“We downloaded the app, sat down together… and nothing. She wouldn’t even look at the screen.” If that has happened to you, nothing is wrong with your child — and nothing is wrong with you. At 18 to 36 months, being ready to learn from a tablet is a skill in itself, and like any skill, it can be built.
Most learning apps assume every child is ready on day one. Interlaza now does something different: it asks first.
The 2-minute readiness check
Before the first session (and any time you like afterwards, from the Today screen), Interlaza walks you through a short check of four things professionals look at before starting table work:
- Looking — can your child focus on the screen for a few seconds?
- Touching — can they touch a big, colorful target on purpose?
- Dragging — can they drag an item? (Not required — tap mode exists.)
- Matching — can they put two identical pictures together?
You answer with what you see, at home, with no pressure. There are no wrong answers — only a starting point.
Three honest outcomes
Ready. Sessions start normally. Most children who already tap and match land here.
Almost ready. Your child attends well, but touching or matching isn’t quite there. Interlaza offers the Warm-Up route: three extra-gentle stages with the simplest possible choices and maximum help, using errorless learning turned up to its softest setting. It exists for exactly one purpose — to give your child easy wins until the real routes make sense. You can also run these sessions operating the tablet yourself while your child points.
Not yet. If your child isn’t yet looking at the screen with intention, a tablet session would only create frustration — so Interlaza says so, plainly, and gives you something better: an off-tablet plan. Simple everyday activities — following a toy with the eyes, popping soap bubbles with one finger, pairing socks — each one building exactly the skill that was missing. A few minutes a day is plenty. The app suggests a date to repeat the check, usually two weeks later.
And “not ready for the tablet” is not the same as “nothing to do in Interlaza”. Sessions can run off the tablet: the adult lays out physical cards, names the sample, the child points, and the adult records the response afterwards — the child never touches the screen, and the data is the same data. If your child already sees an Instructor, those sessions can start now, and the progress arrives on your Family screen. How off-tablet sessions work.
This isn’t us being cautious for caution’s sake. Research on toddlers and touchscreens consistently finds that screen learning only works when a child can engage with the screen contingently — and a 2025 study showed that tablet engagement itself can be taught with exactly this kind of graduated support (study).
Why “not yet” is good news
An app that takes your money and lets a not-ready child fail session after session teaches the child one thing: the tablet means frustration. By starting off-tablet, you protect something precious — the association between learning and feeling capable. When the check turns green two or four weeks later, your child arrives at their first real session already knowing how to succeed.
The readiness check is available now for all Family accounts, on the Today screen. If you already finished the setup questionnaire, your answers count — the app only brings readiness up when there is something useful to do about it.
You can do the check right now, without an account
The same three critical questions are on the website, outside the app: do the readiness check. It takes about a minute, asks for no email, and stores nothing — and if the answer is “not yet”, it hands you the off-tablet plan instead of a signup form.