Play Dough as a Coping Skill and to Process Emotions

Children process emotions in many ways, but usually best through play.  It takes time to develop an emotional vocabulary and to mature to the point to use it.  In the meantime, play can help facilitate processing emotions and communicating with caregivers.  Before children can adequately communicate feelings, they need to calm down strong emotions.  Play dough is a great tool for this! Let’s explore some options:

 Squeezing.  I encourage children to squeeze the play dough so that it oozes out of their fingers.  They typically enjoy this activity because it if fun, but it also is a sudden release of energy.  Anger builds up as energy that needs to be released to help calm down.  There are many options for letting out emotional energy, such as exercise, squeezing a pillow, stress ball, etc.; however, play dough is fun!  I also like the tactile aspect of using play dough.  Multi sensory play incorporates using grounding techniques in calming down.

Smashing.  Similar to squeezing, it is another way to let out strong emotions.  They can either create things and then smash them or just smash balls of play dough. 

Feelings Faces.  Kids who lack an emotional vocabulary can use play dough to communicate feelings.  They can use pieces of play dough to form feelings faces, they can squish a ball of play dough and carve out facial expressions, or they can use cookie cutters to stamp out feelings faces.  A friend of mine was selling some super cute emoji cookie cutters from Pampered Chef that I couldn’t pass up.  They are a hit with the kids!  They also stack up and click together to make storage easy.

Cutting with Scissors. Have you every cut play dough with scissors?  If not, you are missing out!  There is something strangely gratifying about it. I have found the children who have a history of trauma are especially intrigued by it. I’m not sure why, but they seem to love it.

Characters. Sometimes I will form little people out of play dough and encourage kids to act out situations with them.  It can be helpful to process frustrations about a situation, fears, or anything that is causing strong emotions.  Consider this example: A child comes in and says, “Tommy made me so mad that I want to punch him!”  I could give him a couple of play dough figures (or he could create them) and ask him to act out what happened.  He could then role play with the figures to demonstrate the situation. It would also give me the opportunity to help them process not only what happened, but to ask what he thinks would solve the situation, discuss what he did say or do, what he could have said or done, etc.  It opens the door for dialogue.

Creative Play.  Most children enjoy being creative, building and designing things.  As they play I look for themes in what they are doing.  I usually will watch for a while and then ask questions and I pick up on themes.  Sometimes you will see a child venting anger through play.  Or sometimes you may hear a cry for help.  They will often act out issues that are heavy on their hearts, such as feeling rejected and desiring friends, or fear of being hurt.  Many times they will act as a superhero overcoming difficult situations.  There is usually something to be learned by quietly watching a child play.

I hope these tips are helpful.  I am a strong believer in helping children learn many ways to cope.  Play dough has been good to me.  It is one tool that can be used in many ways.  This is not a comprehensive list, but a few ideas that I have used in my counseling room.  

Coping Skill Toolbox

Last fall I helped the kids I work with make coping skill boxes.  They were able to decorate them and either take them home or to their classroom to help them if they started to feel out of control.  I talked to their teachers and parents about how to implement the skills and which skills would be useful in various settings.  Some of the kids took home some of their items and left some at school, especially those that may have caused issues in the classroom. 

The kids really seemed to enjoy decorating their boxes and discussing how they would use their boxes and where they would keep them.  The main point that I stressed during the session was discussing how to implement skills and ways to remember skills.  While their hands were busy decorating, they were happy to chat about their week and process emotions. 

It is always enjoyable to see how different personalities come out with the activities.  Some wrote their name on the box and then were ready to move on to another activity.  Others meticulously painted for the entire session.  The important thing to remember is to roll with it.  When I insist that they do things a certain way or spend a certain amount of time on a project, they usually shut down on me.  Several of them opted for Legos after their box was complete.  

The Trail of Fears

 

There's no better time than October to address fears and anxiety with children.  They are surrounded by monsters, ghosts, and triggers to fears.  For some children this is a fun and enjoyable time of year.  For others, it is full of fear and anxiety.  Children often struggle to separate fantasy from reality and anticipate the villains from movies to appear in their rooms at night.

