Calm Your Child with Tangling and Doodling

blog51 calm your child

There are many ways to calm your child: why choose tangling and doodling? Why is it better than listening quietly to music, or helping you wash up, or taking time out? Is it simply a different way, with some added bonuses?

The initial question you might be asking, though, is what exactly is tangling? We all understand doodling.

But tangling is filling designated areas with different lines and shapes in a uniform way to make patterned sections. You can see a variety of simple and less simple ones in the image for this post. Tangling can get hugely complicated in looks, but always from a really simple starting system of lines. It's known for allowing non-artists to produce something half decent (or brilliant!).

You can do them on little card squares, or infill an image, as in my dragon. Doodling can of course be done on anything at all!

Tangling and doodling are good for calming your child

So – why are tangling and doodling good for an anxious child?

To my mind, tangling and doodling involve four essential aspects that may suit your child best for a calming intervention. They find:

  • a new mental focus, 
  • some creative expression, 
  • the need to invent new ideas to do it, and 
  • an ego boost when finished.

But first, let’s look at some differences between tangling and doodling that may affect your choice when you need to calm your child after an over-anxious episode or tantrum.

Differences between tangling and doodling

1 Tangling can seem a step too far in “being organised” for a distraught younger child – although remember the quality of the actual infills doesn’t really matter for our purposes here, nor does the shape to fill (drawing or square). But you have to print out or draw a shape to fill or find the cards for a square tangle (cards are easier to work on).

However, doodling could start out from  simply inviting your child to take turns to doodle and guess what it most looks like, which gets you started immediately.

2 Doodling can start from nowhere on a scrap of paper with no aim in mind – but quickly catches on as “something” that’s developing.

So it’s easier to tackle initially, as I said above, but possibly less obvious as a distraction to grab their brain to get started with.

“Hey let’s doodle” is a bit vague compared to “Hey, let’s complete a tangle together and have some fun.” They will know what a tangle is if you've done it before – or be curious if they haven't. 

3 There are doodle books available to buy with beginnings of doodles and suggestions for developing them. Having one in the house might be a good choice if your child likes a routine of, say, "let’s have a little time out together and doodle it away", and then have a think together when they're calm.

On the other hand, books on tangling are usually instructional and boil down to having the equipment and starting from scratch, learning an "official" way to make set patterns. (Having one in the house for future use when anxiety is not involved can be useful though – I mention one at the end.)

That said, let’s get back to the four essential features I think are important for when you need to calm your child.

1 New mental focus away from the anxiety and circle of despair

Any kind of distraction changes the scenario and is good for bringing your child’s thinking brain back on board. You can’t talk to them when they’re involved in an anxious moment. They don’t hear you!

But they see through superficial distractions like looking out of the window or starting a household job or tickle session, for example. So a tangle may be something different, or – if you've done one before – something they know they’ve enjoyed.

You could start a collection of tangles or doodles they can keep in a special place. Tangling and doodling produces something new and different each time which grabs their genuine interest. 

Worry and enjoyment can’t co-exist so this is a winning activity. If you need to calm your child, think ‘new’ or ‘previously enjoyed’. Tangles and doodles tick this first box.

2 Creative expression linking hand, eye and feelings

Left brain and right brain don’t really exist except in simple terms, but they’re good for broadly linking ideas. 

Here, when you want to calm your child, you’re giving them an activity you can share, which is a warm feeling. It validates it in the middle of a chaotic moment.

But also, they’re designing some art while having to think and consider what will fill the next space. 

That’s left and right brain sort of stuff. Their hand has to move to make the patterns and their design judgement decides where next. All good calming stuff using all parts of them as a person. 

That’s two boxes ticked.

3 Experience of creating new ideas to finish it - and managing

Now comes the subtle part! You want them to be open to new solutions from new ideas, to be able to think and talk, and to feel capable of changing how they think and feel. We’re talking anxiety-banishing tactics!! Calming stuff. But we’re doing it via tangling or doodling. 

It's totally unimportant which lines and shapes they chose. It will look good when finished: They thought, they did, they conquered – a piece of artwork, at least! And they’ve calmed down, so they can talk with you rationally.

4 Self-esteem and an ego boost on completion, leading to resilience

This experience can be transferred. “Do you remember how you thought that tangle section might look bad? But it turned out OK, didn’t it!” Use their successes and their confidence and pride in their achievements to fuel the inevitable challenge of facing an anxiety or worry. 

With renewed self-esteem, they can discuss their worry in any of the ways you know work – or look up some strategies on this website.

Then help them learn habits of

  • naming three possible solutions (just like they had, say, three choices of infill pattern and chose one and made it work) and
  • choosing one to work on to counter challenge the worry. 

Overall...

Growing resilience and perseverance is super important every day of every year. There will always be worries. To help calm your child, tangles and doodles are just one initial part of becoming resilient and confident. They don't solve resilience, they solve calming! But they contribute to confident resilience.

In the anxious moment, however, having a tactic with a purpose is super important for your sanity as you deal with your child's crisis! Give it a go? You and your child together?

zentangle book cover

You don't need more than paper to doodle with your child. But here's a book with some instructions on tangling and how to get started. More for your interest than your child's. Your child can fill in shapes in any way they want with any patterns. But you might prefer to see how it all came about! Non-perfection is crucial when tangling. Simply work any errors into the design. (That's a useful additional learning point for your child!)

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