Tip 5
Keeping Everyone Calm
Summary
Exercise/movement activities are great structured ways to keep everyone calm, release pent up energy, and refocus the brain for the next activity. It is best to build them into your daily schedule and routine. Movement activities can range from household chores to exercise/dance videos. Reach out to your child's teacher or OT to discuss any movement activities that have been used to help your child stay regulated throughout the day.
Provide choices for your child and model new activities. Observe your child's behavior after the activity to determine if it was beneficial. Did the activity increase focus, help to regain self control, or did it rev your child up and make it difficult for them to complete the next activity?
Frequently practice using coping and calming strategies with your child and provide reinforcement for their participation. This will make it more likely that they will use the techniques when you prompt them when they are beginning to get frustrated. Using a scale for emotions may be beneficial for your child to begin to recognize their body signals, and provide strategies of what to do next (see Zones of Regulation below).
Examples
Example schedule with movement breaks
Choices for outside and inside activities
Calming Choices
Checklist
⃞ Check with teacher to determine if there are any websites or exercises familiar to your child
⃞ Create a menu of websites/activities/exercises as a visual choice board
⃞ Include movement breaks into your daily routine and offer your child choices
⃞ Practice calming strategies regularly
Template Documents
Zones of Regulation
This article is an overview of the Zones of Regulation for parents. It covers a brief explanation of what the Zones of Regulation are, how they're taught to children, and how you can begin using the concepts in your own home. It does not serve as a replacement for the official Zones Framework, simply a starting point for parents who want to learn more.
The green zone is used to describe when you're in a calm state of alertness. Being in the green zone means you are calm, focused, happy, or ready to learn. This is predominately the state you want you child to be in. It's also the state most needed in the classroom in order to learn.
The yellow zone describes when you have a heightened sense of alertness. This isn't always a bad thing, and you typically still have some control when you're in the yellow zone. Bring in the yellow zone means you may feel frustrated, anxious, or nervous. But, it could also mean you're feeling excited, silly, or hyper - which is okay in the right situations.
The red zone describes an extremely heightened state of intense emotions. When a person reaches the red zone, they're no longer about to control their emotions or reactions. This is the zone kids are in during meltdowns. Being in the red zone means you're feeling anger, rage, terror, or complete devastation and feel out of control.
The blue zone, on the other hand, is used when a person is feeling low states of alertness or arousal. When you're in the blue zone you may be feeling down - sad, sick, tired, or bored. You're still in control, as you are in the yellow zone, but with low energy emotions.