This game incorporates CBT to help children challenge irrational thoughts and to learn coping skills to overcome anxiety.  I always love to play games in sessions, as children will answer questions asked by a game that they would hesitate to answer if I asked it directly.  And it is fun!

You can find it at my website, www.pathwaystopeacecounseling.com or my Teachers Pay Teachers store: http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/Pathways-To-Peace-Counseling-Resources
You can also find our games on Amazon and Ebay

Feelings Graph

Don't you love simple, yet very insightful interventions when working with kids?  The feelings graph is a go-to tool for me.  I frequently use feelings charts during session, and they are certainly useful.  However, the Feelings Graph goes much deeper.  Instead of asking kids "What are you feeling today?"  I'd rather ask "How much are you feeling of these emotions today?"

This simple intervention is helpful in a lot of ways:

1. It allows children to show how much of each feeling they are experiencing.
2. It helps children take time to really pay attention to what is really going on inside.
3. It is a great assessment tool.  It can help you as a clinician to identify what feelings are taking precedence and identify what to focus on first.
4. It can show progress.  If I have a client fill out a feelings chart during one of our first sessions, I can pull it out again a couple of months later to help the client identify how their feelings have changed over time.  It can be a motivator.
5. It allows even very young children to express their emotions without relying on verbal language skills.
6. It helps children make sense of why they feel the way they do.
7. It can help initiate important dialogue about what has been going on.  The client may be willing to color in the boxes, but is hesitant to initiate conversation about something that is troubling them.

Feel free to make your own feelings graph, or if you would like to save time you can head over to my website at www.pathwaystopeacecounseling.com for the download.

How to "POP" negative thoughts.

It's October and the weather has been beautiful!  One nice days I find myself looking for reasons to take kids outside to enjoy the day and break out of the monotony of everyday life.  This week I brought a bubble blower and told my clients to imagine that the bubbles were negative thoughts.  They had a great time "popping" negative thoughts and ridding themselves from upsetting feelings.

After a few minutes of popping bubbles, we sat down and made some cards with various thoughts.  We wrote things like:

• "I can't do anything right." 
• "I don't have any friends."
• "I am great at math." 
• "I'm going to fail my spelling test."
• "I am able to do great things if I try."

I encouraged the children to come up with new ideas to put on the cards.  Some children really struggled with this and others were writing down ideas faster that I could!  For those who struggled, I took some extra time to help them grasp the concepts.

I made one index card that said "Keep" and one that said "Pop."  I had the kids sort through the stack of cards into the two piles.  Once they were sorted, we worked on changing the "pop" stack into healthy self-talk.   They were able to identify that the best way to get rid of negative thoughts is to fill their minds with positive thoughts.  I also had the kids process how they would feel thinking the various thoughts and how the positive thoughts change their mood.

I love activities like this because children will forget the things I tell them, but when they see bubbles, they will remember to pop negative thoughts!  I want to them to always have triggers to carry with them to help them to remember to use the coping skills they have learned in counseling.  I hope this intervention works in your practice as well!

Feelings Candy Land

I love to play Feelings Candy Land with my clients!  We all have a good time and it provides a great platform for processing feelings, teaching kids how to use words to express emotion, and to identify problem areas that need to be addressed in future sessions.

I use Feelings Candy Land for several different reasons:

1. To help children identify feelings words and how to attach them to experiences.

2. To help children process feelings in a non-threatening format.

3. To establish rapport.  I think that it helps children normalize feelings when they realize that their therapist has feelings, too.

Update: You can view my tutorial video here: http://pathwaystopeacecounseling.blogspot.com/2018/02/using-feelings-candy-land.html 

I created this simple PDF download as a simple guide to demonstrate how to use Candy Land in therapy sessions.  Here's the link to the free download: https://www.pathwaystopeacecounseling.com/product-page/feelings-candy-land-game-instructions

Be sure to type "CANDY" in the discount code field.

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