Calm Down Cards

Calm Down Cards

Set of 31 Calm down cards helping you to educate your child on possible coping skills and emotion regulation techniques.

• Calm down cards involve actions and activities that you would typically do when feeling unpleasant emotions such as; frustration, disappointment or anger. These activities include: breathe, squeeze and release, draw or paint, blow bubbles, take a walk...etc.

• Assist in bringing your child back to his/her calming self during a stressful situation or during a meltdown/tantrum.

• Developed through recommendations from trained experts in the field of childcare and early childhood learning.

Instructions:

1. Introduce the cards when the child is calm and in a non-stressful environment, talk about the different strategies and see which one your child might be more interested in.

2. When your child is upset or in a meltdown listen and empathise with your child’s feelings, recognise, name and acknowledge their feelings.

3. Do not stop the feeling, having unpleasant emotions is not "wrong."

4. Use the cards to offer relaxation or calming techniques.

5. Ask the child to choose from the deck of cards the activities that they think will help to relax and calm them, like listening to music, drawing or writing in a journal.

6. Model how to transform the feeling of frustration and anger using the examples in the cards such as; count backwards from 10 or imagine a peaceful scene or pretend to blow bubbles.

7. Practice the skills together for a few minutes every day.

8. Notice and encourage the child when they use these skills to cope with big feelings. Commend them for becoming resilient.

9. Use creatively and with love.