Why a Baby Kicking Simulator Script Changed Our Playtime

I was up to my elbows in pureed butternut squash, desperately trying to convince two screaming two-year-olds that lunch was a necessary human function, when I glanced over at my nine-year-old nephew. He was visiting for the weekend, slouched on our sofa in a posture that suggested his spine was made of cooked spaghetti, aggressively tapping his iPad. When I innocently asked what had him so enthralled, he didn't even look up as he muttered that he was searching the internet for an auto-clicker script to level up faster in a Roblox game.

I asked, with the forced casualness of an uncle trying to sound hip, what the game was called. He sighed the heavy, burdened sigh of a tween having to explain the modern world to a dinosaur.

"It's a simulator," he said. "For kicking babies."

I froze, the spoon hovering in mid-air while my daughter Eleanor took the opportunity to smear orange puree directly into her own hair. I'm fairly certain my brain short-circuited entirely. You spend your days worrying about choking hazards and whether non-bio detergent is gentle enough, and meanwhile, older kids are treating the internet like a digital wild west where punting infants is a casual afternoon activity.

A very specific brand of modern horror

If you're blessedly unfamiliar with the dark, absurd underbelly of user-generated gaming platforms, let me ruin your blissful ignorance. There are entire virtual economies built around "clicker" games where players perform a repetitive, often completely unhinged action to earn points. In this particular morbid corner of the platform, the joke—and I use that term with the gritted teeth of an exhausted parent—is the sheer shock value. They drop a low-resolution infant character, and you kick it across a brightly coloured map. The further it goes, the more digital coins you earn. It's meant to be edgy, ironic humour for kids whose brains have been thoroughly deep-fried by short-form video algorithms.

But the gameplay itself isn't even the worst part. The part that actually makes my blood run cold is the "script" aspect. Kids get bored of manually clicking their screens for hours, so they go onto incredibly sketchy forums to download third-party exploits—essentially, lines of hacked code—to automate the game for them. They're literally hunting for a bypass script for a simulator that kicks babies, which means they're downloading unverified executable files from anonymous strangers on the internet.

A bloke I used to work with back in my journalism days mumbled something over a pint once about these exploit executors being massive backdoors for malware, keyloggers, and ransomware, though honestly my understanding of cybersecurity mostly involves just using my mother's maiden name with a number at the end for every password. Still, I know enough to know that inviting Russian spyware onto a family tablet just so a virtual toddler can be launched into the stratosphere is a catastrophic idea.

My brother thinks giving a nine-year-old completely unfiltered internet access builds character, which honestly explains a staggering amount about his own life choices.

What I did horribly wrong when the screens took over

So, naturally, I did exactly what you shouldn't do. I panicked. I didn't calmly sit down and use it as a teachable moment about digital hygiene or internet safety. I dropped the squash spoon, marched over to the sofa, and physically snatched the iPad from my nephew's hands while loudly declaring that Roblox was permanently banned in this house.

The ensuing meltdown was spectacular. My nephew screamed about his lost progress. The twins, sensing the sudden shift in atmospheric pressure, immediately began sobbing in stereo. I was standing there holding a locked tablet, covered in vegetable mush, feeling like the absolute worst dictator in North London.

Our health visitor mentioned once, over a thoroughly tepid cup of tea, that children process abstract aggression much differently than we do, and stripping things away without context just makes the forbidden fruit sweeter. Snatching the screen and shouting into the void doesn't actually solve the problem of digital desensitisation; it just makes you the bad guy in their personal narrative.

What finally worked wasn't a rigid set of rules or a shouting match with the wifi router, but simply a messy, imperfect retreat back to actual, physical reality. Instead of banning every pixel in the house and lecturing them about malware until my face turned blue, we just started heavily tilting the scales back toward things you can actually touch, drop, and feel.

If you're finding yourself similarly exhausted by the digital noise, you might want to look into our tactile play collections, which are wonderfully silent and don't require a wifi password.

The slow, muddy retreat to physical reality

We needed to ground things. I wanted my kids, and my visiting nephew, to remember what actual physics felt like. I wanted play to be something that happened with gravity, not with exploitative code.

This is where the Gentle Baby Building Block Set became a surprising hero in our flat. They're these beautifully soft, rubbery blocks in slightly muted macaron colours—which means they don't assault my retinas at 6am when I inevitably step on one. The twins are obsessed with them. They feature little numbers and animal symbols, and because they're 3D and squishy, Eleanor can practice her very real, very physical throwing skills.

There's something deeply satisfying about watching a child build a wobbly, structurally unsound tower and then knock it over with their own hands. It requires patience. It requires spatial awareness. It doesn't give you a dopamine hit of digital coins, but the sheer joy on their faces when the blocks tumble down is entirely genuine. Plus, they're supposedly completely non-toxic and BPA-free, which is great because Katherine spends roughly 40% of her waking hours trying to eat them like apples.

