Relaxation Techniques from "In Cognitive Therapy Techniques for Children and Adolescents: Tools for Enhancing Practice"

Blog Post

    The Behavioral Interventions chapter of In Cognitive Therapy Techniques for Children and Adolescents: Tools for Enhancing Practice had several excellent tools that can be beneficial for helping children regulate emotions, manage behaviors, and develop social skills. In my field placement, I work with a lot of students with impulsive behavior and emotional regulation challenges so decided to focus my blog post on the parts of the chapter that discuss relaxation techniques. I have small groups weekly with students for only about 30min so it is important for me to be able to maximize the time that we have together. Friedberg and colleagues explain that introducing behavioral interventions in the beginning of session can be helpful in developing rapport with your students and increasing the child’s engagement in the activities. Furthermore, relaxation techniques learned in therapy maybe helpful in developing the capacity for children to regulate their emotional and behaviors outside of the therapeutic context.

    Progressive Muscle Relaxation is a technique that would be extremely useful in the beginning of a session. In this technique, you teach children how to tense and relax their muscles targeting one muscle group at time. With children, it is especially important to give visual descriptions and model the techniques.  Friedberg and colleagues give the example describing muscle relaxation as loosening your arm like spaghetti or muscle tension as pretending to squeeze a lemon. I think it would be a good idea to introduce this activity like a game similar to how you may play Simon Says or follow the leader. These types of activities can be helpful when working with children with attention difficulties, social skill challenges, or anxiety.  

    Progressive Muscle Relaxation reminds me of some of activities I do in my field placement. We use Yogi cards, which are cards with yoga activities and with different breath techniques. My younger students (6 graders) love doing this. Often the yoga positions and breaths are taught by emulating animals and I have noticed that my students try to get into character when doing them.  I find these activities to be helpful in team building as well. My students often help each other by correcting each other’s posture and encouraging each other when a person is experiencing challenges doing the activity.  I like that the chapter emphasizes translating activities outside of the therapeutic session. Students may not be able to break into yoga in the middle of one of their classes when they are feeling stressed of frustrated however; they may be able to utilize these kinds of activities at home.

    A helpful technique to translate relaxation techniques is the use of “Calming Down Kits and cards.  Calming down kits can be a set of items such as balls, crayons, or stuffed animals that children can bringing around with them and utilize how they feel that they need to relax. Calming down cards can be picture or words that children create to trigger relaxation (e.g., mountain, ball, a positive statement). These techniques can be practiced in session with child and parent. For instance, you can have the child and parent act out a scenario that would usually contribute to the child be angry or aggravated. The child will utilize the relation techniques they learn (e.g. breathing, squeezing a ball) in the skit. Reading this chapter reinforced the importance of having a diverse set of tools to use when working with children in order to build upon their self-regulation and coping skills and teach them strategies that they can utilize in various contexts.

Cards similar to what I use with my groups

http://upsidedowngames.us/shop/yogi-cards/

Friedberg, R.D., McClure, J.M., & Garcia, J.H. (2009). Behavioral Interventions. In Cognitive Therapy Techniques for Children and Adolescents: Tools for enhancing practice. NY: Guilford Press.