Build a Coping Skills Toolkit with the Crisis Nursery!
Mental health is top of mind this month as we observe Mental Health Awareness Month. At the Crisis Nursery, one of the ways that we help children develop positive mental health is by teaching children and caregivers different practices to cope with big emotions. For children and parents alike, developing a coping skills “toolkit” can be helpful in learning and remembering easy tools for coping when emotions become difficult to manage. When our bodies perceive a threat, our fight/flight/freeze response is immediately engaged and it becomes difficult to calm down and think clearly. This is especially true for young children, as their brains are not yet fully developed and equipped to deal with stressful situations, and for those who have experienced trauma, as the brain has become conditioned to react to threats as it has in the past. It’s most helpful to practice the ideas below when feeling calm, so that when facing overwhelming situations and emotions, the tools for dealing with those emotions in a healthy way are already in place.
Below are a few quick, attainable ideas for parents and children to practice together to build a coping skills toolkit:
Label Feelings
Feelings aren’t the enemy, but it is incredibly helpful to be aware of them and how they are impacting us. The first step in dealing with big emotions is to label them. Adults can do this by taking a step back from the situation, examining and labeling how they are feeling in a given moment. For young children, it is helpful to have a trusted adult label the emotions they are feeling alongside them. This can look like saying, “you’re feeling happy!” or “I see you’re feeling sad.” Caregivers can take this a step further by identifying the “why” behind the emotion as well: “I can see you’re feeling angry about turning off the TV.”
Breathe Deeply
There are a number of easy and fun ways to use deep breathing to settle our bodies down in stressful circumstances. Here are a few favorites that are especially accessible for young children:
Bubble Breathing: Encourage the child to take a big breath in and slowly release the breath as they pretend to blow a bubble. This can be practiced using real bubbles!
Balloon Breaths: Prompt the child to raise their hands above their heads in the shape of a balloon while breathing in, and release the air from the balloon, bringing their arms back down to their sides as they breathe out.
Smell the Flower, Blow out the Candle: To help children think about their breathing, encourage them to pretend they are smelling a flower, and blowing out a candle. Ask them questions about how the flower smells? What color is their candle?
Starfish Breathing: Holding out one’s hand with fingers splayed, use the index finger on the opposite hand to trace up and down each finger, breathing in while tracing up, and breathing out while tracing back down.
Practice Grounding Exercises
For adults, a common grounding exercise includes the 5-4-3-2-1 grounding method: identifying 5 things you can see, 4 things you can touch, 3 things you can hear, 2 things you can touch, and 1 thing you can taste. For kids, especially young children, this can be more simple. Adults can encourage children to look around them and talk about what they see and hear, or adults can identify things themselves to help children engage their senses. This can look like saying “I see green leaves on that tree over there! Do you see them too?” For children who know their colors, it can be fun to ask them to find the colors of the rainbow in their environment by pointing out objects corresponding to each color in the rainbow: “I see a red chair, an orange flag, a yellow sign, etc.”
Release Tension
Parents and caregivers have perhaps heard of progressive muscle relaxation which involves tensing and releasing different muscles from your toes to your head. For children, it can be helpful to clench their fists then release, push the palms of their hands together, or place both feet firmly on the ground and press against a wall with both hands.
Other ideas to help calm the body’s nervous system include going for a walk, doing jumping jacks, splashing one’s face with water, feeling a blast of cold air from a freezer or refrigerator, hugging oneself or another person, rocking, counting, or drinking a glass of cold water. Different tools work well for different people and in different situations, which means that building a mental health toolkit can take some trial and error to see what works best. By helping children and their caregivers learn tools to deal with difficult emotions, we hope to give them the resources they need to stay calm in tough situations and to maintain positive mental health and wellbeing throughout their lives!