Prevention Activities for Children | Mental Health Matters

Foreign. I'd like to welcome everybody to today's presentation on prevention activities for children. I AM your host, Dr. Donnelly Snipes. In this presentation we're really going to be talking about things that we can do with children as parents, teenagers, teachers, clinicians, leaders of any sort. Anyone who is ever in a caregiving capacity with a child, whether it is a, is as a babysitter, you know, for just a few hours or it is as a long term caregiver like a teacher or a parent or a grandparent. We, I really want to talk about some things that we can do to help kids get off on the right start so they know some of these behaviors that can help them live happy and healthy and all that stuff. So we're going to explore physical, affective, cognitive, environmental and relational strategies to help children develop tools to stay healthy and happy. This is not to say that they won't at some point in their life experience trauma or, or distress, but we realize that pain is an inevitable, inevitable part of life. And recognizing that and having the tools to deal with that and live in the, and recognizing we can experience pain and still have a high quality life is important. The five dimensions of motivation are also important to know because kids aren't going to do much if they're not motivated. So we need to think about how can we motivate our, our little people to embrace some of these behaviors that aren't always necessarily the most fun. So physically, how can doing this give them more energy, help them feel more comfortable or improve their health? How can help keep them from getting sick? You may even put it in terms of, you know, we need to do this to help you stay healthy so you can go to so and so's birthday party on Saturday. Kids need to something that is very proximal. Telling them that will help help them live happy and healthy into their old, old years. That's not real motivating for a kid. Kids are all about the right now. So we need to help them figure out why it's beneficial to them right now. Why is taking a nap beneficial right now? Well, it'll give you energy so you have, so you feel more rested and, and you have more fun at the play date at 3 o'. Clock. Obviously we're talking about a much younger kid at this point. The physical dimension of motivation is helpful and it's important we want to put it out there. It's not always the most motivating for kids, but it can be helpful. It's one dimension. And the more dimensions we have the more motivated they'll be. Affectively, how will doing this make you happy? And we're going to try to talk about that as we go through each of the interventions. But we want to help them see how it's in their best interest, and it'll actually help make them happy in. In some way cognitively. Why is it something you would want to do? Why is. Why is washing your hands something you actually want to do? In what ways does it seem beneficial? Environmentally? This is a little bit different in the environmental. Environmental aspect. You can put up prompts or triggers for people. Like, you put a little sign above the light switch to remind them to turn off the lights, or you put a sign above the toilet to remind them to wash their hands. What. Whatever it is that can be helpful to motivate them because it reminds them. It serves as something in the. In the environment to remind them. But then you can also use star charts or token economies or anything like that to give them something visual to look at to see how well they're doing. Every. I think most everybody's familiar with star charts. You have things that the child is supposed to do or behaviors that they're supposed to display, and you reward them with stars. Token economies, if you're not familiar, are very similar to star charts, but instead of having stars, you give them tokens. We used to have these little beads in. In a bucket. And I would give children, my children beads when they would complete their chores, when they would complete their lessons, when they would do various things, and they add up these beads. And then at the end of the week, they were able to cash in their beads for various things, whether it was movie time or, you know, going out to dinner or quality time with dad, or what they could choose from a variety of things that they may want to do. And yes, dad spent quality time with them without them having to pay for it, but it gave them extra time. So if they wanted, for example, to go out on Saturday night just with dad, that was something that they really wanted to do, they could potentially use that. It's up to the family how they want to choose to reward good behaviors. But children are very motivated by rewards. And remember, we go back to our love languages. Rewards need to be rewarding to the person. Sometimes it is a word, a word of affirmation, like, great job. If you put that on their paper or if you write that on their star chart, the little. The little person will feel very loved and it's very rewarding. It can be acts of service, quality time. Sometimes it's gifts and touch. Sometimes they just. They want a hug, and that is a great reward. It doesn't necessarily need to be something. So you want to consider and talk with your child about what types of rewards they would want if they were going to get rewards for their star chart or their token economy. And relationally, how will it make the caregiver? How will it improve the relationship, your relationship as a child? How will it improve your relationship with everybody else? That can be kind of esoteric for children. So you can turn it around and make it very simple. How will it make me happy if you do this? Or why will it make me happy if. If you do this? I remember going to pick my son up from preschool one day and I showed up and the teacher acknowledged that I was there. She's like, it's going to be a few minutes. And I was like, why? Well, apparently my son was in the bathroom washing his hands, which I had to fight with him at home to do. And she said he was just the best little hand washer they had in the whole class. And. And I'm like, my son, are you sure? But the rewards were different there. At home, I kind of took hand washing for granted. It was something he needed to do. But in at preschool, his teacher was much more effusive. When they would wash their hands and do a good job, there was a lot more positive reinforcement to it. So it