Where does your child go when he has a melt-down? Slam the door and hide in his room? Or does he simply roll about on the floor? How do you help your child calm down?
One strategy is to use a calm down corner. A calm down corner functions as a space typically used in schools where children can go to when they need to regulate big emotions like anger or sadness, and return to a state of calm. Such a space is very useful at home too. When your child is having an angry outburst and cannot control his emotions, a calming corner has been found to be very effective in helping children calm down and process their thoughts.
Setting up a calm down corner at home is easy and inexpensive. Here is how parents can create a calm down corner at home in 5 simple steps.
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1. Pick a Quiet Location
Choose a spot where your child can be alone for a while. It can be corner in his bedroom, beneath a stairwell, or book corner. The key is to ensure your child doesn’t feel like family members are watching him. Ideally, the walls should be in neutral or light colours. Give enough space for your child to sit and stretch out. If you have the space, a table is good for them to draw on.
2. Add Furniture that Evokes Warmth and Comfort
Throw in a few plush cushions to hug, a furry mat or soft bean bag to sit on will do the trick. I have space for a little shelf where I can place favourite books, objects and toys. If there is not enough space, a basket to store calming tools will be fine too. It would be good to check with your children what furniture and things help them calm down when they get angry. My bean bag was bought at the request of my oldest.
3. Put Up Educational Visuals
Putting up visuals on walls is really useful for educating kids on how to calm down. They can be posters about identifying and processing emotions or statements of affirmation. In my children’s bedroom, their strengths board constantly remind them that they can tap on their strengths to solve problems.
Here are some visuals you can put up.
- a poster on identifying emotions
- a poster on deep breathing
- a poster on handling problems
- a poster on dealing with friendship/ relationship issues or bullies.
4. Add Calm Down Tools and Favourite Objects
There are many tools recommended by counsellors that help children calm down. Many are sensory tools where children can touch and hold to divert their attention from big emotions to something tactile and calming. Here are some popular ones you can put in a basket or box.
- Squeeze balls
- Pop-its
- Glittar Jar (you can easily make it yourself. Its a fun activity to make it with your kids too.)
- Expandable ball (good for visualizing deep breathing)
- Sand Timer (very therapeutic to look at and also to note how much time has passed when you give your child 5mins to calm down first before talking to them.)
- LCD drawing tablet
- Blanket
Other than the recommended items, we can include a few of their favourite items in the calming basket too. For my son, they would be his pokemon figurines, angry bird stuffy and hand-held fan. This is a space to trigger happy thoughts and feelings afterall.
5. Teach Your Child About Calming Down
Teaching our children how to calm down is the most important and final step. Then, our children can use the space effectively. A calm down corner is meant to help children self-regulate their big emotions. Here are three essential things to teach so our children know what to do when Mummy asks them to go to the calm down corner for 5mins.
a) Deep breathing techniques. This the single most useful strategy to immediately calm down, whether the child is throwing tantrums or going through a melt-down. To teach how to do it, here is a video to watch together and have the child follow along the beat. You can stop the video at any cycle you wish.
b) Identifying and processing their emotions. With limited vocabulary, children often have difficulty expressing what they feel and why they feel that way. We can use picture books to teach them emotion words (angry, frustrated, disappointed, sad) and what they mean. We can also teach them to explain the incident by visualising a friend who witnessed it and retell what happened.
c) Teach them things they can do to calm down as shown in the ‘Feeling Angry’ Checklist above. I also make it clear that violence is not allowed. So no matter how angry one child is towards siblings– no hitting. Instead they can punch a cushion if they really need to release their pent up anger.
Observing your child’s reactions and responding to his needs through some experimentation is really the best calming strategy. When my son was younger, he sometimes hid under the table when he got really angry at dinner time or go behind a bedroom door. That was how I first learned the need to provide a safe and quiet space for him to calm down.
If we are out and he has an angry outburst, I would look for whatever spot is the quietest and bring him there. I used to try and hug him but he would push me away. That was how I learned that he didn’t want to be touched when he was very angry. I also learned that he needs at least 10mins of alone time before he would talk and open up about why he got so angry.
Final Thoughts
A calm down corner is not only a great space to help children with emotional self-regulation, it is also great for bed-time reading or resting after a tiring day at school. So it would be nice for every home to set up one. At my home, I think my kids see it purely as a cozy corner for some me-time when they need. They love to read and doodle in that space.
What other things do you find suitable in a calming corner? I would like to hear your suggestions in the comment box below too.