The balloon technique is a very effective strategy to promote relaxation of children, regulate their emotions and allow them to develop greater body awareness, it is a simple resource in which children can start at 7 years and with which they will gradually improve. their emotional intelligence.
None of us want to see our children overcome by their frustrations, by attacks of rage where they fall into the most outrageous crises, in the most desperate crises, yet, from the age of two, it is quite common for their emotional worlds, still unknown to them, to be the subject of family problems and tensions.
- “Prolonged emotional stress can be a hindrance to a child’s intellectual abilities and therefore hinder his ability to learn.
- ” Daniel Goleman.
- ?.
Now, there is one fact that we should not lose sight of, our goal as parents or educators is not to eliminate anxiety in the child’s life, it makes no sense or recommends completely paving the way for their daily lives to always be enriching and adjusted to their expectations; the world, as we already know, does not work that way, the key is to provide them with tools so that they can control for themselves their anxiety, anger or sadness.
The children’s balloon technique is an original, fun and incredibly useful tool that will be of great help for this purpose, then we will see what it is.
Children often use crying, screaming and tantrums as the only known resource to control or cause anxiety, far from despairing, far from making the situation worse with screams, censorship or punishment, we must put ourselves in the place of the little one, and more precisely, in his brain.
The cerebral cortex has a slow but gradual maturation, which implies that behaviors such as impulse control or emotional control are not usually completed until after adolescence, a long period in which there are many individual differences, there will be children who will be able to better manage their emotional world and more demanding, restless and sensitive children to anxious processes.
Knowing this, having these clear concepts will be very helpful, so it is mainly about being empathetic with them, understanding their frustrations and angers, but also assuming that validating an emotion does not mean agreeing with it, it means recognizing their existence, but knowing how to provide the child with tools to understand, treat and manage it, so the technique of the children’s balloon is a good starting point , a very useful tool from the age of 7.
It is a practice to teach children to relax and control their impulses, it can be applied when children feel nervous or angry, in this way they can control the same, stay calm, stimulate their psychomotority and develop body awareness, posture. laterality.
To start the ball technique, in terms of conditions and equipment, we need the following:
To apply it, follow these steps
Finally, we will remind children that whenever they feel full of anger, whenever life gets complicated and brings them things they don’t like, don’t expect or that make them nervous. , remember the ball. We should never let ourselves explode because when this happens we all lose and are afraid.
When we feel nervous, nothing better than breathing deeply and letting air out of the lungs, releasing tensions will help us feel lighter to have more control over ourselves.