Henri Joyce teaches harrassed parents how to banish tantrums by helping children to deal with their emotions. The traffic light is a simple yet effective toddler calming technique when used in conjunction with the stress management method of blowing out imaginary candles.
There are many ways in which we can teach our children how to deal with their emotions. Here are two effective techniques: Firstly we can name the feelings for them. For example I could say, ‘ Ryan its frustrating when the pencil keeps slipping out of your hand.
’Secondly we can teach them how to use the traffic lights technique. This simple technique works really well. You draw traffic light on a piece of card, the symbols are red - intense feeling, yellow - getting calmer, and green - content or happy. you would ask your child to point to a colour on the traffic light that demonstrated how angry, sad, frustrated he was feeling. Lets take the example of Ryan. I’d ask Ryan to show we on the traffic light how frustrated he was feeling. He would point to red. I’d say to Ryan, ‘Right now you are feeling really frustrated.
’ He’d probably point to the red light on the traffic lights. I’d then encourage Ryan to work on feeling calm again. I would ask Ryan to pretend that there were five candles in front of him and ask him to try blowing the imaginary candles out. I would observe his response until I could see that he was becoming calmer. Then I’d ask him to show me again on the traffic light how he was feeling. We’d carry on blowing imaginary candles until he was back to green on the traffic light.
Finally when Ryan was in a calmer frame of mind I would teach him how to deal with his emotions in a constructive manner. By asking open-ended or multiple choice questions a child can learn how to express his emotions. Helping children deal with their feelings eventually reduces tantrums and empowers them for life.
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A step by step article explaining how to use Time Out as an effective parenting technique. Henri explaing that the skill of using time out effectively relies on a calm, constructive positive approach to dicipline.