Coping Skills Overview

• The autonomic nervous system & coping skills
• 4 types of coping skills: calming, physical, distraction and processing
• Coping skills checklist to identify current skills and strengths
• Preventative interventions

Skills and Strategies: Interactive Exercises Deep Breathing – Beyond “Taking a Deep Breath”

• Props – pinwheels, bubbles, stuffed animals, Hoberman sphere
• Words – to encourage deep breaths, “smell the soup, cool down the soup”, etc.
• Shapes – star breathing, lazy 8 breathing, square breathing, triangle breathing
• Your Body – your hand, whole body movement

Coping Skills for Anxiety/Stress

• Mindfulness Practice – one mindful minute, spiderman mindfulness, audio and visual mindfulness scripts, Grounding Techniques – 54321 grounding, alphabet grounding
• Identifying and taming anxiety – take-home worksheets to help identify anxiety, including a thermometer for anxiety, “sources of stress”

Coping Skills for ADHD

• Plan movement and sensory breaks
• The importance of play, hobbies, and having fun: calming jars, fidgets, sand trays, zen gardens
• Coping skills for stress
• Manage stressful times – the importance of play, hobbies, and having fun
• Sensory Ideas – calming jars, fidgets, sand trays, zen gardens

Coping Skills for Anger/Frustration

• Small physical movement activities to manage frustration – squeezing play dough, scribble drawing, bubble wrap, ripping paper
• Big physical movement activities to manage anger – jumping jacks, running, wall pushups, obstacle courses, yoga
• Processing anger – comic strip processing, what I can control vs. what I can’t control worksheet

Practical Implementation Ideas for the Classroom or Office

• Make a coping skills toolkit for your room – fidgets, coping skills cue cards and other visuals to help, including distraction coping skills like word searches, hidden pictures, etc.
• Creating a calm down spot/calm down room – identify a good spot, create an area that is peaceful and relaxing, include the coping skills toolkit
• Practice your own coping skills – mindfulness and self-care worksheet

Anxiety, Stress, and Anger in a Pandemic

• Explore how the pandemic has impacted the social and emotional lives of our children
• Why Social Emotional Learning is important now more than ever
• How our needs and windows of tolerance have changed

Coping Skills for Anxiety

• Deep Breathing Ideas
• Mindfulness Strategies
• Relaxation/Calming Activities for Kids

Coping Skills for Stress

• Scheduling to reduce stress
• The importance of play and downtime
• Using your senses to manage stress

Coping Skills for Anger/Frustration

• Understand that anger is often just the tip of the iceberg – a lot of feelings hide beneath
• Safe ways to express anger with movement
• Setting up individual calm down kits for kids

Janine Halloran, LMHC, has over 17 years of experience working with children, teens and their families. She is the founder and CEO of Coping Skills for Kids, where she creates and curates tools & resources to help adults teach kids healthy ways to deal with stress, anxiety and anger.

She is the author of the Coping Skills for Kids Workbook: Over 75 Coping Strategies to Help Kids Deal with Stress, Anxiety and Anger (PESI, 2018) and Social Skills for Kids: Over 75 Fun Games & Activities for Building Better Relationships, Problem Solving & Improving Communication (PESI, 2018).

She is an NBC Parent Toolkit Expert and has written articles featured on their blog. In addition, she has written for several other publications, including Hey Sigmund, Confident Families Confident Kids and Bay State Parent Magazine. She’s worked in a variety of settings, including schools, residential programs and outpatient mental health facilities. She is in private practice and offers consultation.