Mindful Tools for Meltdowns

Lindsay Miller  0:22  
Hey there. This is Lindsay, thanks so much for being here. I'm glad to have you joining me for some ideas on how your family can stress less. I'm going to be sharing some tools today from my mindfulness toolbox. These are tools that I teach to kids. And a lot of times I'll have parents say, I just need your phrasing, like, I need you to just tell it to my kid the way that you're saying it right now. Because while the tools are accessible, sometimes the verbiage and language around it can be a little bit tricky to pick up on without some practice. And so when Alexa started carrying the podcast, and you could just say Alexa, play the stress nanny podcast, I started sharing some of these tools so that you could bring them into your home in a way that felt normal and easy. And then you could discuss them with your kids after I share them with you. So that's my hope. This episode is brought to you by the essential calendar, which is an 18 by 24. Wall Calendar. That means it's a big sheet that goes on the wall that everybody can see, it has three months at a time, so you can check on your plans and know what's going on for the next three months. You can find it at www dot the central calendar.com. Now on to the episode. 

Welcome to The Stress Nanny podcast. I'm your host, Lindsay Miller. And I'm delighted that you're here. Thanks so much for being here to pick up some tools to help your family stress less. Right now, stress levels are epic for everyone. I mean, we're all just feeling the strain of the last couple of years. And all of the societal shifts and the family stress and the school stress. All of that is just kind of piling up on everybody. And it's getting to feel like a lot. And so today I'm going to share two tools that I use around snow actually, because where I live, it is wintertime right now. And so the first one is about meltdowns, because a lot of us are having meltdowns right now for whatever reason. There are adults having meltdowns, kids having meltdowns. And it's just kind of normal right now for people to be having meltdowns. So the what I use for this is just a little silly putty snowman, and he melts. So you put in like his hat and his eyes and his little stick arms. And you put them all together. And then you let him sit there and he just kind of melts. And it's a fun way to teach kids how to notice when they're starting to melt, right. And it's easier to kind of catch a meltdown as it's getting going as opposed to when it's like in full swing. And so if we can start to notice when the snowman is melting, if we can start to notice when we're having a meltdown, we can kind of shore ourselves up or get the support that we need in order to move through that time, instead of going into complete meltdown. And if we do go to complete meltdown, that's normal, we all do it. But if we can help ourselves and create a circumstance where we can get the support we need even better, right? So I get my little snowman out and we talk about it. When I teach this to kids, I send the kids packages in the mail each week. So then they open up their snowman, they look at it, and they put it together. And then we just start chatting about how their week is going what's going on for them, you know, what struggles are having or what things are going great. And then all of a sudden the snowman starts to melt. And then they're like, Wait, he's starting them out? We're like, Yeah, he is looking at him, you see he is starting to melt. So they'll kind of like you know, push them back together and help him be helping be solid again. And then we'll get to talking and then he'll start to melt again. And we'll start talking about okay, yeah, he keeps having a meltdown, right, like he's starting to melt. What are some of the signs for you that you're starting to have a meltdown? What do you notice? Kind of like the snowman, we noticed that his pipe starts to kind of sag a little bit or one of his arms, you know, starts to tilt down? Those are his first signs of a meltdown? What are your first signs of a meltdown? And when we ask kids this question, a lot of times they know. And we don't think that they do, but they do. So they'll say like, well, I start to feel like everyone is just getting mad at me. Or I start to feel like I'm always getting in trouble. And there's just nothing I can do. And so then we start talking through that like, okay, when that happens, what do you do? You know, how can you how do you handle that? And then they'll say, well, then I usually start yelling, and then I hit my sister and then I yell at my mom and I slam my door shut. Like okay, yeah, that sounds like a meltdown. Right? And then I'm crying in my room. So definitely could be classified as a meltdown. Right? So then we say, well, what would happen if you started to notice like when you're feeling overwhelmed, and like everyone is picking on you, or you're getting asked to do a lot of things? What would happen if you started to notice Write then that something was wrong. And that you needed you needed some help. What would that help be? Like? If you could notice, then what would you say you needed that. And they might say, Well, I just might need my mom to give me a hug and tell me that it's okay that I forgot to do my chores. Or I just might need my brother to give me back that toy. Or I just might need to go in the other room so that I don't get too angry with my sister. And they start to generate ideas. So when you point out like, Hey, this is a time when there's still action you can take to support yourself, right to keep this from going downhill, then they can start to generate ideas. And then the next thing we say is okay, well, how will you know? Like, if you, you know, if you have all these great ideas, and you know what to do to support yourself? How will you remind yourself like, how will you know, oh, it's time for my ideas, it's time for me to go in the other room or ask my mom for a hug? How do you know when to do that? What does it feel like in your body? Or how can you remind yourself, and they come up with some cool ideas here, too. And so ask this, like, what, what can be a reminder or what can help you know, it's time for you to call in some extra help, or to make a different choice, because it looks like things are starting to go downhill. And they might say, well, if I if I take a deep breath, which we practice breathing, so you could do that with your kiddos, be practicing breathing consistently. So it becomes a trigger in and of itself to just take a mindful moment. And they might say, well, I could make myself a note and put it on the fridge. That's like a snowman melting. So reminding myself to help myself when I'm having a meltdown. Like, okay, that's a great idea. I could just make sure if I feel like I want to hit someone, that I go in another room. Yeah, that's a great idea, too. So when you when we start generating ideas, we can work with it, right? We know like what to do and how to intervene. And we think of those things in the moment when we're calm, not in the moment when we're stressed. Because in the moment, when we're stressed, we just need to know what to do, right. And if we're lucky, we remember to do that other thing, instead of hitting our sister, sometimes we don't remember that. And we learned. But if we can remember, you know, the calm, the time we practice is when we're calm. That's the time we practice for a meltdown. Right? So we build a snowman, we understand like what it looks like when he's starting to melt, we know what to do to kind of build them back up. The same for melt down for us, if we know what to do when we're starting to kind of melt, then we can shore ourselves back up. So that's the first tool. And it's a really fun one to use. You can find those snowman on Amazon, or you know, at little boutique shops they have. But that can be a fun visual, you can also use something like kinetic sand or flute or something that's like, easy for kids to you know, just play around with. And then the second one is a snow globe. So I just buy these on Amazon. And you can have kids draw a little picture in it. And then you fill it up with water, and then you shake it up and the snow comes down. And so then we talk about like what happens during a blizzard, right? Like if you're in the middle of that snow globe, and you're trying to move around inside there, what would happen? Would you need to maybe wait a second until you could see clearly because it'd be hard to see with all that snow swirling around. And a lot of times kids will say, yeah, you it would be hard to do that to move around. Some kids just want to go for it and move through the snow. But we talk about how the lizard can be kind of like our brains and how our thoughts can feel like a blizzard sometimes when we're having a ton of different thoughts. And they're just swirling all around our head. And we're not sure what to do with them. And we don't know how to kind of feel settled. In those moments, we can take a deep breath. And we can breathe until things kind of settle. And so when we practice this at home with kids, you can practice having them breathe until the snow settles every night, or you know, every morning before school or whatever. So they practice the breathing until the snow settles as a way to kind of get their brain and their their body in a place where it can initiate calm when needed. So again, we don't practice this when we're stressed. We use it when we're stressed if we've practiced it when we're calm. But we have to practice when we're calm in order for it to be effective when we're stressed. So with the breathing, they just breathe until the snow settles. And then a lot of times they'll notice like how did you feel after you were breathing until the snow settled? And they'll notice they'll say I felt really calm. I was really calm. And when I was done with that when the snow was done, when it was done snowing, I felt calm. Like yeah, okay, what did that feel like in your body? How did that feel like? Well, I just felt like relaxed and my tummy wasn't tight and And I didn't feel like I was like, clench, you know, their jaw was tight like my, my jaw was loose. Okay, awesome. That sounds really good. It sounds really relaxing to let go of some of those muscles that hold tension and hold energy like that. How when do you think this would be useful? When do you think it would be useful to kind of use this metaphor of blizzard of

