The Coping Skills for Kids Activity Book: Distraction Detour focuses on the Distraction Coping Style – detouring and holding a child’s attention when they might otherwise be fixated or “stuck” on a particular stressor. This coping style focuses on playful, fun activities that relieve worry.

In the Distraction Detour activity book, there are plenty of different ways to distract children when they need it. It includes coping strategies like:

Playing
Games like sudoku, word searches, tic tac toe, and dots.

Imagination
Drawing items they want to bake, designing their own backyard treehouse,
or what they’ll look like when they’re 100 years old!

Creating
Developing their own comic strip, writing a story, making their own knock-knock jokes, or “Would You Rather” questions.

One benefit of play is that it helps kids learn how to self-regulate and manage stress by setting a problem aside and coming back to it when they are better prepared. Play is enormously powerful in helping kids manage their feelings.

Certain skills work beer in some places rather than others. These four pages give a space for a child to list coping skills that work best at school, in stores/restaurants, during social events, or when they are on the road going someplace.

There is also space to keep track of coping skills a child has attempted, and whether or not they liked them. First, this encourages children to try all the different skills in the book at least once. Second, it offers children an opportunity to recognize if something was helpful or not helpful. If they didn’t like it or didn’t feel any differently, that’s okay! Not all coping skills work for all kids. The important thing is not to give up and to keep trying.