Regularly backup your device
If your iPad or iPhone dies or is stolen, you'll lose everything on it. Back it up regularly to iTunes on your PC or Mac, or use iCloud, and you'll be able to restore to a new device.
Save copies of your stories and word lists
Export your stories from Special Stories and your word lists from Special Words after making important changes. It is quick and easy to email them to yourself as attachments and then save them elsewhere. If you have 2 devices (e.g. an iPad and an iPhone), it's also easy to transfer copies directly between them, using Bluetooth or Wi-Fi.
To learn how to do this, read the Extra Actions chapters in the Special Stories User Guide and Special Words User Guide.
Prevent your child accidentally deleting apps
Apple's Restrictions features (in the Settings app) allow you to passcode-protect actions like deleting and installing apps. Turn on these protections, and little fingers won't be able to delete all your apps!
Use the safety features in Special Stories & Special Words
Special Stories and Special Words both have a padlock button to keep the app in a story or a game: press and hold for 3 seconds to lock or unlock.
Both of our apps also have an option in their settings to disable editing. To find the settings in Special Stories, tap the action button at the top left in the main view, or in Special Words tap the Word List icon at the bottom right and then the action button at the top right. In either case, you are then looking at the Extra Actions view, and the Settings button is at at the top right (if you don't see this button, you have an old version of the app - visit the App Store to update it). In either app, if you set the Enable Editing option to OFF, this will prevent the app's data being modified in any way.