7 Calming Tips to Lower Your Child's Anxiety

Child calming down by cutting and sticking when dysregulated

Just like you have an arsenal of distraction techniques for when you need to avoid a public tantrum, so, too, you need a wallet full of calming tips for use on any occasion that warrants your making a payout!

We’re talking here about any occasion when anxiety shows up in a big way, not just about your child playing up in public.

The thing to remember is this. When fear and anxiety raise your child’s distress levels, it’s impossible to talk with them sensibly about how to sort it out. That’s because their thinking brain has gone offline. Their warning systems are on full alert and nothing else matters to them than escaping the perceived danger. 

The danger might be something totally trivial to you – but what matters is that it’s sounded alarm bells in your child. You can reason and think, but they can’t.

So here are 7 calming tips to have on tap – a bit like they expect you to have your wallet on tap. Only this benefits you as well as your child!

Let’s dive in.

1 Sorting and arranging

Yes, it’s difficult to actually grab their attention when they’re upset and anxious, and totally focused on the object of their anxiety. But sorting and arranging works. Mostly because it engages a different bit of the brain. Not the feeling bit but the executive bit.

So you may have to join them in the task, or more likely, start doing it yourself calmly and quietly and encourage them to join in because “you need some ideas/help/whatever”!

What could you sort or arrange?

Well there’s always a toy box. Or crayons. Or the cupboard. Or their clothes. It doesn’t really matter. What you’re doing is stroking your child’s more primitive response system back into balance, so anything that works is okay – even if you sort of (sorry!) invent a task!

2 Reading a book together

You’ll know your child’s favourite story, so if they’re upset or anxious, haul them onto your knee or put a protective arm round them side by side – and read to them.

This isn’t the moment for daggers and dragons and pirates and funny voices. Well it might be – you know your child, and if that’s what diverts them enough to calm down, go ahead. 

Otherwise, choose a gentler story or a therapeutic story that they know well, and read it slowly in soothing tones, on and on, until you feel them relax into more normal breathing and listening.

Don’t worry if they don’t listen well at first. They might fidget or say “stop!” crossly. But hey, you’re not hearing very well today so you plough on quietly! Eventually, your even tones and the enticing story will take over. Following a different plot takes them out of their own long enough to relax and rebalance.

3 Tapping finger ends

The ends of the fingers and thumb, on the sides, are traditional points for tapping gently to restore balance to the body.

You may find it's something you don’t think you can believe in. But since you’re not going to explain anything to your child, and since it calms them down, maybe it’s worth a try?

You could take their hand and tap their finger ends in turn, two or tree taps each, one hand then the other, then back again. That alone will grab their attention.

You can then ask if they would do it on your fingers – the tapping is felt by them even if they’re doing it, not you, so it works equally well.

4 Dabbling in clay or sand

You may not have clay in the house. Most people don’t have a pack in the cupboard for just in case! But you may well have flour and salt and can make up some play dough with water. 

This home-made dough or clay is a bit more grown-up than official shop-bought playdoh if you have an older child. Younger ones will be fine with either.

So why clay or sand? 

It’s “of the earth” – natural and textural. They can simply mould it again and again making nothing in particular, or push it and stretch it absentmindedly. Nothing has to be made. It’s the repetitive actions that calm.

Pushing sand around might end up as playing with toys in the sand. That's great. They play out what's bothering them.

With clay or dough, if they do happen to decide to make something, that’s fine too: you have diverted their brain from stress and they’ve probably got their thinking brain back online so you can sit with them and chat or simply listen to what went wrong earlier if they want to tell you. Whatever you think right in the situation. It’s also easier to talk when you’re not eye-balling each other.

5 Stroking pets and soft toys

If you have an amenable dog (cats rarely are!), stroking the dog is very calming. If you are an un-dog household, then gather up a favourite soft, furry animal or two and pet them and nurture them.

Talk to them as if they’re people, and your child will join in.

Curiously, if you tell your child the soft toy (or real dog!) is anxious and upset, you can suggest they stroke them to help the animal to calm down.

And what happens? Your child feels the strokes, too, and also calms down. Magic!

6 Singing together gently

Do you both know some favourite songs? Maybe from when they were younger, or from well-known children’s films you’ve watched together – even from a nursery rhyme book if you still have such things around.

If you start singing gently and quietly, you can perhaps rock your child at the same time.

Or maybe take their hands in yours and sway together. You don’t have to make them join in. But they may well choose to.

How does this work as you watch each other singing or swaying to a song? It’s proven that what you watch on someone else’s face (calm, enjoyment, joy etc) triggers the same reaction in the watcher’s brain. They “catch” your calm demeanour!

You can also listen to a quiet, calming favourite playlist and hum along. You do have a bedtime playlist?!

7 Running round the park or garden

"Yard" – if you’re in America like a lot of my readers are. Thank you to you all, by the way! 

When you sense anxiety has risen, take your child’s hand, say: “Come on, we’re going to run like a stormy wind is pushing us!” and disappear out into the fresh air. Flap your other arm, pretend to be pushed around by the wind, and laugh, too – it relieves tension.

This last activity is less calming on the outside, but strangely enough, when you flop down 10 minutes later, the world has totally changed.

And as your breathing settles back down to normal, calm sets in. Maybe it’s not one for just before bed, however!

Where do these seven calming tips leave you?

As I promised – with a wallet full of useful calming "cash" to spend when you need to, when your child needs you to.

Give it a go?

TAKEAWAY>>>>>

  • When your child is worried, talking may not help because their thinking brain is offline.
  • Try sorting and arranging things together to calm their brain.
  • Read a soothing story with them to distract and relax them.
  • Gently tapping on their fingers can make them feel better.
  • Playing with clay or sand can be therapeutic as well as calming.
  • Petting animals or soft toys can help children soothe themselves.
  • Singing gentle songs and swaying together brings calmer feelings.
  • Running and playing outside can change their mood and relieve tension.

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