Creating a Calm Down Toolbox
An effective tool for educators, parents, caregivers, and therapy providers, a calm down toolbox can help your child process emotions and reactions. Sometimes called a Sensory Toolbox, it is made of different items based on the things your child responds to and enjoys, and you can create your own custom setup. We’ve looked at a few different ways you can incorporate these therapy practices into your routine, and they can aid in emotional regulation.
How Do You Build a “calm down” or Sensory Toolbox?
You can use all different kinds of tools in your calm down toolbox. Anything sensory that your child responds to like toys, fidgets, something musical, pinwheel, and anything else that provides a sense of calm for your child. This can start with just picking a few favorite items and keeping them together in a special place.
Things in a Therapist’s Calm Down Toolbox
Therapists use specific tools to address different functional needs. They are looking at things with a clinical perspective and are aware of the different developmental functions associated with each item in their toolbox. Here are some examples of what that might include:
Activities to Engage in Something Different: This could include coloring materials, drawing or writing materials, puzzle or workbooks, reading books, or anything where you making, building, or problem solving.
Items to Encourage Breathing: A great way to help encourage breathing to calm down is with toys like balloons, bubbles, and pinwheels. This winter, keep the materials for the Snowball Transfer Game.
Things to Change Focus and Stay Busy: These include puzzle games or cubes, fidget spinners, clay or slime, and things kids can do with their hands.
Olfactory Sensory Items (Smell): You could add in a pack of different essential oils to smell, wrappers from their favorite candy, scratch and sniff books, or anything that has a smell your child likes or responds to well.
Things to Encourage Exercise & Movement: This might include a balance board, yoga poses, jump ropes, chalk for hopscotch, hula hoop, etc.
Visually Stimulating Items: Anything that is visually stimulating (but not a phone or tablet) like a colored lamp, calming cards, toys that light up, sensory bottles, snow globes, or anything that moves on its own that you can watch.
Oral Motor Sensory Items: Chewable things like gum or candy, different textures of food or snacks (crunchy, grainy, fluffy), teething rings, instruments like recorders or harmonicas, etc.
Proprioceptive (Muscles & Joints) Items: Think about things that provide comfort to the body, like massage tools or rollers, foam rollers, compression shirts/ vests, weighted blankets or weighted clothing items, or something kids can climb inside like a tunnel.
Auditory Sensory Items: Headphones for music or headphones to cancel sound could both be useful, or items like toys that play music they are familiar with, or audiobooks.
All of these items address different sensory processing areas, so depending on the situation, you might want to go to something that will divert their attention to something new, like building a tower, or they may need something to use their body like a yoga ball or resistance bands. If you cover your bases for whichever sensory areas are overstimulated, you have a better chance at reaching a calmed state. Think about the senses, smell, taste, sound, touch, and vision, and build around those five things to get started.
TIP: Use our printable resource to guide your way! Check out our calm down toolbox DIY activity.
How to Use Your Toolbox
After you have put together items to address different forms of sensory support, you can start using the Calm Down Toolbox. You’ll want to use it as a resource whenever your child is experiencing sensory overload. You can use it in conjunction with other tools to help understand the feelings that are happening when they are happening. For instance, you can use an emotions chart like Color Feelings to identify feelings first. That will help give you and your child a good idea of what tool to pick from the toolbox.
Each time you use the toolbox, take note of the things that make your child feel better. If they can remember what makes them feel better, they can repeat the process the next time they feel the same way. Children will start to understand how to deal with these complex emotions and sensory processing issues.
Continue To Grow
As you use the toolbox, you can replace items that aren’t used or don’t really work well for your child and you can add new or different options. Pay attention to the things that aren’t really used in supporting, or try the lesser used items to see how they interact with them.
Use All the Tools You Have
Make sure to incorporate all the different tools your therapist might have in place for your child. Calming Cards are a great way to check in and find an activity that sounds good for the situation or day at hand. With a variety of different sensory experiences, they can be used in many different situations and cover a lot of different senses. To increase the child’s buy-in to the process, you can take and laminate pictures of them completing the activities and create your own customized Calming Cards.
Other Ways to Check-In
There are so many different methods for checking-in with your senses and emotions. Talk with your child’s therapy providers to see what practices they already have in place or that already has shown to be effective. The best way to use these kinds of practices is to keep consistency and reinforce things that are already in place or in use. Some therapist might use something similar to Check Your Engine or Feelings Chain activities as the first step toward the toolbox, so take the time to learn about what your child’s providers would recommend!
Have questions about a Calm Down Toolbox or want to learn more? Contact our team at Tilton’s Therapy for Tots to receive more information and resources. You can find printable activities and supplemental supplies for sensory overload in our Resources section.
Talk to your child’s therapist or provider about concerns you have or ways you can help reinforce learning in a positive and developmental way!
