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Relaxation Techniques for Children

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This 2-minute video for parents features Mental Health Therapist Stephanie Dann talking about quick and easy relaxation techniques for children. - When children are stressed or upset, they can feel it in their bodies. By changing the way our bodies feel, we can also change how we feel emotionally. We can do this through breathing and movement. - Belly breathing: have your child lay on the ground and put a stuffed animal on their stomach, have them take deep breaths to make the animal go up and down - Hot chocolate breathing: pretend to hold a cup of hot chocolate, breath in to smell it and breath out to cool it off - Making lemonade: pretend to hold a lemon in each hand, squeeze as hard as you can to get the juice out and then drop the lemon - Spaghetti noodle: pretend to be an uncooked spaghetti noodle straight up and down, then a cooked spaghetti noodle relaxing your body Challenge: Try teaching one of these relaxation techniques to your child when they are in a calm state, then help them to do it at a time this week when they get upset.

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Hi. My name is Stephanie Dann. I'm a mental health therapist with White River School District and today I wanted to talk to you about some quick and easy relaxation techniques. Often times when students feel upset, or stressed out, you can feel it in their body. They feel like their brain is going fast, maybe their stomach hurts, their muscles are tense, or maybe they're sweating. When we have physical sensations in our bodies we can change them, which changes our emotional state. So I wanted to give you some really easy, quick relaxation techniques you can do with kids. The first two are breathing techniques. One is called belly breathing, and what you want to do is have kids breath in a lot of air in their stomach, fill it up like a balloon and breathe it out. One of the best and most fun ways to do this is have your child lay on the ground and put a stuffed animal on their stomach, and make them have the stuffed animal go up and down. By belly breathing it makes it so they actually deep breathing when the animal goes up and down. The next one is called hot chocolate breathing. You pretend like you have a cup of hot chocolate, you breathe in the smell of the hot chocolate and then you breathe out cooling it down. It's just a fun and easy way to do some deep breathing. The next two are about movement and changing how your muscles feel. The first one is called making lemonade. So, I have kids pretend to hold some lemons in their hands, and then squeeze, squeeze, squeeze, squeeze as hard as they can, and then drop. And then squeeze, sqeeze, squeeze as hard as they can, and then drop. Make some lemonade. The next one is called spaghetti noodle. And I have kids pretend to be a cooked, and an uncooked noodle. So an uncooked spaghetti noodle is like this...straight up and down. And cook spaghetti noodle is like this. So you're changing your muscles, tightening them and relaxing them. Those are some fun relaxation techniques you can try at home with your child. Try doing one this week that you haven't done before, and see how it goes.

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