A place to settle, with you nearby

The activity

A comfortable corner, chosen with your child, for when a feeling gets too big. While they are 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 them to manage yet, they settle by being close to a calmer adult. A familiar place makes that easier to reach for, and in time it can become the child’s.

• The first step. Choose the place with your child 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 your child hurts others during one, talk to your GP and your child’s school. If your child has hurt themselves, or talks about not wanting to be alive, stay calm, thank them if they have told you, don’t promise to keep it secret, and act that day: help them ask the surgery for an urgent appointment, and if it is closed, use the routes under “If you need help right now”, at the foot of every page. If something your child says while settling suggests that someone is hurting them, stay calm, thank them for telling you, don’t promise to keep it secret, and act that day, using those routes; if the person hurting your child lives in your home or your child’s other home, go straight to children’s social care or the police. If your child is badly hurt, or may have taken too much of a medicine, get medical help straight away, even if they seem well.

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 them 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.