Information Sheet for Parents
Relaxation
Key Points
• Learning relaxation skills is an important part of managing anxiety and difficult
emotions. When children are relaxed, they are calmer, able to concentrate better,
and have a more restful sleep.
• Two of the most commonly used and effective relaxation skills are deep
breathing (also known as diaphragmatic breathing) and progressive muscle
relaxation (PMR). Deep breathing involves slow, deep breaths through the
diaphragm to initiate the body’s relaxation response. (The diaphragm is the area
on the stomach just above the belly button.) PMR involves purposefully tensing
and then relaxing muscles in the body.
• Fun, easy to use techniques will motivate your child to learn relaxation skills.
• Relaxation skills require practice before they can be effectively used to manage
anxiety and other difficult emotions.
Tips
• If your child practices daily, they will learn the relaxation technique so it can be
used to cope with fear, anxiety, and other difficult emotions.
• Establish a bedtime routine that includes relaxation. A routine means you do the
same things in the same order and at the same time every day. For example: at
7:30 pm, your child takes a warm bath, then puts on pajamas and brushes teeth.
By 8 p.m., your child is in bed, and you read a bedtime story while cuddling
together until 8:15 p.m. Then you do the relaxation technique five times, give
hugs and kisses goodnight, and turn the lights out by 8:30 p.m. A new routine
might take a few weeks to establish, but this process will go more smoothly if you
stick to the same schedule and procedure each night.
• Do the relaxation technique along with your child – it will help your child learn the
technique and it will reduce your stress level too!
• Once the relaxation technique has been learned, you can encourage its use
when de-stressing is needed. You can follow this four-step process:
1. Pay attention to the signs that your child is getting overly scared, anxious, or
other difficult emotions. Name what you see. For example: “You’re holding on to
me very tightly and you have a scared look on your face.”
2. Coach your child to use the relaxation technique to get calm (do the relaxation
technique too so your child can follow your lead). For example, say, “Let’s do
(Cookie Breathing/Tight-Relax Pose) together to get calm. We’ll do it a few times
until our bodies feel calm.”
3. Praise your child: “You just did a great job doing (Cookie Breathing/Tight-Relax
Pose) to calm your body.”
4. Empower your child: “You have the power to make your body get calm.”
o If your child is in a highly anxious state, help bring the anxiety down to a
more manageable level. For example, you can gently rub their back or
give them space. Once your child is in a more receptive state, you can
then apply the four steps above.
o Model the relaxation technique by using it at appropriate times. For
example, while stuck in traffic, take some slow deep breaths and say to
your child, “I’m so frustrated that we’re stuck in traffic, but doing Cookie
Breathing five times helped me to get calm and feel better.”
o It might be helpful for your child’s teacher to learn the relaxation technique
so your child can be prompted to utilize the strategy to de-stress at school.
To avoid any unnecessary embarrassment, your child and teacher can
come up with a secret signal that will serve as a visual reminder for your
child to use the relaxation strategy.