The Hopes and Fears Tree is colorful craft to help kids understand that no matter what they’re worried about, they can still achieve their hopes and dreams.
Active coping skills are an important part of Please Don’t Sweat The Small Stuff Coping Tool Box. The Over and Under Obstacle Course is a fun way to help kids deal with difficult emotions and can be a powerful visual reminder that life events can be like an obstacle course. There will be ups and downs, but the most important thing is to keep going.
Whether you like writing or drawing or none of the above, a Feelings Journal is an extremely useful tool in learning how to cope with emotions. It is one of the most important thinking coping skills in the Please Don’t Sweat The Small Stuff Coping Tool Box and can also serve as a diversion tool or even a spiritual tool. Your journal is a space to record what’s going on in your life, and even more importantly the emotions that you are feeling. It can be as simple as a binder full of lined paper, a journal purchased from the store, or one you make on your own. The rest of this post describes how we made the journal shown in the pictures here.
Shark Bite was one of the hottest games around this past Christmas. It was flying off the shelves and hard to get your hands on. It also seemed like the perfect game to help kids learn more about emotions. Before you can play though, you’ll have to drop a few buck on your own copy of the game. You can get it through Amazon here.
Shark Bite is a simple game to set up and to play. You put the fish in the mouth of the shark, then roll the dice and fish out the number of fish shown on the dice. The person who pulls the fish that causes the shark to bite loses, but really everyone wins in the fun game.
If your kids are like mine, they like to look at themselves in the mirror. They like to make funny faces, and when they were younger it was uncommon to find them in the bathroom making themselves laugh by what they saw in the mirror. Mirror Mirror is a fun game that builds on that to help kids learn and practice what emotions look like. These are the important “See It” and “Mimic It” phases of the The Super Simple Feelings Management Technique.
You don’t need much to play this game. All you need is
Stress Balloons are a unique homemade alternative to the traditional stress ball that you can make with a child while talking to them about what is causing the stress in their lives. The instructions below use flour to fill the balloons. Use can also use rice, small beans or sand. These stress balloons can be a valuable soothing tool in a child’s Coping Tool Box.
The Mood Meter is a fun craft to build and gives kids a chance to gauge how they’re feeling at any given moment, and over time. Your mood meter can be as simple or as involved as you want and is a nice alternative to a traditional emotion chart. We borrowed this wonderful idea from Education.com and encourage you to check out their website for more great ideas.
Use your creativity to make your own personal mood meter. The following represents what we did:
The Color Wheel of Emotions provides kids and teens an artistic outlet for exploring their emotions. It also provides a golden opportunity to talk about those emotions with them. Although a simple exercise, the Color Wheel of Emotion hits on most of the aspects of the The Super Simple Feelings Management Technique – particularly the “Talk About It!” component. And, the best part is, you don’t even have to be a good artist to do it. The color wheel above was done by my (at the time) 13 year old daughter Lyndsey.
Over the last couple of weeks, we have looked at Lazy 8 Breathing and Triangle Breathing as effective tools for beginning to teach kids about deep breathing. Deep breathing is a key skill to have in the Please Don’t Sweat The Small Stuff coping skills toolbox. The Breathing Sphere can be used along with the techniques from either method to further reinforce breathing skills in kids.
This activity may require spending some cash if you don’t have a sphere lying around, but we found it to be a very effective tool in helping kids to visualize their stomach expanding and contracting as they engage in deep breathing. They come in all sizes from a small one that expands from 5.5 to 12 inches, a large sphere that expands from 9.5 to 30 inches to this super large one that expands up to 4.5 feet. Obviously, the bigger you go the more expensive they get. I won the one shown above on a family vacation to Gatlinburg a few years back.
The idea is simple. Have the child hold the sphere. As they breathe in, they should expand the sphere. Have them hold the sphere open as they hold their breath, then have them slowly contract the ball as they breath out slowly through their mouth.
Last week we looked at an easy way to help kids learn deep breathing called Lazy 8 Breathing. Triangle breathing is another simple way to teach kids how to breathe as a means of coping. The triangle breathing method adds the additional step of holding in the breath before exhaling as explained further below. like Lazy 8 Breathing, you can find a triangle in a picture or simply have the child make a triangle on a piece of paper.
Have the child trace the triangle with their finger. The speed will vary depending on the size of the triangle, but try to have the child trace it in such a way that tracing each side takes about 3-4 seconds. It might help to count out loud as the child begins the exercise in order to help them get into a rhythm. As the child traces the first side of the triangle, they should breath in deeply through their nose. As they trace the second side, they should hold the breath in. As they trace the final side, have them breathe out slowly through their mouth. Together Lazy 8 Breathing and Triangle Breathing serve as a great introduction to breathing as a coping skill in the Please Don’t Sweat The Small Stuff coping skills toolbox.