I use this activity with children who have a difficult time talking about difficult feelings and what can happen if we just stuff our feelings.

Materials: Balloons of different colors

Steps and discussions

• Blow up a balloon really big
• Ask the child what would happen if the balloon took in too much air
• Then ask them, “What would we need to do if we did not want the balloon to pop?”
• Let out some of the air in the balloon slowly so that the air makes noise.
• Explain to the children that we all have similar balloons in our body that hold our feelings.  These balloons are called our feeling containers.
• Ask the child, “If our feeling containers had too many feelings in them, what would happen? “
• Relate it to the balloon being blown up too big.  You can help them connect this to their behaviors by asking them, “What happens when your feeling container pops?” or “What does it look like when people’s feeling containers pops?”
• Then relate it to prevention.  “Just like with the balloon, we have to let some air out so that we don’t pop.”
• Let some of the air out of the balloon and say, “What do you hear when the air comes out?”
• Help them to recognize that noise comes out of the balloon when we let air out.
• Then relate this to talking.  “To keep our feeling containers from popping we let air out by talking about those feelings.”
• Ask the child to choose a balloon and blow it up to represent how full their feeling container may be.
• Reflect to them the size of their container, for example, “Wow your container seems pretty full.”  or “Looks like you talk about your feelings a lot.”
• Then you ask them to let some air out of their container what would the air say?  What feelings would you be letting out and what would those feelings say?

You can tweak this activity in so many ways.  It is also great in groups or individually.  You can use it with adults too.

This is a good exercise for teachers and parents to use with all children.  For teachers, I would suggest making a daily game out of it.  See how long these students can focus on blowing up their belly balloons.

Balloon in my belly

1. Have child/children imagine a balloon deep down in their belly.  Have them pick the balloon color and size. (Most people pick a big balloon.)
2. Tell them that they have to focus on blowing up that balloon for 30 seconds.  Let them know that the balloon will only get bigger if their full attention is on it and that they control their breath deep down into their belly.
3. For the first round, have them shut their eyes.
4. After 30 seconds let them relax and give them a time frame of when they will start again.
5. Each time you start, have the time go longer and longer.
6. Do a couple of rounds and then have the child/children practice this with their eyes open.
7. At the end, have a discussion of the differences when our eyes are closed and when they are open.
8. Have the child/children write down three things that helped them focus their attention on the balloon during the exercise.

If you are doing this with many children, make it a game and see who could focus the longest.  If you are doing it with one child, have him choose how long he thinks he can focus.