Weird Things That Calm Kids Down: Real Parenting Tips That Work When All Else Fails
The automatic door slid shut behind us, and Milo hit the linoleum screaming before I could even grab a shopping cart. It was 10 minutes before his preschool open house, we’d detoured for a pack of extra glue sticks, and the only sparkly purple one he’d agreed to carry to class was sold out. I tried every trick I’d memorized: I got down on his level, I told him I understood how disappointing that was, I offered a sparkly pink one instead, I pulled a lollipop out of the bottom of my purse, I even offered to skip open house entirely and go get ice cream. Nothing stuck. He just kept screaming, face red, snot running down onto his dinosaur shirt, while a woman with a knit scarf slowed her cart to stare. I was so frazzled I couldn’t think of anything else to do, so I leaned against the cart rail and started reciting the alphabet, slow, in a flat, monotone voice. A. B. C. D. He stopped mid-scream. Blinked at me a couple times. Then he said, quiet as anything, “Do it again.”
That was the first time I realized the weirdest, most random things work way better than all the carefully researched parenting tricks I’d saved to my Pinterest board. A month later, he had a full bedtime meltdown because the seam on his sock was lumpy, and the alphabet trick didn’t do a thing. I’d just carried a bag of groceries in from the car, and I had a cold can of black beans in my hand. I handed it to him to hold while I peeled his sock off, and he clutched it to his chest and stopped crying before I even got the sock over his ankle.
I work a couple of subbing shifts a week at the local preschool, so I started paying attention to what worked for other kids when all the usual strategies fell flat. There was a 5-year-old named Lila who knocked over a 20-minute block tower the week before winter break, and screamed so hard she threw up a little. The lead teacher tried hugging her, offering to help her rebuild, giving her a sticker, nothing worked. I remembered my alphabet trick, but it was too loud and chaotic for that room, so I dumped the jar of loose paper clips we kept for art projects on the table next to her and said, “Wanna sort these by size into the pencil cups?” She nodded, and spent the next three minutes silently sorting, no talking, no praise from me, just her and the paper clips. When she was done, she wiped her face and walked back to the block area to start over.
It took me a while to figure out why all these weird, random things work when the “right” strategies don’t. When a kid hits that full meltdown point, their brain is in fight or flight. The part that processes feelings, follows requests, or responds to distraction is offline. If you try to validate their big feelings right then, you’re asking them to process something they literally don’t have the brain capacity for. If you try to distract them with something fun, that’s too much stimulation for an already overloaded system.
All the weird little things we stumble on work because they’re neutral. They don’t ask anything of the kid. Reciting the alphabet in a monotone doesn’t require a response, it doesn’t demand that they calm down, it just gives their overstimulated brain a single, predictable thing to focus on long enough to reset. A cold can of beans is perfect because it gives steady, firm pressure and a consistent temperature, exactly the kind of sensory input a dysregulated nervous system craves. No one had to market it as a sensory tool, no one had to explain to the kid that it’s supposed to help them feel better. It’s just a can of beans.
The best part is you don’t have to buy anything special to test this. If you’re stuck in a meltdown at the grocery store, try reciting all the items on your grocery list in a flat voice, don’t even look at them while you do it. If you’re at home, hand them a full can from the pantry, or ask them to sort the silverware from the dishwasher into the drawer, or stack the post-its you keep by the phone into a neat pile. It doesn’t matter what it is, as long as it’s boring, repetitive, and doesn’t come with a side of “you need to calm down now.”
I used to feel guilty that I wasn’t doing it “right.” I’d read all the books about emotion coaching, and I’d wonder why Milo didn’t respond when I named his feelings for him, why the calm down corner I set up with all the fancy fidget toys collected dust. Now I know that every kid’s brain resets differently, and sometimes the most effective strategy is the one that you stumble on by accident when you’re too tired to try anything else.
Last week, we had a meltdown in the garage before soccer practice because he couldn’t get his cleat strap twisted the exact way he wanted it. The alphabet didn’t work. The black beans (we keep a spare in the fridge now, just in case) didn’t work. I leaned against the cold garage door, out of ideas, and started listing every kind of pasta I could remember. Spaghetti. Penne. Macaroni. Fettuccine. He stopped crying after the fifth one, leaned against my leg, and let me tie the strap the way it needed to be tied. It doesn’t work every time. Some days we just sit on the floor until the storm passes, no tricks required. But when it does work? It’s weird, it’s messy, and it’s ours.
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