Kids are restless. Running about. Playing games. Watching television. Climbing trees. Causing general mischief and mayhem. It can be hard to get them to sit still for five minutes to eat their dinner. Nevermind at any other time of the day. So how can you calm your little ones down a bit? It’s important for them to have some calm, down time other than when they’re sleeping. Otherwise, they can get over excited and start doing things that could land them in trouble, or even worse, danger. Here are a few top tips for getting your kids to relax a little.
Make Calm Activities Fun
Racing around the garden is fun. Building mud pies and digging holes in the sandpit are fun. Teaching Rover, the dog to play fetch with your favorite pair of slippers is fun. For the little ones at least. But how can you tempt the most boisterous of kids to read a book or watch a film? Well, the key to this is to make calm activities fun. Most kids will enjoy these things once they’ve settled down and got into them. It’s just the settling down part that often takes time and practice. Try out filling your children’s play spaces with comfortable, fun furniture. There are a few ways to do this. Inflatable furniture will always grab a kid’s attention. But these kinds of things break easily and will often simply function as a bouncy castle for a while. Bean bags are a great alternative option. They’re a bag of beans; they’re fun. You can put them near enough anywhere; in the house or the garden. But the secret to bean bags is that they’re comfortable. Once your child is seated in one, they probably won’t want to get up. They’ll want to remain swaddled in the beads. Who knows, they might even take a nap. Find a great range of comfortable beanbags at http://www.fombag.com/Kid_Sized_Bean_Bags_Fombag.html.
Turn Calm Time Into A Game
We all know sleeping lions. This is a fun game that kids adore. At a certain age, they’ll realize why you were so avid about playing it: it gives you a five-minute break of peace and quiet. Calm and quiet time can be easily turned into a game. Besides sleeping lions, you could take different approaches. For example, get your kids to watch a film knowing that they’ll be quizzed at the end. The child with the most correct answers wins a prize. They’ll fix their attention on the film itself rather than what’s going on around them.
Don’t Overdo It
Yes, we all need a little break now and then. But kids are kids. They’re going to be loud. They’re going to explore. They’ll want to talk and laugh and learn. They’ll raise their voice when they get excited about something. They’ll squeal when something amuses them. Don’t punish or penalize them for this completely normal behavior. Encourage them in their endeavors. Feed their passions. These tips are for when they get over excited or a little too rowdy and loud at the wrong time.