My Favorite Sensory Tools to Help Your Child Regulate Their Emotions and Reconnect With You
*this post will contain amazon-associated links as well as links to free resources
If your child, or the child you’re working with, can often get frustrated, worried, or sad and have difficulty communicating or expressing those feelings in healthy ways, these tools can help them engage their 5 senses for better emotional regulation. When we reconnect with our bodies and become more grounded in the present moment, it can feel easier and safer to process our overwhelming emotions or thoughts. When we’re more grounded we can begin to communicate more easily because we are more aware of those feelings or the triggers for them. This is true for adults too. Sometimes as the adult we also need help staying grounded during our children’s big emotions. Engaging in sensory activities together can help us both stay calm and centered and provide an environment where we can communicate first through our actions and expressions and then through our words when we’re ready. If you have a younger child or a more shy child, these tools can build that bridge to processing emotions without as much dialogue. Also these tools can be great for children to utilize on their own when in self-soothing situations, such as homework frustrations, weather fears, or short separation sadness.
Scented Putty
The first tool is scented PUTTY. The putty is often thicker and takes more effort to knead through. This is a great tool for frustration or anxious energy. Having children fidget with the putty in their nondominant hand during stressful activities, like homework, can give an outlet for their frustrated or anxious energy as they focus on their work. Scents can be a pleasing addition to help them stay calmed or even stimulated by the scent. Color-changing putty can be good because it requires more effort to fully switch the colors, which can mean exhausting that restless or angry energy naturally. It can become a go-to routine where the putty is solely used for that situation as a self-soothing strategy or it can be used as a longer ‘body break’ during a stressful activity, where the child can take a 10 minute break to focus solely on the scented putty before returning to or beginning another activity.
Scented Clay and Playdoh
Scented clay or playdoh are softer and can be used to recreate images, memories, or roleplay stressful fears/worries the child has recently experienced and is having difficulty expressing. It can also be used to model a situation that they are nervous or worried about. This would be an activity that you can ask directing questions on- “What could you do?” “How might that feel?” as they act it out through the playdough or clay creations. Remember that this is a form of play though, so it can be typical to see embellishments of the story. Instead let your focus be on the validation of their feelings and the coping tools they can use in the moment. You can discuss problem solving strategies, but first model active listening and just hear your child’s recollection of the moment or their thought process of their worries. Don’t jump in to solve it or offer suggestions immediately. Hear them and encourage them to just process the situation or to problem solve on their own first. As children get older, it’s good to actually ask them if they are wanting any strategies from you or if they are just wanting you to watch and listen?
Scented Warmies
Using scented stuffed animals, especially the ones that can be warmed up or are weighted, can give an extra boost of self-soothing and physical grounding for our emotions. This is especially true of younger children with less ability to vocalize the uncertainty or the unsettled feeling that big emotions can bring to their body. Being able to hug something or snuggle inside of a warm and soft blanket can trigger their brain to relax and their breathing to slow back down. I like to use these in my sessions because it is a way of bringing physical comfort in a clinical setting where I’m not as easily able to comfort a child as their caregiver may be. I have many middle schoolers that often go to grab these as they walk in session as well.
Sometimes as a parent myself, I can be the source of my own child’s frustration when I’m saying no or giving a consequence. I may not be someone they are ready to allow to comfort them in that moment until they’ve calmed their body’s response back down. These stuffed animals can be a way of allowing them to self soothe so we can reconnect and talk about the situation afterwards.
The stuffed animals are also portable and can be used in new or stressful situations for the children, like trips to the doctor or dentist. The lavender scents are more prominent when they are heated up, but they are detectable even when the stuffed animal is cool. The weight of them is often soothing for children too, especially more anxious children.
