Weird Things That Get Your Child to Calm Down: Lessons From My Kid’s Big Meltdowns
The checkout line at our local grocery store smells like warm pretzels and floor cleaner, and last month it’s where I learned just how far I’ll go to stop a mid-meltdown scream. My 6-year-old Leo had marched into the store specifically for the blue dinosaur-shaped fruit snacks he’d seen advertised on TV, and when we found the shelf empty, he folded. Within 10 seconds he was on the linoleum, kicking the base of the candy rack, snot streaking down his cheeks, screaming so loud the cashier paused mid-scan of my gallon of milk.
I’d tried all the standard tools already that week: the deep breathing we practiced at occupational therapy, the gentle hug, the quiet reminder that big feelings are okay, even the offer to pick a different candy. None of it was working. On a random, dumb impulse, I started humming the jingle from the local plumbing company that plays every commercial break during Leo’s favorite cartoon. It’s annoying, it’s stuck in my head 24/7, and I didn’t even think about it before I started. He stopped mid-scream. Stared up at me. Blinked. After 30 seconds, he stood up, wiped his face on his sleeve, and said “That’s the plumbers song. Do it again.” By the time we bagged the groceries, he was talking about going to the park after lunch. It was the weirdest thing that had ever worked to calm him down, and it wasn’t the first.
Leo’s always had big, fast feelings. He gets overstimulated easily, and for the first couple years of elementary school I was determined to follow all the advice I’d read: set up a calm down corner with a glitter jar and stuffed animals, practice naming emotions every night at dinner, reward him for using his words instead of screaming. Most of the time that works, but when he’s fully over the edge, any tool that I’ve labeled a “calm down tool” just makes it worse. He can feel I’m trying to fix him, and that makes the whole thing escalate.
That’s how we stumbled into all the weird, unplanned tricks. The first one was sorting silverware. One morning before school, he melted down because the seam on his sock was “too bumpy” and nothing I said helped. I was standing at the kitchen counter dumping clean cutlery out of the drying rack, and on a whim I asked him to help me sort the forks from the spoons. He walked over, sat down, and started sorting. Five minutes later, he was done, announced his sock felt fine now, and put his shoes on. I had no idea why it worked at the time, but I’ve kept doing it.
Other weird tricks followed: handing him a cereal box and asking him to read me every ingredient on the back when he’s over-tired after school, letting him sort the loose change out of my car console cup when we’re stuck in traffic, asking him to line up all our canned goods by size in the pantry when we’re stuck at home during a rainstorm. None of these are things I planned or bought. They’re just random, boring chores that happen to be around when we need them.
After a while I started to figure out what they all have in common, and it’s not some fancy trick (though the repetitive small motor movement does help pull his brain out of that fight-or-flight loop). It’s that none of them ask him to calm down. When you tell a kid who’s mid-meltdown to take a deep breath or name his feeling, you’re putting a big emotional demand on him when his brain is already too overwhelmed to process it. These weird little tasks don’t have any pressure attached. They’re just something small and concrete to focus on, no right or wrong answers, no lesson to learn in the moment. They give his brain a minute to slow down without him noticing that’s what’s happening.
I used to feel guilty about this, actually. I thought I was skipping the important emotional work by distracting him with sorting silverware instead of talking through his feelings. When I mentioned it to Leo’s OT last fall, she told me I was doing exactly the right thing. You can’t teach a kid to regulate their emotions when they’re already fully dysregulated, she said. The first step is just to de-escalate, any way you can. You can have the talk about what made him upset, and what he can do next time, when everyone’s calm. That’s stuck with me. It’s changed how I handle every meltdown now.
It doesn’t work every time. Last week, Leo melted down after his soccer game when he missed the game-winning goal, and none of my go-to weird tricks worked. I asked him to count how many blades of grass were under his feet, I sang the plumbing jingle, I even offered to let him sort my contact list by first name. Nothing worked, so we just sat on the parking lot asphalt for 15 minutes while he cried, and that was that. But it works more often than any fancy calm down tool I ever bought.
For other parents who are tired of the standard tricks not working, the best advice I can give is to look around your own space. You don’t need to buy anything special. Find whatever mundane, low-stakes task your kid doesn’t mind doing. It can be sorting crayons, counting cars that pass by the window, folding washcloths, anything. It doesn’t need to make sense, it doesn’t need to be endorsed by any parenting expert. If it’s weird and it works, it’s good enough. I’m still figuring it out, same as everyone else. Right now, that’s all any of us can ask for.
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