did. It made her happy, and he wanted to make her happy. So it was a great thing. Recognizing how children are motivated is really important. We also want to seek first to understand, then to be understood. And that's one of Covey's seven habits of highly effective people. But remember that behavior is communication. We need to understand what is motivating to our children. To each individual child, we need to understand what their current behaviors are saying. If their current behaviors are, quote, oppositional or disorganized. What does that mean? I've shared with you guys before in, in other classes when my children, both of them, they would be getting ready to get sick, or they would be mildly sick, but. But they weren't like running a fever or anything yet. Kids don't usually show when they're sick. They. They are just playing away. But both of them would become what I would call more disorganized. And their behavior, how they acted, how they reacted, they were more. A little bit more restless and irritable. That indicated to me that, hey, something's up. So, seeking first to understand. With children, a lot of times that means understand what their behaviors mean because they may not have the words to put to it yet. And we'll get to helping them find those words. Once we understand what's going on, or we think we understand what's going on, then we can help them understand our point of view or what we want them to do or why it's in their best interest. If I understand, for example, that when Sean would come home from school, you know, he would be allegedly a perfect angel at school all day long. And he would come home and it was about dinner time and I'd be in there making dinner and the child would be bouncing off the walls and I'm like, what in the world? But when I stepped back, you know, recognizing that he had to hold it together all day long and he was on his best behavior all day long when he came home, he, he had all that pent up energy that he needed to, to release. So instead of getting mad, it was important for me to understand, okay, what does this behavior saying? This behavior saying, I feel safe enough to just, you know, get rid of all this energy and let it rip. Well, I guess that's good then. I had to be understood. That's great. I'm glad you feel safe. I understand you've got some pent up energy. However, let's talk about how to do that in a way that is, you know, not going to be a problem. You know, talking about playing in his room or playing outside instead of playing right underfoot in the kitchen and, you know, harassing the dogs or whatever, you know, that was the give and take that we had to go through. So understanding kids generally, you know, 90, I would say 99% of the time, kids do not, are not trying to be malicious. Their behavior is communicating something. If they're stealing a toy from their sibling, you know, it's communicating something. Let's take a look at what that is. Understand what they're trying to communicate and then try to help them understand other people's perspectives and create a win, win when possible. You know, I understand you need to get some energy out and, you know, don't blame you. More power to you. However, you know, I need to not be tripping over you while I'm trying to cook dinner because it's not safe. You know, that's what we're talking about. And then try to figure out a way to solve that problem that's mutually beneficial. Ill health and poor health behaviors contribute to poor mental health. If you were in yesterday's class, we went over this ad nauseam. When we are sick or chronically stressed, that HPA axis is activated, inflammation goes up, immunity goes down, and depression and anxiety behaviors tend to go up. It's just how they're related. Poor mental health contributes to poor health behaviors and illness. When people are anxious or depressed or even angry, a lot of times they're not thinking, what can I do to increase my self awareness? And what are the activities of daily living I need to do? And what are the healthy foods I want to eat? That's just really not where they're at. They're at either fight or flee or apathy. Developing good habits early can help protect the vulnerable developing brain and body from unnecessary insults. Emphasis on unnecessary pain is an inevitable part of life, but we can experience pain and have other areas of our life be going well, have supports, etc. Remember, when the brain is developing and the body, I would assume I haven't done near as much research on the body, but when the brain is developing, it is much more susceptible to assaults from surges of dopamine, from surges of glutamate, from surges from anything. Which is why addiction in the developing brain can be so much more physiologically devastating. Which is why PTSD and adverse childhood experiences can be more devastating to the brain in, in some ways than after it is finished developing at the age of 24. Now, we're, we're talking about much younger kids here, but the take home message is their bl. Their brains are very malleable at this point. Think about if you're making a vase out of clay, this is when they're growing. It hasn't been put in the kiln yet. It has its shape and you can see that it's a vase and you know, it's beautiful and everything, but it is still very easy to, you know, mush it the wrong way until it gets fired in the kiln. Their brains are the same way. They're still very malleable. And if we can help strengthen the prefrontal cortex, the frontal cortex, the amygdala, help them learn how to regulate their HPA axis, they are going to be so much better off. So it's interesting to note that prevention, health related behaviors and activities for mental health are really in many cases very, very simple. I mean, we can boil it down to probably a dozen or so behaviors that everybody should probably have or try to have. Now I don't usually put the ones and twos here, but there were a lot of articles on the impact of sleep on children's mental health. So you know, I did go a little bit overboard on those, those there. But when children are sleep deprived, they tend to be more moody, irritable, have more tantrums. They may also be hyperactive and have difficulty concentrating. Now you think, why is that? You know, why would you be hyperactive when you're sleep deprived? That HPA axis is activated. It's dumping glutamate. It's saying, hey, we don't want to be sleepy. We need to be aware of what's going