How to Help Kids “Settle Their Glitter”

Take a jar filled with water & glitter. Now shake it up: that’s your child’s brain during an emotional meltdown.

When kids are overwhelmed by emotions, they don’t respond well to reasoning. In the height of a tantrum in a grocery store, our words — however warm and wise — get lost in their neurological glitter storm. 

When my son was in PreK, we made sensory glitter jars together (plastic bottle + water + glitter + Elmer's glue). 

“Remember last week when you got really mad during the football game?” I asked him “Remember how I asked you to take a deep breath but you said it was too hard? Let’s pretend this bottle is your body. When you got upset, it looked kind of like this.” I shook up the jar. “It’s so busy and stormy in there!”

We watched as the glitter begin to drift back to the bottom. “And remember how we snuggled on the stairs and breathed together,” I said, “and then you bounced on your little trampoline for a while. That helped your glitter calm down.”

“And then I felt better!” he announced.

This is a helpful mental model for parents. Sometimes, we need to patiently wait for the height of the storm to pass (while keeping kids from hurting themselves and others, of course!). When children are a bit calmer, we can continue to work on strategies that will — with time and practice — strengthen their emotional self-regulation.

Deborah Farmer Kris

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