Open up that Hershey Kiss and go to the "happy place"

There are two lessons in my curriculum at school that are VERY helpful to kids and adults as well. One of them is on "stress management" and the other one is on "anger as a secondary emotion". The lesson on stress management talks about a lot of different ways to relieve stress. I like to focus the lesson on how to relieve stress when you are sitting in your seat and no one can even tell. There are three techniques that I teach the kids. The first one is tightening your muscles as tight as you can, then releasing them. It is called "out tensioning the tension". The second one is deep breathing through your nose, then blowing it out through your mouth. The last one is finding a happy and beautiful place that you can go to in your mind when you are stressed. The kids understand stress and are grateful to learn some skills to help them handle it. The lesson on anger management talks about how anger is not usually ever the first emotion. The first emotion is usually something like fear, embarrassment, frustration, hurt, pain, hunger, or sadness. If we can understand what we are really feeling, it will help to ease the anger. We are focusing on the true feeling instead of our reaction to it. I demonstrate this lesson with a Hershey Kiss. The wrapper is the anger. If we unwrap the anger, we get inside to what is most important (the real emotion). Of course, we have to all have a Hershey Kiss to celebrate learning this important principle. I always ask the kids at the beginning of the lesson if they have had any experiences to share from the last lesson. A while back I asked the kids how they had gotten rid of their stress after the lesson on stress. One little girl in second grade raised her hand and said, "I just unwrapped that Hershey Kiss and went to the happy place!" In my book of memories of all of the crazy things that kids have said to me, it is hard to imagine one better than that. It is always good to have people reflect back what we have said, because what is heard is often different than what was said.