on. So the brain's trying to keep the little person awake. And that can be part of it. It also can be a reactive behavior because the child, somewhere inside knows that if they sit still, they're going to fall asleep. And they don't want to fall asleep. They don't want to miss something. I think most of us remember when our kids went through that phase where they fought sleep like a bugger because they were just, they didn't want to miss anything that was happening. So hyperactivity can happen. Difficulty concentrating, loss of motivation, some. Sometimes they become clingy and needy or have difficulty learning. Well, when you're tired, it's difficult to learn. When you're not getting adequate quality sleep. Even as a child, or maybe especially as a child, the brain's not clearing out that adenosine. So they wake up and they still feel sleep pressure, they still feel foggy, which makes it harder to learn. If you think back to young children, when they start getting sleepy, you know, toddlers, when they start sucking their thumb, pulling on their ear, they often tend to get clingy, needy. If, when we're tired, when anybody's tired, a lot of times your motivation is lower. So you can see how these symptoms make sense. We want to back out when we see children displaying some of these and ask ourselves, what is this behavior communicating? It may not be sleep deprivation, but it very well could be. Children need. Young children need up to 12 hours of sleep, good quality sleep per day. Think about the schedules of most of the parents that we work with and, you know, probably your own schedule too, when you had little, little children. The American schedule really is not conducive to children getting a solid 10 to 12 hours of sleep every night. You know, that would mean that if they have to be up at 5:30 or 6:00 clock to get ready to go to daycare or school, that means that, you know, they need to be getting into bed at no later than 8 o'. Clock. And a lot of families are just not set up that way. It's possible. I mean, 8 o' clock bedtime is, is possible. 6 o' clock may be late for a lot of people to wake up. I know a lot of people have to get, get their kids up earlier than that. The big thing that we can do is try to as, as caregivers, try to schedule that sleep time and make it a priority. You know, it's not especially on school nights, but anytime it's not a, it is a priority to make sure that the little person can get to bed at their regular bedtime, whether that's 7:30, 8 o', clock, stick to a sleep routine and make it rewarding. You can make a picture list and have the kid, the child participate in this. You know, what are the three things or five things I have to do before bed? You know, I come home from school and, you know, I put my backpack down in the, in the mud room or wherever they put their backpack. And then I play and then I eat and I take a, take a bath and brush my teeth and then I read a book and then I go to sleep. And the child can draw pictures or you can print out pictures off the Internet of each one of those things and have the child color them and you can post those for obviously for children who don't read yet, so they have a pictorial representation of what they're supposed to do and that can be helpful. Other things that you can do is tuck in dolls or action figures. Sometimes it's helpful to allow the child to have that step so they don't feel like they're missing out on anything because all of their dolls and action figures are going to sleep too, so they can tuck them in. Or if you've got a dog, cats don't work so well with this, but the child may put Fido to bed in, in his crate or on his mat or wherever Fido goes to bed. So the child feels like, okay, everybody's going to sleep, so I'm not going to miss out on anything. Obviously, reading a book together can be a helpful activity. Reading a book, preferably one that is not stimulating. This is not necessarily the time to really get into stimulating that creativity because that can get them riled up. So reading a quiet book can be helpful. You can also just talk, share five good things from the day, and have the child share five good things from their day. And that encourages a little bit of give and take. Do you have any other suggestions for fun ways to get kids to go to sleep? They may not look forward to bed, but fun ways to Help them wind down. Sometimes helping them have a particular blanket, a nighttime yoga. That is an excellent suggestion because yoga can really help slow breathing trigger that rest and digest and help kind of work out some of the kinks from the day. So that can be great. Or if you don't do yoga, just nighttime stretching together. It's good for both people and can help the child and. And the child's body start winding down. Set their. Set their brain to start creating melatonin. And Beverly says there's actually a board book about children's yoga, so you can look for that. If you don't know much about yoga, There are also apps that you can download. I don't know if they're specifically for children, but that can be something, anything that helps the child start winding down. Nutrition is another habit we want them to develop because kids are kids and they can be very picky about what they eat. Hydration is a biggie. You know, we know we need good hydration in order to flush out those toxins, flush out those free radicals, as well as keep our system running and our. Our nervous system running as efficiently as possible. If they don't like drinking plain water, which not all kids do, ideally they do, but if they don't, you can puree fruit, like puree apples or grapes, and freeze them in ice trays and use them as ice cubes. Or you can make them into little fruit popsicles. You don't have to add sugar to them. You can just have it as the fruit. It takes children who are used to sugar a little while to wean down. It takes. If they're already on sugar, you know, they're used to having the really sugary popsicles or really sugary drinks. You may end up starting by adding sugar to your ice cubes or your popsicles and then gradually weaning down. You know, it takes a little bit of time, but it's certainly worth the effort. Encourage them to eat colorfully in order to get the antioxidants that they need. And there are a lot of books out there on food art. And when I was growing up, we were taught not to play with our food. We. Well, now it's just the opposite. Play with your food. Make art with