Are you a parent looking for strategies to help your child feel calm when they are dealing with anxiety, meltdowns or other overwhelming emotions? What you need is a toolkit of various strategies to implement when your child needs help to feel calm. Not every strategy will work for every child. Some strategies will work for one child in one situation and not in another. This is why having a variety of strategies at your disposal is the best way to help your child deal with big feeling and to calm down.
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Table Of Contents
Keep Your Options Open
I’m going to offer up a variety of different strategies and not every strategy will work for every child and not every strategy will work for every child in every situation. Some things I do with my children work wonderfully sometimes, and just don’t do anything other times. So it’s good to have a whole host of ideas that you can go to when you need to help your child to feel calm.
Please Remember
I do think it’s important to say I’m not a doctor, although lots of these strategies have been given to me by doctors as part of my journey as an autism Mum. But if you do have concerns about your child, whether you feel they may need an assessment for autism , for which I do have lots of videos on my channel actually, or whether they are dealing with extreme anxiety.
If you’ve got some real concerns about your child, then make sure you speak to your doctor for advice.
Make sure you keep reading all the way to the end, where I’ve got some really simple strategies that can be used absolutely anywhere, either with your child or your child can use independently to calm down instantly.
But first let’s take a little look at preventing any meltdowns before they occur.
Prevention Is Better Than Cure
Get to know your child’s triggers, if you know that certain situations always cause anxiety or meltdowns then do what you can in advance to avoid, or at least smooth over these situations.
Now this is a topic on its own that I could talk about in depth about how to prepare your children in advance and avoid these trigger situations.
But in short;
If they’re wearing something new and you know that your child gets really triggered by scratchy labels and clothes then make sure that you try on their clothes before you head out.
If you know, they get overwhelmed, when they’re overtired, make sure that they’re getting to bed at appropriate times, structure and routine can really help children, whether they’re on the autism spectrum or not.
So keep an eye on what may be the cause, so you can try your best to avoid these situations.
Notice Early Warning Signs
The next one is to really notice the early warning signs as with most things in life, it’s going to be so much easier to help your child calm down from anxiety or a meltdown when you catch it in the earlier stages, rather than waiting until it’s escalated into a frenzied state.
Learn to recognise your own child’s personal tells. Maybe they go very, very quiet. Maybe they would start clenching their fists, or you’d notice a certain look on their faces. Maybe they start pulling at their hair, whatever it might be, it’s going to be very, very specific to your child.
I’m sure most adults that you know, will have these tells too when they’re starting to feel stressed and anxious. By getting to know, your child’s specific tells that they’re starting to feel overwhelmed, you are able to jump in at the earliest possible point and help to calm them down. It’s gonna be so much easier to help them to calm down and recover from what they’re feeling before it really reaches a fever pitch.
Identify Feelings
The next tip is to talk to your child about how they are feeling. As they’re getting these big feelings and getting them to identify it as a feeling. Now, this may sound obvious. It’s definitely not obvious to children and quite frankly, it’s not always obvious to us adults when we’re getting really stressed, it can come on very suddenly without us being mentally aware.
“I am starting to feel stressed. I am feeling this way.” So if you can get your child to talk about how they’re feeling and label that feeling, and then the next step on from that, if they’re able to tell you why they’re feeling that way, as in what may have caused them to feel that way. And again, this is something that children, especially in my experience, children on the spectrum are not always aware of.
They don’t necessarily know as children, and like I said, we don’t always know as adults “I’m feeling this way, because….” So if you can talk to your child and get them to identify how they’re feeling, and why they’re feeling that way. So I am feeling stressed out because I can’t find my shoes or I’m feeling worried because this is happening.
Now obviously, if your child has really reached fever pitch with all this, then it’s not an exercise you’re gonna be able to do to talk through this with them. But if you noticing early warning signs of anxiety or stress or meltdown, then this might be something you’re able to discuss with them.
There’s a really sweet book called Ruby’s worry, which talks about how this little girl has a worry. And because she doesn’t talk about it to anyone, it gets bigger and bigger and bigger.
