The Relaxation Coping Style

Children will experience a variety of different emotions as they live and play in the world. They will need coping skills to help them manage their feelings in safe and healthy ways. But there isn’t a “one-size-fits-all” strategies. Not all skills will work for all kids or all the time. The strategy that will work will be different, depending on their emotions, where they are, and their personal preferences.

The Relaxation style focuses on calming activities to help kids relax their minds and bodies. Some examples of coping skills that I place in the relaxation coping style:

Deep Breathing

There are so many ways to take a deep breath. I love helping kids learn how by using shapes, prompts, props, or even gif’s. To get inspired, visit the deep breathing resources page.

Using Your Imagination

Using the power of imagination by visualizing a favorite place, or picturing the people you care about are phenomenal ways that can help a child calm down.

Mindfulness & Meditation

Mindfulness and meditation has become popular over the last several years, and has been studied more and more. There’s even a study that showed mindfulness can shrink the amygdala, the part of our brain responsible for fight, flight, or freeze response. Kids can start using mindfulness in small ways, by using their spidey senses, or eating a snack in a mindful way, paying attention to their senses as they eat

Grounding Techniques

These techniques are designed to help kids as they are having big emotions and to help them stay in the present moment. They can do things like naming all the blue things in the room, 5 4 3 2 1 grounding, or remembering the words to a song they love.

Relaxation Coping Style Products

To see research studies about coping skills that fall into the category of relaxation, visit the evidence-based page.

*Please note, while I do place coping skills into styles, but these are not hard and fast categories. Something like drawing could fall into either relaxation or distraction. The styles are there to help bring order to the mountain of coping skills ideas, but aren’t meant to be rigid categories that can’t be changed.