it. And so there are a lot of different things that you can do with, you know, different colored cheeses, different colored fruits and vegetables, even different types of pasta if you want to. In order to encourage kids to eat and eat colorfully and be willing to try it. You know, sometimes you have to have a certain shape and the only vegetable you can think of or the only thing you can think of that comes in that shape is a Brussels sprout. I'm not sure what that would be right now, but, you know, certainly you can find different ways to do that. Oh, I know what it would be. If you cut the brussels sprout in half, it can be a shrub if they're making a little house. See, you know, you just have to think ahead of time what vegetables you want them to use and figure out what, what designs to make. But like I said, there are a lot of books out there, and I'm sure there's a lot of websites out there that you can go to that would encourage that. The low glycemic index is also important. Remember, high glycemic index causes our blood sugar to spike. It increases inflammation. It increases the risk of insulin resistance and obesity. So we really want to help kids learn how to eat a low glycemic diet when possible. And there are kids cookbooks out there. If you Google kids kids cookbook low glycemic index, you can find them. They have some keto recipes out there or keto books, cookbooks out there for kids. Remember, keto is going to stay way, way far away from a lot of carbohydrates, which means you're going to miss out on a lot of the fruits and vegetables that would be in a, a cookbook that is less specialized. So just really look for low glycemic index and look for foods that are whole, whole vegetables and whole grains and those sorts of things. The less processed, the lower the glycemic index in general. Another thing that we want them to do is exercise. We know exercise helps with mood. It helps release endorphins, it helps release serotonin, it reduces cortisol levels, it increases oxygenation. It just does so many awesome things. But a lot of times kids think exercise and they think gym class or adults think exercise and they think gym class, and they're in this box when it comes to exercise. But there are so many different things that you can do even in your house. You know, maybe it's cold outside, it's. It's rainy or, or snowy or something, and you don't want to go outside. There are a lot of things that you can do in the house. Yoga is one form of exercise. We were talking about that just a minute ago. Jump rope. This is something people are going to probably want to do either in the garage with the car pulled out or, you know, outside. But, you know, Kids can have fun doing jump rope, especially if they're doing it with their friends. You like they used to do in grade school when I was younger. I don't know if they still do that dancing. Just put on music and dance around like, you know, a silly person and you can even do silly dancing. When my daughter was little, I used to teach a fitness class for three to five year olds and I had this whole choreographed routine to the song no More Monkeys and we had so much fun whenever it would come on. So make up your own choreographed routines. Be willing to dance, be willing to be silly. And it can be really fun for the adults because a lot of times we've forgotten how to be silly and so that can be kind of, kind of awesome. Act out to the songs for little kids. They have, you know, kids bop kids. They also have music from the Disney characters and you can find a variety of different songs that are fun to dance to. If. And some kids even like my son has always loved orchestral music so, you know, more power to him. You can play hide and seek. This is a great inside game or outside game and it gets people moving around. You can have a scavenger hunt that takes a little bit more planning, but again, it's something you can do inside the house that can encourage moving around. Obviously you can also do it outside, but you know, things we can do even when it's nasty weather outside. Balloon toss. This is better inside because the wind can really be a bugger and a half. But a balloon toss can be really fun. Just fill up the balloons and pop it in the air and try not to let it touch the ground. If you have dogs, I will warn you ahead of time, you probably want to put them out of the room because they really love this game. But that's one of our favorite games still and we actually like to play it with the dogs. Any kind of sport that the child enjoys, you can do. I mean, just because it's a traditional form of exercise doesn't mean some kids aren't going to love it. So sports are out, are in there. Dodgeball and kickball, generally things, these are things that you're going to want to do outside or at the park. But they can be fun with dodgeball. I'll warn you, you want to train kids when they're playing dodgeball to keep their hands like this. I used when I was playing dodgeball with my son, I, you know, dodged one of the balls with an open hand and ended up dislocating my finger. So lesson learned. Always Want to keep closed hands when you're playing dodgeball? Kickball's fun. Hula hoop. That can be really fun. See who can hula hoop for the longest. Go to the park, play Twister. Even if you don't have a Twister mat, you can get painters tape and make your own little Twister game in the kitchen or somewhere where you've got a solid floor. You can also have an exercise ball or a bouncy ball. Now I have one of those big exercise balls, and when I sit on it, and I do a lot, a lot of times when I'm not doing these presentations, so I have better posture, but I tend to bounce around. Kids have those bouncy balls that actually have the handle and they can bounce on it. That is great exercise for their little legs. Anything that gets them moving is exercise. Anything that gets their heart rate up just a little bit is exercise. We do want to work on obesity management and exercise and good nutrition kind of fall in there. So if we can make healthy eating fun, if we can make movement fun, then we're going to be 80% of the way to obesity management. The other 20% is helping them learn to eat when they're hungry instead of when they are upset. Pain management. Kids are going to have pain. They will go through growth spurts and they will be achy. They will sleep wrong. They will have pain occasionally. And we want to encourage them to not always go to the