When you are stressed and exhausted that nothing seems to calm down your crying child, try these techniques:
1. Pour a glass of water to your child. Dehydration is linked to lower mental performance. So, have your child slowly drink a glass of cold water. You will see the calming effects that the water has instantly.
2. Get your child in a “downward facing dog” pose. This pose will calm the autonomic nervous system of your child which is responsible for controlling how the body responds to stress.
3. Use an inversion. Bring back the head of your child below the level of their heart. Inverting your child’s body will have a restorative effect on their autonomic nervous system.
4. Ask your child to visualize a happy and quiet place. And gently ask them to imagine how it feels to be there. It will have a calm effect on your child.
5. Challenge your child to jump to the beats of music. It will release the excessive stress from their body.
6. Draw a hot bath for your child. This will relax them. Try introducing new toys as well.
7. Make them a warm cozy drink. A nice and hot drink on a cold day will feel like a hug from inside for your child.
8. Blow bubbles with your child. Blowing bubbles is a fun activity which will help your child to have control over their breathing which will immediately calm them down.
9. Watch fish. Watching fish swimming in an aquarium lowers the heart rate and reduces blood pressure.
10. Have your child breathe into their belly. Most people breathe incorrectly and even more so when they are facing a stressful situation. Tell your child to think of its belly as a balloon and ask them to breathe in to fill the ‘balloon’ with air, and then breathe out to empty it.
11. Ask your child to count backward. Counting backward will shift the focus of your child to something else than the stressful situation.
12. Go for a run with your child. It will affect positively the mood of your child.
13. Talk it out. Ask them kindly what is wrong and make them describe how they are feeling.
14. Give them a bear hug. Hugging produces oxytocin, reduces blood pressure, reduces the damaging effects of stress, and increases the happiness levels.
15. Take a walk in nature with your child. It reduces stress and improves cognition.
16. Rock your child in a rocking chair. It is a great way to soothe their frenzied feelings.
17. Play some music to your child. Music has an enormously positive effect on stress, anxiety, sleep, and mood.
18. Dance. By adding dancing to your enjoyment of music will make their children moving and improve their mood.
19. Change the scenery. If you are outside, get in. If you are inside, get them outside. Sometimes a change of scenery is all your child need to calm down.
20. Ask them to yell it out. Sometimes you child cannot get hold of their emotions and they need to let them out. Doing a primal yell will help them release their emotions and calm down.
21. Knead the bread. The process of bread-making and allowing your child to help you by pushing and turning dough is extremely helpful if you want to calm down your child immediately.
22. Get on a bike. It promotes balance, and staying physically active is great for all the family.
23. Crinkle tissue paper with them. This activity has calming and pleasant noise and the crumbled texture of the paper provides a satisfying feeling on your child’s hand which releases stress.
24. Have your child push against a wall. This process contracts the muscles in an attempt to bring down the wall and then it produces relaxing hormones which help in reducing stress.
25. Ask your child to name the emotion they are feeling. Whether it is sadness, anger, panic, saying the emotion out loud will make it less intense.
26. Decorate a wall together. Let them hang some posters in their room. This will engage them and will increase their creativity.
27. Repeat a mantra. Create a mantra together that you will repeat together every time when you are under stress. “I am calm” helps a lot.
28. Blow out candles. Light candles and ask your child to blow them out. Then light them again and place them further away from your child, so that they have to take deep breaths in order to blow them out.
29. Jump high. Challenge your child to see who will jump higher, slower, faster, or longer. This is an excellent way for your child to blow off some steam.
20. Paint. Painting will shift your child’s focus to something else and it is a great stress alleviator. Plus, it adds to their creativity.
