A place to settle, with you nearby

The activity

A comfortable corner, chosen with her, for when a feeling gets too big. While she is small you go there together, and nobody is ever sent there.

What it is for. When a young child has a feeling too big for her to manage yet, she settles by being close to a calmer adult. A familiar place makes that easier to reach for, and in time it can become hers.

• The first step. Choose the place with her on a calm day, somewhere you usually are.

Safety. Nothing that runs on button batteries, no hot lamps or trailing flexes, and nothing small enough to swallow where there are children under three.

When to get help. If the meltdowns are becoming more frequent, longer or harder to come back from over several weeks, or she hurts herself or others in them, talk to your GP and her school. If something she says while settling suggests that someone is hurting her, that she is hurting herself, or that she does not want to be alive, stay calm, thank her for telling you, do not promise to keep it secret, and act that day, using the routes under “If you need help right now”, at the foot of every page.

The other four steps, and your part in it, are in the library.

It goes with

• Big Feelings and Co-Regulation. For parents whose child has just had a meltdown, on how to help her through it.
• Neurodiversity, and the Conversation with the School. For parents whose child has been working harder and longer than other children to do things that come more easily to them.

The first chapter you open here is free to read in full.

Free on this subject

• Co-regulation. What to do first, what helps, and who else can help. Free to read and to print.
• Emotional regulation. What to do first, what helps, and who else can help. Free to read and to print.