercise demonstrates how to massage pressure points on the head. These movements have a relieving effect if you’re feeling tense or can’t sleep.

Super Chill has also helped foster deeper conversations at home. Collaborating with mental health experts, the Super Chill team has created a set of 10 chat cards, aimed to encourage meaningful conversations that go beyond the standard ‘how was your day?’ Rene and his family began using them at the dinner table. “With an eight-year-old, it’s always hard to get something out of her about how her day was. We’d ask, ‘How was school?’ and she’d just say, ‘It was fun,’ and the conversation would end. But with these questions, it was easier. She even started asking us questions too - like ‘what we were proud of during the day?’ It’s something you never think about, I guess, as an adult, but now we have these conversations together.” 

Rene sees a stark contrast between his own childhood and his daughter’s experience when it comes to emotional awareness. 

“The biggest difference is that I was bored a lot as a kid, which forced me to be creative. Now, what I see with my daughter and already my son (2) is that whenever there’s a slight moment of boredom, kids can just grab a phone, an iPad, or watch one of the 900 TV channels. What I really like [about Super Chill] is that when they do the exercises, they don’t look at the screen anymore. After a while, they just do it themselves. So instead of me telling her not to do something, I can encourage her to do something that she enjoys - and it ends up achieving what I want, too.” 

Parent: Lisa (35) 

A ball of energy, Lisa’s daughter Emily (7) has always struggled to wind down in the evenings. “She’s always very energetic before bed, jumping around and full of stories,” Lisa explains. “But I think the reason she’s got this much energy is that she’s actually tired. She struggles to wind down, so we needed something to help her relax.” 

Super Chill has become an integral part of their nighttime routine. Now, instead of trying to find excuses and distractions from going to bed, Emily looks forward to bedtime. “We usually do two or three exercises, and by the end, she’s so much calmer. She enjoys it so much that she wants to keep going!” 

Emily’s favourite exercises include The Calm Robot, a wind-down activity where kids imagine turning off like a robot, and The Wishing Tree, a visualisation exercise to quiet the mind by picturing their deepest wish. Sometimes, even her 3-year-old son Jake joins in. “My husband puts Jake to bed, but when we start using Super Chill, he always comes over for a cuddle and wants to do it with us,” Lisa shared with a laugh. “Sometimes, when Emily has too much energy during the day, I remind her to do the ‘square breath’ exercise from the app. She now does it even without the app.” 

Lisa believes mindfulness practices are especially beneficial for children today, given the pressures they face. “With school and social pressures, they have so much on, I don’t remember it being like that when I was young,” she reflects. The exercises on the app aren’t like games you play, they are audio or videos. Lisa says she prefers to turn her phone screen off so Emily can focus on listening. She also hopes that starting these practices early will benefit Emily in the long run.