Relaxation techniques for children

[PM]

I have a fantastic book, in French, entitled Apprendre a relaxer vos enfants...de 2 à 7 ans (Learn to Relax Your Children Aged 2-7). There are additional versions for older children. It contains relaxation techniques: from simple finger games to listening to certain scores of classical music in a darkened room. All the exercises have an at-school version and an at-home version. Each exercise is meant to be used after specific types of activities (motor activities like writing, physical activities, etc.).

I love this book. I found it an ayurvedin shop in Paris. But I don't feel really comfortable with a lot of the finger games and such because they are not familiar to me.

Before I start translating them into something more useable for me (itsy bitsy spider, etc.), does anyone know of a book like this in English?

Thanks!

[rosebuds]

Sorry, no book suggestions but thought of your post when I came across this article at A Magical Childhood .

http://www.magicalchildhood.com/news/vol56.htm

Scroll down to Sensory Integration: Calming activities

[Joyce in the mts.]

Wow this thread puts me in mind of a li'l visualization thing-y I made up for my 3 kids when they were very little.

In my house we did afternoon naps...sometimes though it is hard to get kids to nap, so I just started a story. (Mommy needed the nap more than the kids sometimes, but it was never a forced thing. If my oldest wanted to draw quietly or look at a book quietly that was fine, but he stayed in the room with us. It worked out somehow.)

My neighbor Lucy had a birdhouse in her back yard right behind the house we lived in at the time. I used to get the kids to lay down on our mish-mash of beds put together, with me, and I would start out about how we could see ourselves as a bluejay family living in Lucy's birdhouse. I would tell them to look at their feathers, how pretty blue they were...how like the color of the clear blue sky our feathers were.

I was the BlueJay Mommy of course, and I would teach my wee ones to "fly" and then once they had that image pretty well going, I would take them on trips around the neighborhood. Sometimes they would direct where we went and help navigate us. But normally, soon, they would all be zzzzzzzzzing, and I could too. The stories were fun, and relaxing for me too.

That is one my fondest memories and it worked so very well. I think it's not so hard to make up these stories....be a bear family...or whatever. O'course you DO have to know how a bear or bluejay would behave and such to make it real for li'l ones.

Use clear language, concrete words, and tell them to make the pictures; paint the pictures that the words make on the insides of their eyelids when closed or on the blank space that their closed eyes make, as if they are making pictures for a storybook. My 3 were really very, very young, but really could do that. They loved stories and drawing, so they were really ripe for my stories, which I made up "on the fly" ....sorry for the pun.

They are now 18, nearly 21, and 23 now and they ALL remember "Bluejay Mommy" stories and still think it was really fun and cool.

Those were the days!....Joyce in the mts.