medicine cabinet every time they have pain. We can teach them about a variety of things, but the fun intervention for pain management is guided imagery. And you can have them envision wherever their pain is. Maybe they've got a headache, envision their pain being able to be controlled by a volume knob and have them turn the volume of that pain down. You can have them envision their. Their pain as a color, maybe red. So their head is red right now because it really, really hurts. And you want to have them envision that red turning to a very cool blue. And with children, sometimes it's helpful to have them look at the color you want them to have it turned to so you can see the. Give them something blue to look at and have them imagine that. That blue coming and taking over the red and helping it feel cooler or less painful. And something that's a little bit different is they can envision healing elves. You know, just kind of like our. Our immune system has the little cells that go out and attack. They can envision they've got little healing elves in their body and it's going to wherever that pain is, and it's going to heal it. Encourage them to come up with their own imagery that can help them see and feel that pain getting better, and whatever's causing the pain healing effectively. Emotion identification is so important. When my son was little, we used to go through the emotions periodically, and I would say, you know, show me what surprised looks like. And he would go, so I still have some videos of that that I periodically watch. He's almost 21 now, but, you know, it still makes me laugh. Emotion identification is really important, but they also need to understand not only what the feeling is, but why they're having it and what causes it. You can use, I call them, emoticon cards with activities on the back. So on the front, it has a little emoticon, one of the little smiley faces making a expression. And then on the back, the child identifies three things that make them feel that way. So you can have sick, scared, happy, excite, you know, you know, all the feelings. And on the back of each one, the child identifies three things that trigger that emotion. So if they're having a moment, you can give them the cards and you can ask them, you know, which emotion do you feel right now? And you can look at what triggers that you can also have on the dysphoric emotions. You can have them identify three things that help them feel better. Or you can have happy, happy cards, happy emotion cards, and say, okay, which emotion would you rather feel? And then they can pick that. So there's a couple of different ways of doing it, but it gives them something that's already written down so they're not having to think about, well, what would make me feel better right now because I feel really lousy. They can look at something and then they can say, I'll try number two, taboo. The game is another way, another thing for emotion identification. You can have the taboo word be an emotion like sad. And you can each take turns, you know, with the taboo word, but you explain or give hints about the word that the person's supposed to guess. You just can't say that particular word. Like, you can't say sad. And try to get them to identify that emotion. The Jenga block game, you have to do it with colored Jenga blocks. So this one has three colors. It's the only one I could find. And pick a colored block and show me or tell me what makes you feel that way. So the red blocks may represent anger, the yellow blocks may represent happy, and the blue blocks may represent sad. And they look and they figure out which block they want to pull for their turn. But in order to pull that block, they have to tell you what makes them feel that way. Emotion collages. These are pretty, you know, straight up, you know, 101 things. What does sad look like? So I want you to draw a collage and show me what sad looks like or what makes you feel sad. So then they can put different things that make them feel sad. And we want to do the happy emotions, too. The happy, happy and excited and curious and all of those permutations. We don't want people to be saddled with the base words of happy, mad, sad, glad, and afraid. You know, we want them to have a wide repertoire of emotion words. You can pick an emotion animal. You can say, all right, what animal do you feel like when you're angry? And they may say, a T. Rex or a lion. What animal do you feel like when you're scared? Maybe they feel like a bunny rabbit. But then you can talk to them about why. Why did you choose that animal? Why do you think that that represents that emotion? You can also just periodically, when you're watching TV or a movie together, pause it and ask them, what do you think that TV character is feeling right now? You know, what do you think Dora's feeling? Another thing I guess I didn't put on here is the ball activity. You can put different feelings on each color of the ball, and you pass it around. And when they get the ball, they look down. Whatever feeling is facing up, they have got to give an example of when they felt that way. And if it's a dysphoric emotion or what they did to feel better, and if it's a happy emotion, what they continued to do. Distress tolerance is another thing that we want to work on with children, because sometimes there are things they can't change and they're unhappy, but there's just nothing they can do to change that situation at that point in time. We want to emphasize with children that distress tolerance skills are to help them get through the moment, to get into their wise mind so they can choose what to do or to help them deal with the moment until they can get help. We don't want them to learn to just suppress emotions. And that's really important to articulate with children. And I'll get down there in a minute. But with. With children, you can create what I call a skills path. If it is in a classroom, for example, you can put it along the base of the wall, just above the baseboards, and on each brick on the Skills path. There are different activities that children can do in order to help them cope with the stress when they're feeling it, if they're feeling anxious about a test or if they're feeling tired or if they're feeling angry or what are some different things that they can do. So it's visually there, it's a visual reminder of what they can do when they're feeling distressed. It, like I said, it's great for classrooms. You can