App Profile: Hum kids by Colgate

Urbancowgal

Rating: 5/5

After about 1 1/2 years of struggling with my now-4 year old about brushing teeth twice a day, I stumbled upon this and it’s a total game-changer. It took her about 2 weeks to get the hang of it, but she wants to use her “Neat toothbrush timer” every day now and happily brushes and brushes well. (I spot check after she’s done for now.) My only complaint is that I wish there was a confirmation button in the store before buying things. My child keeps getting excited to buy something big, saving up, and then accidentally hitting the wrong button and buying something else. So an “Are you sure you want to buy this?” button would be awesome. Thanks!

Ronkenator

Rating: 1/5

If your kid is not a perfectionist, maybe this is a good app for you. If your kid is a perfectionist, this will be a cause of tears every night because your kid will insist on doing it over and over to try to get a perfect score, which is nearly impossible. This is largely due the fact that there are certain angles in which the app cannot detect that the child is brushing — despite them brushing furiously just to make the app detect their efforts. The frequent 13/16 and 14/16 scores would be tolerable if the app have the child the opportunity to go back over areas they “missed.” But nope. 2 minutes? Done. And you didn’t do a perfect job. Try better tomorrow. Worse, my kids’ brushing technique has worsened because they are contorting their brushes into unnatural positions to try to get the app to see them brush certain teeth. This app is the bane of my existence. Do not get it unless you have kids who do not mind losing at a game. Parents of competitive kids beware.

Bronco-man

Rating: 5/5

Has been a great app to really get the kids motivated and excited about brushing. Took a little bit of getting used to, particularly how to angle the device properly. However, it's a bit glitchy. We've had several minor issues of losing progress, which is annoying enough and leads the kids to get very upset, especially challenging when it happens before bed. This week however, after two months of using the app, it just completely reset. All progress was lost - literally thousands of gems. Devastating to the kids. Contacted support and was made to feel as if I'd done something wrong. A promise to escalate, but literally no follow up. Was able to convince the kids to try again from the beginning, but if it happens again, I fear this will have the opposite effect of what we wanted - having them swear off brushing. Hoping Colgate works out any glitches so as not to have to deal with this again, otherwise we'll need to find something that works more consistently.