Bubble Bliss: Taming Tantrums with a Splash of Fun

Have you ever tried the "blow the bubble therapy"?

No worries, my son and I discovered this ourselves.

My 9-year-old son is a hyperactive child. It's tough to manage his temper. He gets angry due to many things for example, when the papers on which he keeps writing all his weird things are not found, when he finds even a tiny drop of water on the toilet seat, his sister says no to his mom for any reason, when the chairs of the house get bored of standing right in front of the dining table and feel like taking a tour around the house (isn't it really annoying, how can chairs even move a cm away from the table? They need to be right there neatly tucked inside the table, to be pulled later), when mom changes the bedsheets on Sunday (preferably) and they are not of his choice.... And the list goes on.

These moods provoke his adrenaline and cortisol to release in abundance. And the result is felt everywhere else in the house, throwing anything that comes in his hands then, flipping light switches on and off, throwing and trying to break things that are dear to me and his father. It can be the car keys, the latest toy we got for them, the doll that his sister loves to play with, many times even my mobile went through this (which met its end after one such episode) and, can't help, but this list is also too long to mention everything here.

To stay calm is the only option then. But I don't want to lie; there were many times when we lost our calm and got angry on him. But that just worsens the condition and nothing else.

We knew that was situational, after a few moments of this, everything returns back to normalcy in minutes.

Tried several things to work on his temper issues, but almost everything failed. We asked him to take deep breaths, practice chanting "Om" or just the humming sound, gave him some water to drink, sometimes I have to hold him tight, tucked in my arms for as long as 15 or 20 mins to calm him down. Every solution was situational like his anger. The anger would appear again, and the process continues....

I first read about it in a book by Preeti Shenoy, "Wake up, Life is calling," the balloon therapy. The protagonist Ankita is advised by her professor to blow a balloon, give it the name of her thought or emotion and let it fly in the sky....The higher it goes, the more relaxed you feel, assuming the negative emotion within you is being carried away from you along with it. That struck me and somehow I felt like applying that on my son.

One day while he was blowing his water bubble from a colorful bottle he got from the fair he visited, I went to him and asked him to name the bubbles. I explained to him how that can probably help him get rid of his unwanted moods. He tried... He named them... He kept telling me : "Look mama, this is my small sadness bubble (I'm not sad more often, but when I cry I get sad), this is my fear bubble (I get scared when I see the pigeons coming on our balcony, I get scared thinking what if they peck on me or my sister), this is my anxiety bubble (I get them often), this is my frustration bubble (the one I get when I see things scattered or when I don't see my things at the place) and look this is the biggest of all, it's my anger balloon (I get angry due to so many reasons). Look, all of them are floating, now going towards the gulmohar tree....And burstttttttttttt the fear bubble popped, then it was the sadness bubble that burst, the anger bubble was still floating and rising towards the sky.... Now its coming down towards the road lying in front of our balcony...Look where is it going. That may hit the car running on the road....o o o and it goes burstttTttttttttt.

Hahaha haha And all laughter around....We could break all his negative emotions playfully and cleverly.

This worked.

I think this is really a calming exercise for everyone. Moreover, there is no harm in becoming a child again and blowing some bubbles outside and watching your negative emotions flying in the open air searching for a new destination till they burst and end abruptly.

Well, if this does not work for you, maybe it can just bring a smile for a moment. And if it could bring that smile to your face, then remember me