do it in a playroom. There are a variety of things, probably not something you're going to want in the living room of your house, but you can get creative. Other things that you can do is comparisons. And with children, I distill the distress tolerance skills down to four, five things. Chats, comparisons, hardiness, activities, thought stopping, and sensations. So with comparisons, you want to compare yourself to others who are not doing so well. And you can talk children through this. You can ask them to talk about times when they've been worse off. You know, tell me about a time when things were worse or, and my favorite one is to talk about times that they've handled similarly difficult situations and create what I call a courage book. So when they go through something stressful or distressful and they can make a page in the scrapbook about that, how they felt and what they did to get through it, and how they felt better. So when they start, when having problems in the future, they can go back over their courage book and they can see, hey, I've, I've made it through things like this before and I'm, I'm really a strong person. We can also have them focus on hardiness, which is that commitment, control and challenge. Commitment is recognizing what things are going well in your life. And over here, you can see my little gratitude tree. You can do it with construction paper 100%, or you can get a vase or a pot of some sort and put sand in it and get a big branch from outside. And then on each of the little branches you put present tags, or you can make things out of construction paper. And each little tag or leaf has something that the child is grateful for. And they can fill that gratitude tree up so they've got something to look at. That one's, that one's can be pretty fun to do. It can take a little bit of time, but helping them recognize that there are lots of things in their life that they can be committed to is important. Helping them identify the parts of the situation that they have control over and helping them view this challenging, this, this time as Challenging. Instead of a problem or something that is unsolvable, it's a challenge like it, not necessarily like a game, but something that they can use their creativity and their strength to potentially overcome. So you have the gratitude tree. You also can make a rock balance, and you can do this really easily with, with paper cups, string, a hanger, and a doorknob. And you can get little marbles or you can get little rocks from outside. Whatever you want to do in order to show the commitment and help the child see that there are things that can help balance it out. They can put a rock in the left side for what's going wrong, you know, the things that are going wrong, and then they put rocks in the right side side for all the things that. That are going right that they're grateful for, hopefully. Fingers crossed. We want to help them see that there's more weight on the things that are going right side. Yes, there are things that are going wrong. There is a little bit of a counterbalance. It doesn't go away. But they do have, you know, good things that they can focus on. The third one you can do is a little bit more challenging sometimes. It's called the rock rucksack. Take a backpack and for all of the things that are stressing them out, you know, give them a rock, a big rock or a brick to put in that rucksack, depending on the size of the child. You've got to, you know, scale this up or down a little bit and have them carry that rucksack around as long as they're holding on to that distress, and then talk about different ways, different things that they could do in order to deal with their distress. And as they're ready to start trying to deal with their distress, they can take the rocks out. As they start dealing with each problem, so they can feel it lighten their load. That one is a little bit more cognitive and works better with older children. The elementary school children do relatively well with the rock balance and the gratitude tree. You can have them do figure out activities that distract or produce positive emotions. And it's up to us as caregivers to help them remember what they need to do when they're distressed. So, yes, going to the doctor is not your favorite thing, you know, and going and getting a shot is not your favorite thing. So what can we do to help you not sit here and focus on it for the next hour and a half while we drive there and wait in the waiting room and yada, yada, sing, tell jokes. Those are things you can do in the car. Other things that are distressful where the child is still at home. They can take a bubble bath. They can bounce or throw a ball sometimes if they're worried about something or they're angry about something they don't have any control over. Maybe they got into a fight with their best friend. Sometimes it can be cathartic to go outside and just throw a tennis ball up against, you know, a backboard of some sort. Don't throw it up against stucco because eventually it may crack the stucco find somewhere safe for them to use. But just throwing that repeatedly a few times can help them get some of that pent up energy that anger out so they can get into their wise mind. The same thing can be true for bouncing a ball, just bouncing it really hard, not dribbling. Reading. Some kids really respond well when they feel distressed to getting a book and going into that fantasy world that is created when they start to read. Not every kid responds well to that. Some of them have too much energy and they need to move. And telling them to sit still is counterproductive. But others respond well. Playing a video game or a board game can also be helpful. It gives them something to focus on that's outside of themselves. Not that I want them, you know, developing, you know, gaming addiction or something. We need to be careful with some of this. But get allowing them to play a video game for 20 minutes can give them a break so that HPA axis can downregulate and they can get into their wise mind and then they can start talking more clearly about what's going on. Art is always good, whether it's finger paints or chalk on the sidewalk, or drawing or crayons or whatever it is. Sometimes art can be very helpful. Freeform art, let them draw how they feel or have give them coloring books, ask them what they like to do, know what they like to do. And guided imagery can be also very helpful here. Just like