As a therapist who works with children and their families, I often think about kids’ lives as if they’re driving a bus: They’re going down a road, but they don’t always know how to respond to the obstacles they encounter along the way. Our job as caregivers and supportive adults is to teach children the skills they need to arrive safely at their destinations.
The kids have some passengers riding with them as they drive. These passengers are (often big) feelings — anger, joy, sadness, guilt, and anxiety. They provide kids with information about the world and their place in it. Part of teaching children how to drive their bus is helping them learn from those passengers without feeling overwhelmed.
Anxiety can be particularly difficult for kids to handle. Although it helps them identify potential threats and prepare for challenges, anxiety can sometimes take over — it tries to drive, and the bus starts to veer off the road. You’ll know this is happening when a child’s anxiety is out of proportion to the challenges they face, or when it prevents them from living their lives.
When this happens, we need to help kids honor their anxiety and move those anxious feelings back into a passenger seat. Once kids are steering the bus again, they can calm their nervous systems, learn what their anxiety was trying to tell them, and get back to the things that matter most.
For anyone overwhelmed by anxiety, the first step is to separate our anxiety-ridden story from our sense of identity.
In narrative therapy, this separation is a tool known as externalizing. This involves recognizing that we are not our anxiety. Instead, anxiety is a temporary state of being that arises when we feel threatened or out of control. Separating ourselves from it empowers us to take our place in the driver’s seat, where we can accept and learn from the information that anxiety offers.
There are various ways to practice externalizing, and I’ve created a range of games to guide kids and their families to work through anxiety in a way that matches kids’ development.
( Game 1 )
Paint Worry Monsters
Materials needed:
- Watercolor paint or water with lots of food coloring
- Paintbrush
- Straw
- Marker
- Paper (cardstock works best)
Instructions:
- Get a paintbrush dripping wet with watercolors or colored water.
- Drip the colored water all over a piece of paper, leaving space between the drops.
- Take the straw and blow through it, hard, onto the droplets of water. This will create color splatters.
- Using a marker, give each water splatter the name of a different worry or fear.
- Once the color is mostly dry, draw faces (and arms, legs, or hair if desired) for each worry monster.
- Optional: Crumple up the paper with the worry monsters and throw it away, or close it up in a special box.
( Game 2 )
Let Worries Fly
This is a particularly good game for kids who feel anxious before school. They can blow their worries about the day into a balloon and then let the balloon go and sputter around as it deflates.
Materials needed:
- Balloon
- Marker (permanent markers work best), optional
Instructions:
- Blow up the balloon with your breath, imagining your worries filling the balloon.
- Do not tie off the balloon.
- Optional step: When the balloon is full, hold it shut while writing the worries all over the balloon.
- Let go of the balloon and let it deflate freely, imagining the worries being released with the balloon.
- If playing this game outside, make sure to pick up the balloon when it lands.
( Game 3 )
Feed Your Worry Monster
Materials needed:
- Paper bag
- Marker
- Slips of paper
- Pen or pencil
Instructions:
- Draw a monster face on the bottom flap of a paper bag, with the crease of the flap as the mouth. Add the monster’s eyes and nose above the crease, then draw teeth or a tongue just below and extending out from under the folded edge.
- Cut a small hole or slit in the fold under the bottom flap. This will be the opening for the monster’s mouth.
- Seal the bottom of the bag (this would normally be the opening at the top of the bag).
- Give your monster a name and introduce it as a “Worry Monster,” a friendly creature who loves to eat worries.
- Write (or draw) worries or fears on slips of paper.
- “Feed” the Worry Monster by putting the worries into the monster’s mouth, making a big, playful show of the Worry Monster gobbling up the worries.
The post 3 Games to Help Children Release Their Worries appeared first on Experience Life.
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