Sasha Long, a former special-education teacher and behavior analyst, shares two strategies for helping overwhelmed children: visual supports and offering choices. She provides free customizable calm-down choice boards with options like counting, fidgeting, and stretching that reduce verbal overload and let kids regain control during a meltdown.
Two of the best strategies to use to help a child safely de-escalate when they're overwhelmed or overstimulated is using visuals and using choices. I'm Sasha Long. I'm a former special education teacher and a board-certified behavior analyst, and I think it's super important to think critically about the strategies we are using during de-escalation. Not only do we want to help our kids maintain safety, but we want to help keep that connection and rapport with the child while acknowledging some of the struggles they're having with emotional regulation. When a child is in meltdown mode, when a child is having a tantrum, they are overstimulated, overwhelmed, and we want to use strategies that can support those missing skills at this time. We have these free calm down choice boards that really combine both of these strategies I just said, visuals and choice, in such a nice way. What I love about these— we've got two options, clip art and real photo— is you can really customize to the calm down strategies that work for your child. Here we have talking about it, count to 10, pick a fidget or toy, think positive thoughts, stretch. Some of these aren't applicable to your child. You can really customize and put things that make sense to them. And then during that crisis moment, you can bring this to the child to give options. This is giving them autonomy. This is helping them be in control by making the choice. And we're also reducing overwhelm by relying on visuals and not verbal language. So check out these for free and let me know how they go.