with pain, when people are in emotional pain, sometimes guided imagery can be helpful. With kids, it's important to prompt them for what they're seeing. But you can write down what they're seeing and then you can make an a video or audio recording of it later, you know, talking about it so they can hear it. So ask them, you know, where would be a happy place that you could go right now? You know, if you could be anywhere in the world, where would it be? And they may say, the moon. Okay, fine, tell me five things that you see on the moon. Tell me five things that you hear on the moon. Now Smells and sounds can't always come up with five. So you can just prompt them, you know, what do you smell, what else do you smell? And take notes of that. Then you can create a script, record it for them so when they feel distressed, they can listen to that recording and go to that place. Especially for younger children, older children may be able to recreate it on their own, but it's always helpful to have a script around. Thought stopping can also be helpful. A lot of times children perseverate a lot, so encourage them to do things like envision a superhero that is there protecting them and keeping those bad thoughts from coming in. Or envisioning a force field around them so they can't hear, you know, the, the unpleasant thoughts at all. Encourage them to draw it. If it's a superhero, have them draw that superhero so they can put meaning to it or put a visual concept to it. Sometimes just singing a song can help with thought stopping. And it can be something inane. Whatever their favorite song is, if they're singing, they're using those words and they're not thinking about the other ones. You can have a God or a universe jar. If for people that are atheist, agnostic, they may not want a God jar, a universe jar is fine too, where the child can write down the problem that they don't have control over right now, or the intrusive thoughts that they're having and they can put it in the universe jar for the universe to help them deal with. Write it down to get it out of your head. Sometimes it's just a matter of, you know, writing if you and your friend got in a fight, you know, write in your diary, write in your journal about it. Whatever sensations are other activities that kids can do when they are experiencing distress to help them down regulate that HPA axis so they can get into their wise mind. The breath dragon is one of my favorite. With little kids, you take a paper cup and you cut out the bottom, you paint it green and you put tissue paper that's orange, little strips of tissue paper that are orange on the end of it. You tape them and then when the child gets upset, they take in a deep breath and they blow through the cup and it makes the tissue paper wave around so it looks kind of like a fire breathing dragon. But little kids enjoy that and that can help them slow down their breathing. Some blowing bubbles or taking dandelions that have gone to seed. And blowing those can also be helpful because it requires a big breath in and then an extended breath out. So you're triggering that rest and digest. You're triggering that slowed breathing. You can also do a candle breathing contest, you know, see how far away you can get. Who can get the furthest away and still blow out the candle again. That's requiring a great big breath in holding it and then a slow exhale. Little kid. Well, all kids, sometimes harmonicas can be helpful. If they have it. They don't have to play anything that is a song. Just inhaling and exhaling on the harmonica. So sometimes can help them feel better. And it's loud, so it's distracting. And you can race, you know, sometimes it's just, let's go see who can run to the end of the driveway and back the fastest. And that can help them, you know, re regulate that HPA system cognitively. We want to help teach them mindfulness regularly, not just when they're upset, but all the time, every day. Encourage them to stop and do the 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Five things I see, four things I hear, three things I smell, two things that I feel, and one thing that I taste. You can have them tell you every day the five best things that happen today and the five worst things that happen today or the one worst thing you. It's important that we help. We're teaching distress tolerance skills, but it's also important to help the children when they're in their wise mind to review their day and process anything that was distressful. We don't want them just stuffing their cabinets, their mental cabinets with this stuff. And encourage them before each meal to identify how they feel physically and emotionally and what they need. So all of these things can be things that they do each day. Positivity at, at your house or at school. During lunchtime, you can have a positivity time where the only thing we talk about during this 20 minutes is the best things that happen. And if we're talk going to talk about something, we want to talk about how it's a good thing, you know, so we're encouraging radical acceptance, taking the good with the bad. You can also have them journal or draw about positive things in their life. We want to teach them psychological flexibility so they learn how to accept what is and improve the next moment. And that's really what it comes down to. When they get upset, we say, okay, tell me how you feel. And that's where those emoticon cards may come in. Why do you feel that way? Encouraging them to start figuring out why that is. And then what can you do to help yourself feel better? What do you need goes Back to that mindfulness. To improve the next moment, we can teach them problem solving skills. And I love this. The duct tape, gum, paperclip box, just a plain old cardboard box and a soda bottle. Give them these, you know, maybe one each day and ask them, what kinds of things can you do with this besides what they're intended for? And that can get their creative juices flowing. You may need to put some parameters on it because you don't want to end up with gum stuck everywhere around your house. But you can also ask the child for help. Instead of telling them how to solve problems or tell them what to do, you can ask them for help. It's like, hm, I ran out of aluminum foil and I need to cover this up. What can I use? Encourage the child to participate. Read books together about health literacy. Make menus together. That can be fun because kids can start thinking