thoughts? Do you ever feel like your thoughts just are a blizzard. And there's just so many thoughts swirling that you can't keep them straight and know which one to focus on. And a lot of times kids will be able to connect with that experience. Also, they might say, like, yeah, when I'm at school, I'm trying to focus. I'm just thinking about a lot of things. But I want to listen to my teacher, but I can't because I'm thinking about going to recess and what's in my lunchbox and what I'm going to do after school and I'm having a hard time listening. Okay, yeah, that that's really normal. That happens for a lot of kids. What do you think you could do that might help you in that moment, now that you know how to kind of help yourself feel more settled and focused? What do you think you could do? And they'll come up with ideas. And so practicing using the, the snowglobe gives them the tools and the sense of calm, and that sense of mental steadiness that they can then use in other settings, you know, where it might be a little bit harder to come by. So even though they may not have a snow globe on their desk, they might say, like, I can look outside, if there's someone where there is snow, I can look outside at the snow. And remember how I feel when the snow falls, I can take a deep breath, like I do when I'm watching the snow fall in my snow globe. And I can just feel calm. And so giving them like example, a physical example either the melting snowman or the snowglobe of kind of what's going on internally, like their emotions or having, you know, causing them to have a meltdown, or their thoughts or like a blizzard, it really support their ability to connect with what's going on in these more subtle processes. And also gives them some language to work with to help them identify how to help themselves in these other ways. So like, if your child is having a hard time saying, like, my brain was so busy, I was having so many thoughts, but they could say my brain felt like a blizzard. Then you can say like, oh, okay, we know what to do when your brain feels like a blizzard, here are some things we can try, right? So giving kids concrete ways to express subtle ideas is really important when it comes to mindfulness because it can be a kind of challenging concept to grasp. But once we give them these more concrete examples, they can usually connect with it in really astonishing fun and creative ways. So I hope that gave you some tools you can use in your own home and whether you have kids draw a snowglobe or draw snowman or, you know, you get these things from Amazon, which you're welcome to do, and teach them that way. Hopefully, you can use them to help your family initiate a sense of calm and steadiness. And it's these crazy times that we're in. So thanks again for listening. If you enjoyed the podcast, I would really appreciate it if you would leave a review reviews help other people find it. And I would love for as many families as possible to be able to have tools for stress relief right now. And I would also love to have you join me over on Instagram or on my website. For more information on how you can help your family stressless I have a newsletter and videos on the website that you can access to give you just a few more ideas on how to work with your kids around mindfulness and stress resilience so that we can all be living our most resilient lives. Until next time!

Transcribed by https://otter.ai