And it’s like this big monster following her round. And when she talks about her worry, then it shrinks and gets more and eventually goes away. So using picture books like this, I will link that one below in the accompanying blog post to go with this video, lots of books like that, help to explain things to children that they may be worried about and help them put it in a different frame of mind.
Now, even as an adult, thinking of emotions as separate from us, not overtaking us. ” This is a worry, this is something I’m feeling. It’s not me. It’s just something I am feeling” can be perhaps not intuitive to think of, but a good way of breaking it down so we can start to feel better.
Teach Them To Ask For What They Need
If you’re able to take this one step further, and this is something I’m working on with my children and it works sometimes and not always, but I think it’s a case of repetition. If you are able to get them to not only identify how they’re feeling. ” I’m feeling cross, I’m feeling sad” but then use their words to ask for help.
Then those are the tools that they’re really gonna need as they go into adulthood. I know so many adults, myself included that sometimes struggle to ask for what they want or need. Maybe it’s in a friendship, maybe it’s in a workplace, but asking for help can be really something that’s quite tricky for a lot of adults.
I mean, let me know in the comments, are you good at asking for help? I know a lot of adults are not. So if you’re able to ask your child when they’re saying “I’m sad, I’m cross I’m feeling this, or I can’t find my shoes”. If you’re then able to prompt them to ask for what they need. It’s like, okay. I understand that you’re feeling that I understand that this is a problem. What you need, use your words to ask me for what you need.
As a parent, you may naturally know what they need or naturally jump in and give them whatever it is they need, because you’re just identifying that they feel a certain way and therefore preempting what they need as they are out in the world or getting to be adults, they won’t necessarily have someone offering that to them.
So if you can just practice saying “That’s great, I understand how you feel. What do you need ask for what you need”. Then it might be a case of, they need to ask for help in looking for something, ask for help in putting something on, and that’s a really good practice for them to get into that will ultimately lead to them feeling a lot better and give them the tools as they get older to manage these big feelings, be it in secondary school or as an adult when you’re not work there with them 24/7.
So all of that may sound a bit intense. Let’s go onto some really simple strategies that can work quite quickly for calming your children. Even if they’re not at a place where they’re able to understand how they’re feeling themselves.
Mix It Up
So one simple strategy is literally just to switch things up. Change location, meltdowns are happening because you’re cooped up in the house, get ’em outside. Even if it’s raining, get you wellies on go splash in some puddles. If it’s pouring with rain and everyone is stressed out because the school run home has been hideous, switch things up, get them home, get ’em into their jammies super early and snuggle up under some blankets.
Whatever you are doing, just switch it up. So if you’re out and about, get home and get snugly. If you’re cooped up in the house, get out, just switch up whatever you’re doing at that moment and try something new. The simple act of changing what you’re doing changing location can often be really, really helpful.
Paint With All The Colours Of The Wind
One strategy for getting your children to express to you how they’re feeling is getting them perhaps to take a pen and paper and draw what they’re feeling, using different colours to express how they’re feeling. The activity itself can sometimes be enough of a distraction to kind of break them free of the really intense emotion, but it can be a good way of expressing to you what’s going on when they just can’t find the words.
Tap Their Troubles Away
A really great strategy for easing anxiety is something called tapping, also known as EFT, which stands for emotional freedom technique. Now, this is the kind of thing that people have entire YouTube channels dedicated to, check out the video below.
In summary, it is tapping certain points on your face and body to calm the nervous system when you are feeling stressed. This is a really good thing to practice with your children when they are not feeling stressed so that when they feel that they need it, they already know what to do and they’re not having to learn it because that in itself can feel a bit overwhelming.
So you start by tapping where you would do a karate chop on the side of the hand, then you’re tapping on the eyebrow side of the underneath the eyes. The idea is if you start with putting a number on your anxiety at the beginning of this, after a few cycles, you, that number should reduce to feeling lower levels of anxiety under the nose, on the chin collarbone.
And then under the arm on the bra line, after going through a few cycles of tapping, you’re generally going to feel a lot calmer, that level of anxiety that you picked at the beginning, it’s going to feel a lot lower. Sometimes when my children are feeling very anxious, then I kind of help them with it. So I would say, do you want Mummy to do the tapping for you? And then they would close their eyes and I would gently tap in the points when they’re just feeling too overwhelmed to think about it. But if they’re kind of feeling a bit wobbly, then we do it together. You can either put a video on to watch or you demonstrate it for them, and then they copy you. It’s definitely worth looking into and learning about before the meltdowns happen.