The teething diversion that mostly just exists

Speaking of chewing on things, we were also right in the middle of a massive teething crisis. When Baby K—which is my affectionate nickname for Katherine when she's acting like a tiny, drool-covered mob boss—started cutting her incisors, she was feral. She'd bite the sofa cushions, my kneecaps, and occasionally her sister.

We bought the Panda Teether out of pure desperation. Look, it's a piece of silicone shaped like a bear. It's totally fine. The marketing says it's got multi-textured surfaces that massage tender gums, and sure, she gnaws on it quite happily when I remember to wash it. But I'm not going to pretend it's a miracle cure for teething; it's mostly just a decent distraction that I've fished out from under the television stand, covered in an ungodly amount of lint, more times than I care to admit. It does the job, it doesn't have small parts to choke on, and it's easy to chuck in the dishwasher. Sometimes "fine" is all you really need when you're running on three hours of broken sleep.

Real feet doing actual things

The contrast between the aggressive, meaningless kicking in that cursed tablet game and the reality of a baby's physical development really hit me a few weeks later. The twins were starting to pull themselves up on the furniture, their little legs wobbling like freshly born fawns. A real baby kick isn't a digital joke; it's usually a tiny foot catching you squarely in the ribs during a 3am nappy change.

When they started demanding to walk outside in the communal garden, I realised we needed actual footwear. The barefoot purists online will yell at you about natural foot development until they're blue in the face, but those people clearly haven't seen the state of a London pavement on a Tuesday morning. We got them the Baby Sneakers from Kianao.

They're brilliant, honestly. They look like tiny adult boat shoes, which is inherently hilarious, but the soles are incredibly soft and pliable. They don't restrict the foot like those stiff, formal baby shoes that look like miniature Victorian torture devices. The girls can feel the ground beneath them, which apparently helps with their balance, but they're protected from sharp twigs and rogue pebbles. They also stay on surprisingly well, despite Eleanor's best efforts to kick them off into the nearest puddle.

A slightly messy approach to digital hygiene

We didn't magically solve screen time in our house. My nephew still plays Roblox when he goes back home, and I'm sure he's still downloading sketchy hacks to automate his digital chaos. But in our flat, we've established a different rhythm.

You really just have to sit down in the mess of cables and half-eaten biscuits to figure out what they're honestly watching, because trusting a platform's age rating is about as reliable as trusting a toddler with an open pot of Sudocrem. We've replaced the mindless tapping with blocks that fall, shoes that get muddy, and teethers that end up lost in the sofa cushions. It's chaotic, it requires infinitely more energy on my part, and my flat constantly looks like a toy factory exploded.

But at least the chaos is real. At least when things get thrown or kicked around here, I can really pick them up, wipe them down, and hand them back.

If you're ready to swap the digital noise for some genuinely beautiful, real-world chaos, explore Kianao's full collection of sustainable baby essentials before your kid discovers how to hack a tablet.

FAQs that nobody really asked but I'm answering anyway

How do I stop my older kid from playing inappropriate clicker games?

You honestly can't stop them entirely once they know they exist, but you can go into the app's privacy settings and lock the account restrictions down so tightly it practically squeaks. It won't stop them complaining about it, but it'll block the weird user-generated stuff. Mostly, just sit next to them and force them to explain the joke to you until it stops being funny.

Are those exploit scripts genuinely dangerous for our devices?

Yeah, absolutely. From what I gather through my panicked late-night Google searches, third-party executors are essentially open invitations for malware. Kids click "download" on a cheat code and accidentally hand over the keys to your home network. It's a nightmare. Keep antivirus software updated and explain that nothing on the internet is honestly free.

Why are soft building blocks better than standard wooden ones?

Because my children throw things at my head. Next question. (But seriously, the soft ones are brilliant for the early months when their motor skills are basically nonexistent and everything goes straight into their mouths. They're lighter, squishier, and significantly less painful to step on in the dark).

Do babies really need shoes before they can walk properly?

Inside? Absolutely not, let them grip the floor with their bare toes like tiny primates. Outside? Yes, unless you fancy picking bits of glass and questionable pavement debris out of their feet. Soft-soled shoes give them the protection of a shoe with the flexibility of a thick sock, which seems to be the only compromise they'll tolerate without screaming.

How do I clean that silicone teether when it inevitably ends up in the dirt?

I usually just run it under the hot tap with some washing-up liquid and hope for the best, though you can apparently chuck it straight into the dishwasher. Just don't boil it for hours or freeze it solid, because rock-hard silicone isn't particularly soothing on swollen gums.