Now that you have purchased the Amazon Echo Dot Kids Edition, you're likely wondering how to use the Amazon Parent Dashboard — you know, one of the key features that brought you to the kids edition in the first place. Here's a deeper look at what the service offers and what you can do with it.
Products used in this guide
- Amazon: Echo Dot Kids Edition ($70)
- Amazon: FreeTime Unlimited (1 year included for Echo Dot Kids Edition, $3/month)
What is the Amazon Parent Dashboard?
For the unaware, the Parent Dashboard offered alongside the Echo Dot Kids edition offers quite a few different controls. Here's a quick list and a brief description:
- Activity Reports: Weekly and 3-month reports provide information about what your child has been using. These also share how much content is being consumed.
- Discussion Cards: These cards allow you to view more information from your child's favorite books, apps, and videos. There are also summaries, which identify "key themes" to help you talk to your children.
- More Content: Whenever you purchase new content, you can then share it with your children.
- Locking: If you need to lock the children's devices after a certain time, the Dashboard also allows that. Then, your children will not be able to use enabled devices until the time selected has expired.
- Remote Parental Controls: These controls make it possible to set daily time limits, create educational goals, and choose which content the child sees from the Dashboard.
How to use the Amazon Parent Dashboard
With every purchase of the Amazon Echo Kids Dot Edition, the company includes a year of Amazon FreeTime Unlimited. This not only gives you all of the parental controls that you would need, but there is even more included:
- Audible Books
- Ad-free Radio Stations
- "Hundreds of hours of educational content"
- And more
After you have received and set up the Echo Dot for your child, you'll need to get signed into the Parent Dashboard. You can do this from the Amazon Echo app, but there is also a web client available.
Once signed in, you can scroll down and there will be a section for the child's specific Echo device. From there, you are greeted with a slew of different options to be able to control various aspects.
One great example of how the Parent Dashboard can help both parents and children is through the Discussion cards. The cards share a summary of what content is being used, some of the themes of the content, along with questions that could be asked.
Our top equipment picks
Best Echo for Kids
Introduce your family to smart home magic safely
At just $70, you really can't go wrong with this bright little smart speaker, thanks to the 2-year worry-free warranty, child-resistant case, and one year of FreeTime Unlimited with the Parent Dashboard.
Additional Equipment
In order to obtain full parental control over what your kids are doing, you'll need Amazon FreeTime Unlimited.
Amazon FreeTime Unlimited ($3/month at Amazon)
Amazon FreeTime Unlimited is required to take full advantage of Parent Dashboard, and it unlocks thousands of hours of entertainment for your kid, not just on the Echo Dot Kids Edition, but smartphones and tablets as well.
