(Free PDF) 30 Coping Cards for Kids: Helping Children Calm Down, Self-Regulate and Develop Coping Skills

Download your free Coping Cards (Calming Down Cards) and help your kids practice self-regulation and develop coping skills!

Sooner or later, we all have to face failure, disappointment, anger, anxiety, frustration, regret, rejection, or loss.

It’s no different for our kids.

Stressful situations for our kids may look like this:

• Anxiety about speaking in front of their peers in class
• Feeling self-conscious and not wanting to draw attention to themselves
• Difficulty making friends
• Embarrassment about not performing as they would like in school
• Anger over injustice
• Frustration about events they can’t control 
• Sadness about the loss of a pet

The list is long, I didn’t even have to think too hard to come up with those.

When life presents us with those challenges, we look for strategies that allow us to deal with our setbacks or difficulties and minimize or help us tolerate the effects of those stressful events.

The name for these is coping strategies.

Definition: What is a Coping Strategy?

An action, a series of actions, or a thought process used in meeting a stressful or unpleasant situation or in modifying one’s reaction to such a situation. Coping strategies typically involve a conscious and direct approach to problems, in contrast to defense mechanisms.

Source: APA Dictionary of Psychology

Types of Coping Strategies

The number of ways we can use to cope with our difficulties has been counted in the hundreds.

In a review of the category systems that classify ways of coping, Skinner et al. identified 400 different ways of coping.

And, although there are also many different classifications, there seems to be some agreement on two overarching categories:

• Problem-focused coping strategies, that involve active efforts to address the underlying cause of our stressor.
• Emotion-focused coping strategies, that involve our efforts to mitigate the emotional consequences of stressful events. In other words, dealing with our emotions and feelings instead of the problem itself.

The strategy we choose will obviously be influenced by the type of problem we face and our own coping skills.

Related reading:

• Anger Management Activities for Kids
• How to Help a Kids with Anxiety

Coping Cards (or Calm Down Cards)

Let’s get back to our important topic. How to assist our kids to choose good coping strategies. 

Stressful situations are not the perfect environment to think and reflect on our choices.

And, the sheer number of strategies available makes it difficult for our kids to choose an appropriate coping skill adapted to their level of mastery and the problem they face. 

A great tool that will support our kids’ (or students’) choices is a set of Coping Cards.

What are Coping Cards (or Calming Cards)?

A coping card is a visual prompt that presents a coping strategy to be used when facing a stressor.

Some people prefer to call them calming cards, calm down cards, calming strategy cards, or self-regulation cards.

Coping cards can be a useful tool for anybody needing support when making coping choices.  

For adults and teenagers, they may look like written coping statements, such as:

“When I feel anxious, I remember to practice my breathing exercises”

When it comes to children, we most often use illustrations or pictograms because they:

• improve information processing
• assist those who have not developed good reading skills
• support those who can’t communicate verbally

Benefits of Using Calm Down Cards

Using calming down cards when teaching kids how to cope with big emotions (anger or anxiety) has many benefits:

• they promote self-regulation
• they provide a variety of choices that would have not popped up spontaneously in their minds
• they assist them in making their choices
• they supplement or replace speech for those kids who can´t communicate verbally 
• they provide a tool to help us with our kids on their coping strategies
• they improve the chances of successfully implementing strategies we have been practicing with them, by providing visual prompts
• they are conveniently presented in a card format, so  they are easy to carry around and you can access them when you need them

These Coping Cards have been created by VerySpecialTales.com / The pictograms used are property of the Aragon Government (Spain) and have been created by Sergio Palao to ARASAAC which distribute them under Creative Commons License (BY-NC-SA)

11 Tips on How to Use Your Calming Cards

Calm Down Cards are a great tool, but like any tool, there are specific tips and strategies that can help you make the most out of this resource:

1. Get familiar with the coping strategies available
2. Practice the proposed activities when your kids are calm and happy. You cannot teach them to “stop, think, and solve” (just an example) during a tantrum or a meltdown.
   They need to start to automate that sequence in a happy context.
3. Decide what format works better for you (cards or a little book where you can check several strategies at a time)
4. Introduce the cards to your kid.  Explain to your kid what calm-down cards are and how they can help when they feel upset, anxious, or overwhelmed. 
5. Model how to use the calming cards. Pick a card, pretend to feel frustrated or anxious, and explain how you may feel better by following the card instructions.
6. Select a few cards to start trying them. Attempting to pick a strategy out of 30 cards may be too difficult. Start small.
7. Practice regularly. Incorporate the use of calming cards into daily routines.
8. Positive Reinforcement. Praise your kids when they use the calm-down cards so they feel more motivated to use them again.
9. Evaluate/Reflect on how it worked after they used their cards. Talk about how it worked for them, how they felt, and how it helped them.
10. Involve caregivers and teachers. If you find this tool helps your kids, involve caregivers or teachers so they can support the child’s use of the cards in different environments.
11. Ensure the cards are available when they are likely needed, such as during transitions or when you identify signs of dysregulation.

(Free Download) Coping Cards with Pictograms

The coping cards that you will be able to download provide a variety of visual prompts that will assist your kid’s self-regulation.

Other Useful Resources to Help Kids Learn About Emotions

• Emotions Workbooks
• Positive Affirmation Cards for Kids