Calm Down Strategies for Kids: A Menu by Sense and Setting, and a Plan Made Before It Is Needed

About this tool

Calm down strategies for kids are the concrete things a child can do, with an adult's help, to bring a big feeling back down to a size they can manage: slow breathing, a weighted blanket, a walk, a squeeze of a stress ball, a quiet corner. The phrase covers a lot of advice of uneven quality, so it helps to be clear about what a strategy is for. It is not for stopping the feeling, which is not possible and not the goal. It is for helping the nervous system settle enough that the child can think again, and for teaching, over hundreds of repetitions, that feelings rise and fall and can be survived.

The first strategy is not for the child. Young children are helped to regulate by the adults around them, a process developmental researchers call co-regulation: a calm, warm, predictable adult supports the child's settling while their own capacity develops. A 2015 report for the US Administration for Children and Families put co-regulation at the center of how self-regulation develops across childhood. In practice this means your tone of voice, your face and your breathing are part of the intervention, and a strategy delivered through gritted teeth tends to land badly. Before you reach for the menu, take the breath yourself. If you are too flooded to be calm, the honest strategy is to make the child safe and step back for a minute.

Children differ in which sense settles them, which is why a menu beats a single technique. Some settle through proprioception, the sense of pressure and position: a tight hug, pushing against a wall, carrying something heavy, a weighted lap pad. Some settle through movement: jumping, swinging, running the length of the yard. Some through touch (a fidget, warm water, sand), some through sound (a quiet song, noise-canceling headphones, silence), some through sight (a glitter jar, dimmed lights, watching fish). Taste and smell work for some children (a cold drink, a familiar scent) and are easy to carry. Watch what your child reaches for when upset and start there.

The setting changes what is possible. At home you can have a calm-down corner with the full kit, and the tools can be large and messy. In the car the child cannot leave the seat, so the strategies are breathing, a small fidget or squeeze toy, a specific song, counting cars of one color, or a cold drink, and the adult's strategy is to stop talking about the problem until the car is parked. In the classroom a child needs strategies that are quiet, quick and do not draw attention: a breathing card taped inside the desk, a pre-agreed signal to the teacher, a short errand to the office, a water break, pressing hands together under the desk. Agreeing these with the teacher in advance is itself a calm down strategy.

A calm-down plan is a short, written agreement made when everyone is calm, which is the only time it can be made. It names the child's early warning signs as they experience them (hot face, loud voice, wanting to hit), two or three strategies for each setting, where the materials are kept, and what the adult will do and say. It is practiced when nothing is wrong, like a fire drill, because a child in a meltdown has no access to new ideas. Ross Greene's observation that children do well if they can, not if they want to, is the attitude behind the plan: a meltdown is a skill shortfall under load, and the plan supplies the skill before the load arrives.

Age changes the menu. Toddlers and preschoolers need the adult to do most of it: holding, rocking, naming the feeling, moving them away from the trigger. School-age children can learn and choose strategies themselves if they have practiced them. Older children and teenagers often reject anything that looks like a technique and do better with privacy, movement, music and being left alone for an agreed period, then approached. Daniel Siegel and Tina Payne Bryson's phrase "name it to tame it" is a useful reminder at any age: putting a word to the feeling, by the adult first and later by the child, helps some children settle and gives both of you a shared vocabulary even when it does not.

The evidence base is better for the principles than for any particular strategy. Co-regulation, emotional labeling, predictable routines and practicing skills before they are needed have support across developmental research. Specific tools such as glitter jars, weighted blankets or particular breathing patterns have little or no controlled evidence in children, and claims that one of them resets the nervous system go beyond what is known. That does not make them useless. It means you should treat them as options to test with your child rather than prescriptions, and drop the ones that do not help.

The common mistakes: offering a strategy at the peak of the meltdown rather than at the first warning sign; turning the calm-down corner into a time-out so it becomes a punishment and the child refuses it; talking too much, because reasoning with a flooded child adds load; offering a menu of twelve options in the moment instead of the two the plan named; and expecting the strategy to work the first time it is used in anger when it has never been practiced in calm. The other one is skipping your own regulation, which is the step everything else depends on.

Most children's big feelings are developmentally normal and respond to this kind of structure over months. See a professional if meltdowns are frequent and intense well past the preschool years, last a long time, involve hurting themselves or others, happen mostly at school, or if you suspect sensory processing differences, ADHD or autism, where the strategies still help but the plan needs a clinician's input. A pediatrician, school psychologist or child therapist can help. The Calm-Down Corner Cards page is the home companion to this one, the Emotional Regulation Activities for Kids page covers the skill-building side, and the Feelings Thermometer helps a child rate the size of a feeling.

Reviewed by Michael Callans, MSW
Reviewed the co-regulation framing, the menus by sense and setting, the calm-down plan steps and the guidance on when to seek a professional assessment.

References

1. Murray DW, Rosanbalm K, Christopoulos C, Hamoudi A. Self-Regulation and Toxic Stress: Foundations for Understanding Self-Regulation from an Applied Developmental Perspective. OPRE Report 2015-21. Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation, Administration for Children and Families, US Department of Health and Human Services; 2015.
2. Siegel DJ, Bryson TP. The Whole-Brain Child: 12 Revolutionary Strategies to Nurture Your Child's Developing Mind. Delacorte Press; 2011.
3. Greene RW. The Explosive Child. 5th ed. Harper; 2014.
4. Shanker S. Self-Reg: How to Help Your Child (and You) Break the Stress Cycle and Successfully Engage with Life. Penguin Press; 2016.

Calm Down Strategies for Kids FAQ