School Breaks, House Transitions, and Travel: An At Home Tip To Ease Anxiety With Big Events10/2/2024 Anxiety is a diagnosis that can be painful and dysregulating to both kids and families. Parents and caregivers can feel out of control not knowing how to calm the anxiety and dysregulation and oftentimes that leads parents to co-escalate right along with their kids. And if we have learned anything it is that a dysregulated adult can never soothe a dysregulated child. If you are looking for more ways to support dysregulated caregivers in the playroom grab my FREE parent guide for co-regulation HERE!
So, for this reason I have created a series of proactive regulation strategies and resources to use in play therapy for kids with anxiety HERE, HERE, HERE andHERE! AND I wanted to give you another proactive and playful resource for those kids that have anticipatory anxiety about big events!
And this intervention? Well…. It involves paper chains! Yes, exactly like the ones that you made in elementary school or hung around your bedroom. Maybe that was just me? I’m a sucker for a good paper chain and here’s why! We can visually see us getting closer to the thing or event. They are colorful and fun. AND as play therapists we can up the wow-factor with some simple steps. So here’s how it works. If a child has a big event coming up we can use this intervention to calm anxiety. This works best with events like a parent separating for travel for work (or fun), holiday break, or moving to a new home. You can either do this in session as a family OR give it as homework for the family to do on their own. First identify how many days the event will be or days until the event. Have the child select colors they would like to be in their paper chain and cut out strips and count out the number of pieces of paper needed for the paper chain. Here’s where it gets playful. You can have the child, parent, or a combination of both write positive self statements or messages on each of the links of the paper chain. For parents who will be separating (like on a work trip) I typically recommend the parent write the statements in secret so it is a fun surprise for the child to open every day. You can also add some extra elements to the chain like a small piece of candy or a fun small toy (think erasers, croc charms, etc.) that the child gets to have once they take off the piece of the chain. Another modification would be to write down a fun family event for each day on the paper chain- from as simple as a board game, popcorn and movie night, or going out mini golfing! This leads the child to have some fun, excitement, and something to look forward to with big transitions or separations that help decrease stress and rumination! They also will have an increased sense of power and control (see more about the 5 basic needs and grab this FREE download HERE!) by getting to take off a chain link everyday. This is so important because anxiety typically leads kids to feel out of control, so anytime we can return control is a definite win! Loading...
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Hi, there!I'm Ann Meehan, an LPCC, Loading... Archives
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