Create a worry monster (optional):If you’d like to make the worry box more engaging for your child, consider turning the tissue box opening into the “mouth” of a worry monster. Use your art supplies to create a monster face. Attach googly eyes, triangular pieces of card for teeth, or even a pipe cleaner antenna with a sign reading “FEED ME WORRIES!”

It tells the story of a little girl who carries around a huge bag filled with worries. (‘The metaphor is little monsters). This worry bag activity is a great one to use with your class to help them think about and discuss their emotions. It can be used as a morning starter activity to set them up for their day, or even as a standalone lesson alongside this Emotions PowerPoint. For young children under 10, a worry box can be a brilliant introduction to identifying and sharing your worries. But they may need more help than you think. Identifying your worries is an advanced skill, especially if you have multiple worries swirling around in your mind. Sit with your child and try to help them label and makes sense of their big feelings.Should you look at what your child writes? Technically, no. The box is meant to be a safe place where the child can write down anything and not have it “discovered.” Instead, you could set up a worry time when your child can discuss her worries with you. Worry time is also a form of containment because it restricts the time the child can dwell on her worries with an adult. You can set up the time specially for the child, say from 4:00 to 4:20 every afternoon. If at 4:20 your child is not through discussing her worries, ask her to write down the worries and put them into the worry box. Tell her that she can take them out to discuss tomorrow at the same time. Place a dab of glue above the open mouth in the center of the box for each eyeball. Place the eyeballs on the box.

Your monster could be any color and have anything added to it. There are endless ideas on the web if you look under “monsters made out of tissue boxes” or just DIY monsters. Let this monster be your child’s creation. The important concept is to have a mouth or a slot where your child can insert a paper with a written or drawn worry. How to use a worry box The simple-sounding idea of putting a written worry in a worry box (containment) comes from Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), which is widely regarded as the most effective way to manage anxiety in both children and adults. Before learning to make your own worry box, let’s learn more about containment and why it is so effective. Containment A worry box is a simple yetpotent therapeutic tooldesigned to help children manage their feelings of anxiety and overwhelm. By creating a physical space to store their worries, your child can symbolically let go of their concerns, allowing them to feel lighter and more in control. Worry Boxes as Part of Your Child’s “Coping Menu”

However, there are different approaches to the worry box concept that can be adapted to suit children’s different needs and preferences.

Worry boxes are containers into which children can post their anxious thoughts. Children can find them soothing because they: To make worry time an effective coping strategy, you need to turn it into a daily routine for your child. Using your worry box:The next time your child feels worried or anxious, encourage them to write the worry down on a piece of paper and slip it into the worry box’s opening. It can take a couple of weeks to establish this as a habit, so persistence is key. Or you may have come across slight variations that use different types of containers like jars. Those would be your Worry Jars, Feelings Jars, or Anxiety Jars.

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We’ll share a tutorial for a fun monster worry box in the next section, but let’s be clear, this technique is equally effective with any box you may have lying around in the house. Containment is one of the basic principles of CBT. An analogy can help to understand it better. Imagine a yellow dandelion flower. The immature seeds are in the flower head and are contained within the flower. If you pull up the yellow flower, the seeds do not scatter and cannot reproduce. But when the flower changes to a white seedhead with parachute-like seeds, the mature seeds scatter with the slightest puff of wind. You can no longer control dandelions because they are not contained. The seeds spread all over your yard, your neighbor’s yard and far down the road. Soon there are hundreds of new dandelions popping up. What a problem! If only you could contain all those seeds before they spread. help them to understand that thoughts are just thoughts, not real things that happen in the world, and that it’s possible to let them go