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.

What You Need to Make Stress Balloons

• A package of balloons.
• Flour (2/3 of a cup to a cup for each balloon)
• Funnel (or a water bottle)
• Pen or pencil
• Sharpie Marker
• Scissors

How to Make Stress Balloons

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.

How Does the Breathing Sphere Work

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.

How Does Triangle Breathing Work

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.

Pool Noodle Fidget Toys are an easy DIY project you can make for, or with, your kids. They are cheaper than fidget spinners, squishies and other fidget toys, and you can mass produce them with relative ease. I’ve worked with kids for years, and for many of those years I was in charge of games with a large group of students. Ever since that time, I’ve kept a box of pool noodles in my basement, because you never know when you’re going to need them! (FYI, you can get a box fairly cheap after summer is over). A standard pool noodle can be used to create 42 fidget toys. Here’s all you need to know:

63 inches – 42 stress relievers

Items Need For Project

• Pool Noodles
• Scissors or a Knife
• Ruler
• Pencil

Lazy 8 Breathing is a very simple technique to help teach kids deep breathing. Deep breathing is a foundational skill when it comes to coping and is a vital part in the Please Don’t Sweat The Small Stuff coping tool box. Whether you find the number 8 in a magazine or book or draw your own on a sheet paper, you can quickly and easily teach kids a simple method to practice deep breathing.

How Does Lazy 8 Breathing Work

Have the child trace the number 8 with their finger. Obviously, the speed will vary depending on the size of the 8, but try to have the child trace the eight in such a way that tracing each side of the eight takes about 3-4 seconds. As the child traces one side of the 8, they should breath in deeply through their nose. As they cross the intersection line and trace the other side, have them breathe out through their mouth. That’s it! We told you it was easy, but it is a simple and effective way for kids of all ages to remember how to breathe deeply in order to cope with difficult circumstances.

The Elephant Noise Maker is a fun and useful tool for teaching kids deep breathing techniques. Deep breathing is a key coping skill and one of the Soothing Coping Skills covered in Please Don’t Sweat The Small Stuff.

In the past we have drawn a picture of an elephant on a piece of heavy paper or cardboard to create our elephant noise makers. With this new template you can either use the picture to trace on something more durable or simply cut the elephant out and use the template itself.

Here’s are the instructions:

1.Cut out the elephant from the template. Either trace the elephant on to heavy duty paper or cardboard if desired or use the elephant from the template.

The first step in helping kids (or anyone for that matter) to deal with and process the difficult emotions in their lives is to help them understand and name emotions. At Hope 4 Hurting Kids, we use the Super Simple Feelings Management Technique for that. Once we have helped kids to understand their emotions, we need to provide them with means for dealing with those emotions.

The second step towards emotional maturity and healing is to develop a robust set of coping skills. Coping Skills are designed to help “take the edge” of emotions and assist us in dealing with them. Unfortunately, that moment when a young person is drowning in emotions is not the right time to start thinking about coping mechanisms. Instead, it is important that kids and teens have at their disposal a tool box full of coping mechanisms that work for them that they can draw from in a time of crisis.

At Hope 4 Hurting Kids, we’ve developed another mnemonic to help keep track of the many different types of coping mechanism. This time we borrowed from the title of a popular book series by Richard Carlson. The different types of coping skills can be readily recalled by remembering the phrase:

Please Don’t Sweat The Small Stuff

A Scream Box is a fun and effective way to vent some of those intense emotions that build up inside like anger, fear and stress. While breathing, physical activity and talking about it are great ways to help deal difficult emotions, sometimes you just need to scream! Handled correctly, this can be a therapeutic way to vent some of that frustration. Screaming however is not always socially acceptable or appropriate. That’s where the Scream Box comes in handy.

The pictures in this article are of a scream box my 13 year-old daughter made.

You can decorate your box however you want, but here are the basic steps:

1. Gather up the following ingredients:
– Cereal box (preferably an empty one).
– Cardboard tube from inside a roll of paper towels.
– Old newspaper or packing paper (regular paper or tissue paper can also work)
– Tape (duct tape works best, but packing tape will also suffice)
– Construction paper or wrapping paper to cover the cereal box
– Items to decorate your box (markers, pencils, stickers, glitter or whatever you want to use)

You might think that the anger and target practice probably shouldn’t go together. However, when it comes to kids taking some target practice can be an effective way of both venting anger and discussing a child’s anger with them so they can explain it better. Here is how this great idea, which we found originally on Little Birdie Secrets, works:

1. Draw a series of concentric circles on a large sheet of paper or white board to create a target. You can have the child make their own target if you have some time and let them decorate it however they want.
2. Have them write or draw things on the target that make them angry. As they do, talk to them about each item and how they’ve dealt with that anger in the past.
3. Have the child throw something at the target. Anything soft will do – you don’t want to break anything, but the physical activity of throwing something also helps to alleviate anger. Foam balls are a great option. I use the puffer balls shown below. I got a dozen of them on Amazon for around $10 and use them for a variety of activities.

Just Breathe is an awesome short film from Julie Bayer Salzman & Josh Salzman that offers a kids’ perspective on anger and big emotions and how to deal with them.

They describe the video as follows:

The inspiration for “Just Breathe” first came about a little over a year ago when I overheard my then 5-year-old son talking with his friend about how emotions affect different regions of the brain, and how to calm down by taking deep breaths — all things they were beginning to learn in Kindergarten at their new school, Citizens of the World Charter School, in Mar Vista, CA. I was surprised and overjoyed to witness first-hand just how significant social-emotional learning in an elementary school curriculum was on these young minds…

As a filmmaker, I am always interested in finding a subject worthy of filming, and I felt strongly that Mindfulness was a necessary concept to communicate visually. Thankfully my husband, who happens to be my filmmaking partner, agreed. We made “Just Breathe” with our son, his classmates and their family members one Saturday afternoon. The film is entirely unscripted – what the kids say is based purely on their own neuro-scientific understanding of difficult emotions, and how they cope through breathing and meditation. They, in turn, are teaching us all …