Quick answer: You do not need to change your child's age or put them through an age check. Link your Roblox account to theirs and use Parental Controls — Roblox states that "until their child turns 16, parents can change chat settings and allow or block specific games." That permission applies to the one experience you choose, and nothing else about the account changes. If the game still will not open afterwards, the cause is almost always its content rating rather than the permission.
Why your child is blocked in the first place
Since the 2026 rollout, a Roblox account that has not completed an age check is placed into a catalog based on its self-declared age: Roblox Kids for ages 5–8 and Roblox Select for ages 9–15. The full catalog is for age-checked users 16 and older.
A child in the Select catalog can play experiences rated Moderate and below. Kids accounts are narrower still — Minimal and Mild — and exclude experiences with social hangout or free-form drawing features. Anything outside the assigned catalog, including every newly published experience, simply does not open.
This is why a friend can send your child a link that works perfectly for them and does nothing for your child. It is not a broken link and not a bug.
The fix: allow that one game
The route Roblox provides is deliberately narrow, which is the point — you are approving one experience, not opening the whole platform.
- Link your account to your child's account. Parental Controls only exist once the two accounts are connected; a parent account that is not linked has no authority over the child's settings.
- Open Parental Controls for the child's account from your own.
- Allow the specific game. Roblox's own wording is that parents "can change chat settings and allow or block specific games" until the child turns 16.
What this does not do matters as much: it does not raise your child's stated age, it does not complete an age check on their behalf, it does not turn on chat, and it does not grant access to anything else in the catalog above theirs.
What an age check is, and why you are not doing one for a child
An age check is completed either with ID verification or with Facial Age Estimation, a short camera scan. It is what moves an account into the full 16+ tier, and age-checked users can then reach all rated experiences except Restricted (18+) ones.
For a child under 16 this is not the tool you want. The parental permission above gives access to one game without changing anything about the child's account. Reserve the age check for your own adult account if you want to open such an experience yourself.
If it still will not open after you allowed it
- Check the experience's rating. A Restricted (18+) experience is not reachable by a child account at all, with or without a parental allowance.
- Confirm the accounts are genuinely linked, not merely friended. Friending is a different relationship and carries no parental authority.
- Have the child sign out and back in. Permission changes are not always picked up inside a running session.
- Check which account they are signed into. Children with a second, older account frequently test on the wrong one.
A note on what this costs the people building games
From the other side of the wall, the same rule means a new experience is invisible to exactly the children it was built for. In one measured case, a game published on 11 October sat at 2 visits after 19 days, and a social post that reached 5,039 people moved that counter by zero.
If you want the mechanics from the creator's side, see why your friends cannot play your Roblox game and what the 1,000 Robux publishing fee actually buys. For the full picture of the three account tiers, start with Roblox Kids vs Select vs full accounts.