Strategies to Calm an Upset Child

hi I'm Cindy welcome to positive preschool tips today I have some ideas and strategies on how to calm down an upset child there's nothing harder than to try and talk to a child who's crying and sobbing and so upset that you can't figure out what's wrong and why they are upset so the first couple of strategies that I have today to calm down and upset child are to get them to breathe and then to distract them so that hopefully they can then settle down to a point where they can tell you what's wrong and you can help them with that problem so the first strategy that I have that's going to help children breathe and to distract them is a pinwheel and this has been wheel I got at the dollar store and it's very simply all you want them to do is say oh I can see you're really upset I need you to blow the pinwheel and spin the pinwheel for me can you take a deep breath and blow the pinwheel so what happens is you have the children breathing to spin the pinwheel then you have them distracted because they're watching the pinwheel go around and another strategy that you can use with the pinwheel is to spray it with some sort of smell that's very calming lavender or spearmint something that's very soothing you don't anything heavy imperf ume that way the child is breathing in to smell that nice calming smell and blowing out to move the pinwheel good little strategy quick gets them breathing gets them distracted and then you can talk to them about why they were upset and help them solve that problem another cute breathing technique is one that you would need to teach children prior to them being upset so it's something that you might want to do it's your roof time or Center time you can start it out as a fun little game and once they learn how to play you can then use it when they are upset and it's what I call candy breathing so when they're in a big group and you're trying to teach your candy breathing you're gonna have all the children take a big deep breath in and blow it out and then they get to call out one of their favorite candies and you can go through and have each child call out a favorite candy you might want to model it first so the children know what to do and I'll model it for you so everybody's gonna take a deep breath in blow it out call out your favorite candy M&Ms breathe in breathe out licorice breathe in breathe out Smarties so it starts out as a really fun game but if the child is very upset you can remind them say oh I can see you're upset but I need you to do some candy breathing with me so that we can get you settled down again it gets them breathing it gets them distracted because they're thinking about the next candy if a child is really upset you might need to start doing it first and call out a couple of your favorite candies first and keep offering them a turn and hopefully they will be distracted by your candy and what you're calling out and they'll be able to come up with a candy and do the candy breathing as well to calm them down another fun breathing technique that you can use is to take a stuffed toy the child lays on their back they put the stuffed toy on their chest and you're just going to direct them into making the stuffed toy go up taking a deep breath and making this stuff till we go down watch your little stuff till we go up and watch it go down those two strategies yet again breathing and destruction their breathing by making the stuffed toy go up and down and destructed because they're watching the stuffed toy up-and-down and they're trying to breathe hard to get that stuffed toy to go up and down so those are my breathing strategies that I have I have a fun strategy especially a child is upset and angry and they're very mad and very upset and it's okay for children to be angry we just want them to express it in an appropriate way so then I would offer children the dinosaur stomp and what that is I just took a tissue box with all the tissues out and you need the kind of tissue box that has the slit in the middle I painted it with some green paint and then I took sponges and I cut out triangles with the sponges and just hot glued them on so it looks like a dinosaur foot the strategy here is the children put one foot in each box and then they stop and you can let them stuff down the hall they can stop around the room and it's a way for them to express their anger but at the same time do it appropriately and it's so much fun and it's so silly that generally it just gets them thinking about stomping their feet and not being so mad and upset another strategy that I have is called feed the Gretsch and this might be if a child is upset and they're maybe feeling a little grumpy and grouchy what I've done here is take a Parmesan cheese container so if you can see the lid you have this side where you can get a little bit of the cheese that comes out and kind of glued it down and then this side that comes out and makes it look like mouths that's the site I'm using and I took cutting balls hot glued them on it took some googly eyes glued them on the cotton ball and just a little bit of felt for it tongue that I glued glued inside the middle there and put it on so it makes it look like a little mouth and if you're feeding the Grouch I give the children lots of little pom-poms and they just open the lid they feed the Grouch and they close it down open the lid feed the grouch and close it down this strategy is designed to distract the child they're doing something very purposeful it's very repetitive it has a purpose they are focusing on feeding the grouch and filling up the container with pom poms and it's a way to help them settle down in that moment so that's a good strategy the last thing that I might suggest for you to do is to have a toolbox of strategies and let me show you the one that I've put together here's my box you want a pretty sturdy box especially if it's going to be used by children who are upset so you want something that's kind of sturdy this is a box that I had in my closet so I pulled it out it's nice and sturdy and in that box I have my pinwheel I have the stuffed toys so that they can do some stuff toy breathing I have the garage and some pom-poms so they can feed the grouch I also have some markers and paper if they just want some time alone and color and all these things are in one place so that if I have a child that's upset there's a place that they can go and access these things or someplace I can go and grab them quickly one last little idea that you might want to try when you put your box together you can put pictures of what is in the box and that way when the child comes to the box if they're going to access the box independently it's not an idea of what's there they can open the box they can take a look you can even help them pick I just have the two pictures of coloring in the pinwheel but you could have many pictures up here and you can help the child pick by saying would you like the pinwheel would you like to color which would you like to do to calm down and then if there are several options for them then they can either pick an option or you can help them take an option and that way they'll have something to do and hopefully calm down so I hope some of these strategies are you try in your classroom or at home with your children at home I hope they're helpful I hope they work please subscribe or give me a thumbs up or any kind of comments even if you've tried them and they worked I would love to know that and I thank you for tuning in so have a great day and have a great preschool day bye now

Channel: positivepreschooltips

Views: 81,526

Rating: 4.9673471 out of 5

Keywords: why is my child upset, how to deal with a temper tantrum, what to do for an upset child, strategies to calm down a toddler, strategies to calm down a young child, strategies to deal with a temper tantrum

Id: 2KjDfNvBHb4

Length: 10min 0sec (600 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 20 2017