But I’m pretty sure, you know, even if you forget the order and things, it’s not gonna matter that much, the act of going through it can be really calming.
Rainbow Breathing
The next technique is when I actually used, when I was in labor as like a hip and a birthing kind of thing, but I find it works really well with the children too.
I’ve actually used it myself recently at times, like in the dentist where I really need to distract myself from whatever was going on. So this one is rainbow breathing. There are lots of different ways to do rainbow breathing, but the way that I have used I’ve used with my children is literally to inhale, and you start the beginning of the rainbow, you inhale red. You think about all things that around you like; strawberries, roses, and you just imagine what they smell like. Big, deep breath, and then very slow exhale on red. Then you repeat for orange. I can only ever think of oranges for this one, but that’s fine.
You imagine the smell of oranges and the colour of them and then hold and exhale. So the children can use this to think of lots of different things of the different colors and imagine the smells of them. Generally, by the time you get to the end of the rainbow, then levels will calm down a bit. If not, you repeat the whole process.
My children often like to add arms to their rainbow breathing by bringing the arms up above the head and then as they exhale, forming the arc of a rainbow, as we go through the colours and the breathing.
Finger Breathing
Perhaps the simplest technique that you can do is actually finger breathing. Now, this is so, so easy because it can be done subtly, something you can teach your child to do, even if they were out in public and they were starting to feel a little anxious and they needed a tool to utilize when they’re away from you.
If you take your hand, place your finger at the base of your hand. As you go up, you inhale and as you go down, you exhale. So quite simply you go in through the nose, out through the mouth, nice and slowly, and then up again.
If necessary you can then go back along the hand as many times as you like. You could do it with the other hand, I find this a really simple technique. It’s really easy to use. It doesn’t require any memory or any brain power, and it’s a good one to have in your toolkit as a Mum, and to teach to your children..
Keep On Movin’
Sometimes a really good way to help your children to calm down is to utilize exercise. So this could be something really vigorous, like putting on some really upbeat music and really dancing it out and just getting it all out your system or something a little bit calmer, like yoga. There’s a really great channel on YouTube called Cosmic Kids. Yoga. My children adore it. There are lots of really kid friendly yoga sessions based on cartoon characters and things that they know and love.
Often schools will utilize cosmic kids yoga and do these sessions and schools. Your children will probably be familiar with them, but yoga and general movement and exercise is really great when they’re feeling a bit stressed and overwhelmed, but also as really good as a preventative thing, because exercise in children and in adults can help us all feel mentally and physically better overall.
A Tight Hug
Another tactic can be, (this is sort of quite specific to autism) that works really well for some children, not so well for others, which is just a really tight hug. This can suppress the nervous system and make you go. Ah, and then for other children, it’s not going to work at all and they’re just going to hate it.
Just giving a really pressured squeeze, obviously not so hard that you hurt them, but just a secure squeeze can sometimes help children. So it’s just gonna be kind of a judgment call on that one, whether it’s something that suits your child or not.
Meditation For Beginners
Now, meditation is known to be really great for relaxing and calming down for adults, and it can be used for children as well. There are apps and things that you can use or guided meditations that you can put on for them to close their eyes and follow.
Perhaps more of an entry level meditation, shall we call it for children that. Not up for being calm enough to meditate. And in fact, for adults that really find it difficult to switch off their brains, an audiobook can be a really good alternative.
It’s a good distraction so that you can close your eyes and quiet your mind without your mind having to be so quiet that you are actually meditating.
Any audiobook at all, to be honest would be a good option. I actually have an audible subscription, click the button below for a free audiobook.
Download an audiobook to whichever device your child has access to in advance, next time they’re feeling a little anxious or stressed, it might be a really good switch off.
Which Will You Try?
So like I said, it is really important to know that this is not a replacement for medical advice. But if your child is struggling, then try some of these strategies by all means. But if your child is really struggling and you need help, then make sure you see your doctor, your health, visitor, whichever medical health professional is around to help you.
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