My Little Morphée – meditation and relaxation aid for children.
Discover My Little Morphée!
The new school year has begun and like many parents we have a little one starting reception. It is a big step coming from nursery, but school starting is not just challenging for first-time starters. School can bring so much excitement but also change, nerves, overstimulation, and overtiredness. Our eldest has ASD and had school attendance anxiety through his primary years. Sleep schedules and time for relaxation are important parts of a child’s daily routine to help with all those BIG feelings. Parents will encourage littles to get the rest and downtime they need at night, especially after a long day of learning!
You may find younger children need earlier bedtimes in the first few weeks of school as they start dozing off at the dinner table. Or, if they are feeling overwhelmed have talking time in the car to help them process their day. Though don’t be surprised if all you get told is, ‘I didn’t do anything’ or ‘I don’t remember’. Helpful child-friendly products like French-founded My Little Morphée, offer parents a low tech, screen free relaxation aid. Perfect for using before bedtime or help calm children down during the day Morphée contains 192 meditative journeys with content suitable for children ages 3-8 years old. For older children, Morphée also has its namesake adult version with which kids can practice relaxation with their parents.
What is in the box- Inside the environmentally focussed, illustrated cardboard packaging you will find a Little Morphée, easy to follow user guide and usb charging cable.
How does My Little Morphée work?
I really like how simple Morphée is to operate, for both parents and children. There are two ‘keys’ that can be turned to different pictograms. With the first key you choose the theme of your session: a soothing journey (visualisation), guided meditation (solo or with an adult), breathing exercises, nature sounds or soft music. The second is to choose the world the adventure happens, the soundscape – how about in the mountains, or outer space? To your children they’re just adventurous stories. In the sleep expert designed journeys children meet animals that each represent life skill such as generosity, courage etc and in the sessions help children relax and build self-esteem.
A play button sits up top, which is what starts and pauses the sound. On the side there is an hourglass switch so you can customise the length of the session: 8 or 16 minutes. Also is the volume and off dial. Easy. It doesn’t have a massive volume range, but I think with it being a meditation sounds system you don’t want it being too loud. You can plug in a pair of 3.5mm headphones on the side. The battery lasts 3 hours on play mode and needs an hour and a half to be fully charged. It is not the longest battery life but still offers a decent amount of listening time. The price of My Little Morphée is £79.95, I like that it comes with a range of content and that you don’t have to buy add-ons like some other story players. And, if after your 100-nights trial you’re not happy, you can return the Morphée for a full refund.
What did we think of My Little Morphée?
I love the concept of improving a child’s mindfulness and wouldn’t call this solely a sleep aid as I think its prime purpose is to calm children down. Full points for the overall aesthetic of the device and that it is operated by physical keys and buttons. Tick to the gender neutral pale green colour which will fit in with modern decor. It is robustly built, compact and portable so with the handy wooden handle, can travel with your children, in the car etc. Morphée being multi use – perfect to accompany children to bed but also for use during the day to help regulate emotions is a good design point. Especially for pre-schoolers that still have tantrums they need to wind down from. It is perfect for stimulating a child’s imagination, paired with a wonderful wealth of vocabulary.
Originally, I thought the story language would be too complicated for the younger age range of children, but it seems it doesn’t matter as Norah just contentedly listened and enjoyed hearing about the animals. She responded surprisingly well to the meditation-app soothing female voice. That gives a hint to me then that it will last its age range as I tried it out with my 11-year-old and afterwards he was discussing the emotions and meditations which she is not quite ready to fully follow. That said the calming breathing, learning to sit still etc are all good tools for a four-year-old to be introduced to and develop.
Yes, you could find the content on YouTube or an app, but you would have to have a screen to do this, what I like about this little device is that its deliberately non digital and very child friendly – there are no over stimulating lights. A downside is perhaps if you have it on nature sounds or music after the timer cycle it will stop and you will need to press play again which could be disruptive if a child is just dosing off you have to go and press play again. Though if they do dose off this stops the battery being run down so it makes sense from the design point. I was a bit overwhelmed by the choices at first, but this is likely a good thing as then your child won’t get bored quickly. It is on the more premium cost side, but this could be tempered with that a 6-month subscription to an app would cost the same and you don’t get a physical device to keep with that. You are paying for 128 soothing mediation journeys, 16 nature sounds, 32 meditation recordings, 16 gentle pieces of music. I would say ideal age would be 6 even up to 10.
Is this something you would buy for your children? Or if you have a My Little Morphée does it work for you?
#Ad We were kindly gifted the product for the purpose of this review.