about what they want. They can look through those kids cookbooks. You can work together to put a first aid kit together so you have everything that you need. And even put together a first aid kit for the animals so they get practice doing it twice. You can act out positive health behaviors with action figures. I know my kids always used to like to play with action figures. You know, what does Superman need to do to stay healthy? Or what is Dolly doing today to stay healthy? Scaffolding. We can have the child create step charts for what they need to do in order to get ready to do this. I need to do these three steps. You can also have them teach back. So if you teach them something like, you know, how to wash their hair, you know, you have them teach it back. You know, tell me, what do I need to do to wash my hair Again, with goal setting, it's easy as 1, 2, 3. So have them start with the end in mind. What is it that you want to achieve? And then back up and say, all right, you want to get there. What's the first thing you think you need to do? And write that down. And then, okay, what's the next thing? Write that down. Write all the things down till you get to the end. And then go back and double check and make sure that they've remembered everything. And if not, you can prompt them. You know, maybe that's a big step. What might need you need to do in between? If they have an inner critic, which most of us do, encourage them to act it out with puppets or action figures so they can articulate what that inner critic is saying. And maybe you can be part of the puppet or action figure scene. And help counteract what that that puppet is saying environmentally. Teaching kids to be safe in the environment is super helpful. The best thing is safety inspector. You know, you can give them a little sash and have them talk about what makes them feel unsafe and what we can do to help them feel safe. They may be afraid of monsters, they may be afraid of fire, whatever it is, you know, talk about it and then talk about what they can do to feel safe. And as a safety inspector, that gives them a feeling of power. You can also take an old Chutes and Ladders game and you can actually probably download a template for it offline so you can print it out. I don't know. But each time you land on a person, you draw a situation card. So, you know, somebody left the stove on. What do you do? So every time you land on a person, you draw a situation card. If it's an up, you know, this little girl on 19, she can slide up to 62. So if it's an up card, then they need to answer the question correctly to go up. So the. The stove is on. What do you do if they say turn it off or go get an adult? Then they go up if it's a down. So if they land on 16, they're going, they're up here and they land on 62. If they answer the card correctly, they don't have to slide down. They get to stay where they're at. So little bit of a difference. But colors you can just like with the animals and the feelings, you can ask them what color do you feel and why. You can have them do color theme drawings or paintings. So today I want you to do a blue painting. We what things can you think of that are blue scents? You can ask them how scents make them feel and why. You can bake or bring in a bunch of flowers, you know, bringing the scent in and ask them what they think about it or have them think back to a happy time in their life and what did they smell? You know, maybe it was a cleaner, maybe it was grandma's perfume, whatever it was. And. And for touch hugs, you know, obviously you can ask them if they like hugs and textures. You know, talking about what types of touch that they like is important. Interpersonally craves consistency, responsiveness, attention, validation, encouragement, and support. We want to help them develop empathy. We can do that with puppets, with story narration, you can narrate a story and then ask them, you know, how do you think that person feels and why? You can do the same thing with television movies or pets. When you're watch when you see them, you can ask the child what is that you know, character feeling? Or what is your dog feeling right now? Self esteem. You can create an about me, call it collage or scrapbook. You can have them write an ad campaign to sell themselves. Or you can create a self esteem jar. I love the self esteem jars because everybody in the household once a day or once a week puts a slip in everybody else's self esteem jar about what it is about them that is wonderful so it adds up over time. Communication skills encourage clarity and I statements. You can teach assertiveness by finding aggression in TV and movies and pausing it and saying okay, that looked pretty aggressive or have them notice it. Even better where they can be like they're being aggressive and have them pause it and say okay, tell me what it would look like or how you could be assertive in that situation. Have Love Language days. So on one day you have the love language is quality time. Another day the love language is touch and have each person in the family make a list of what are some examples of that love language that they like. Healthy boundaries. We want to empathize, empathize with them and help them validate their feelings as well as others. And in relationship skills we can practice role playing or through role playing we can help them with perspective taking, not over personalizing or mind reading and conflict resolution. It's never too early to start teaching behaviors that will contribute to health and mental health. Improving health literacy can be fun. By teaching, encouraging and modeling health related behaviors, the entire family or classroom can enjoy improved health and happiness. Alrighty. That took me a little bit longer than I expected, but I'm hoping you guys found some fun little tips or tools that you might be able to use. Fun little games that you might be able to use with your the younger people in your life. Everybody have a great day. Remember, I will see you tomorrow for yet another live webinar. Have a great night. If this podcast helps you help your clients or yourself, please support us by purchasing your ceus@allce.com or getting your agency to sponsor an episode. A direct link to the on demand CEUs for this podcast is at allce.com/podcastce. That's allce. Com podcastce. To sponsor an episode of Counselor Toolbox and reach over 50,000 clinicians per week, go to allce. Com sponsor. Thank you.