Scented Markers and Art Supplies
Scented markers are a great tool for art therapy that can also be used at home settings. Coloring or drawing to calm and regulate our emotions is a widely researched and effective tool for children and adults. Drawing pictures about situations or memories that are overwhelming for the child or teen can allow them to process it and communicate their needs. I can’t tell you how many times in sessions a client can begin with angry or anxious scribblings and end smiling and having a conversation about their favorite marker scents as we share and smell all of them. Smells can trigger happy feelings and emotions. Even triggering neutral feelings can be a welcome addition to the frustration they were previously feeling. Also in this example, the success is not that the client is no longer angry, instead the success is that the client allowed themselves to be angry, to express and release it in a healthy way, and to use their own tools to work through it and relax their body’s responses so they can move forward. Drawing with your child when they are overwhelmed, or stepping back and allowing them the space to draw by themselves, can be a wonderful tool for teaching their brain to address their feelings and needs productively.
Also, art therapy with teens can open up the opportunity for teens to allow themselves to be more vulnerable and express more of their thoughts and feelings in session. Using positive sensory-stimulating art supplies can help them connect to that vulnerability more and fully engage in the art therapy process. Often with older children and teens I will recommend that parents start an open journal that can go back and forth between the parent and child during big or stressful situations when their communication may typically shut down or become more defensive. By writing down your thoughts and feelings (as many drafts as needed) in a plain notebook and giving it to the other person to read on their own, it reduces the need to defend one’s self in the moment and allows each person to actually hear (read) what the other person is thinking and feeling and respond fully through their own entry back. Using scented pens or markers can help the self-soothing and calming process start earlier during the writing process, so hopefully the writer can end up with a draft that expresses their feelings while also being considerate of the person they are writing to.
Tactile Calming Tools
Some of my favorite tools to help children visually and through tactile touch are items like these raised patterns for deep breathing guides and these shake-able bottles for frustration release. Tactile touch is not only an important part of brain development, but it also is an effective form of redirecting our fight-or-flight response by focusing our thoughts and awareness to the sensations of our fingers moving along different surfaces.
The tactile mazes allow children to trace their fingers along the ridges as they engage in deep breathing to self-sooth or to build focus. By touching something they help ground their body physically in the moment. They also focus their visual attention on just the task at hand, helping to break up some of the negative thoughts they may be having. For ADHD clients, sensory stimulation like this can be used to both calm and focus the mind. I often make our own tactile breathing guides in session as well, using puffy paints and cardstock. Making an infinity symbol or breathing star can be a good guide for practicing deep breathing at home.
These feelings shakers can be used to help younger children identify and communicate their feelings, especially if they are not very verbal. It also can be used with older ages as a calming jar, where they can shake them up when frustrated and engage in deep breathing until the colors settle. This can be used as a calm down timer or an emotions-reset before talking through a situation.
Finally, these dual faced small stuffies (seen below) have been a big hit with all of my adolescent clients. Teens and preteens like to fidget with them as we talk and I use them with the younger kids to show me the feelings they are having if they aren’t ready to talk yet. Often during parent sessions, I discuss using these with even younger children that aren’t able to verbalize their emotions yet. They are inexpensive and a fun addition to your coping tool box for feelings identification.
Soothing Sounds
Playing calming music in the background during a stressful time for a child can be extremely helpful. We can see a lot of benefits with soothing music at bedtime, during a calm down or ‘time-out period', in the car on the way to stressful activities, to reduce hyperactivity or anxiety, to build focus or reduce tension during school and homework, or to signify a transition time. You can easily access music through your phone, radio, Alexa, etc., but I also like the concept of combining music with the soft comfort of a stuffed animal, such as these examples below. When it comes to setting music, keep in mind you can also use it as an auditory timeline. Ask Alexa to play instrumental music for 20 mins as a guideline for reading or calming time. You can set a timer for 4-6 hours with sleep music or white noise when your child has trouble falling or staying asleep. Also, you can use the heartbeat function when children are upset to help them lower and mimic the tempo of the heartbeat they are hearing as they calm their breathing down.
Music is an extremely powerful tool for our mental health. This is a link to another blog of mine about the impact of music and more ways to regulate how you want it to work for you- calming, stimulating, focus inducing, meditating, etc.
For more resources and information, you can check out the rest of my blogs, including ‘Positive and Negative Triggers’ on how sensory stimulation can impact our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. Also check out my pinterest and youtube page for free printables and videos.
