Relaxation audiotape

It can be very helpful both for an anxious child and for the child's parents to regularly listen to a relaxation audiotape. The best tapes are those that have been personalised for someone, with the person's name interspersed throughout the script. Personalised tapes need to be made personally, of course.

How to make your own relaxation tape

You will need two tape recorders. On one, play a piece of beautiful, relaxing music. Speak into the other recorder, making all sorts of suggestions about relaxing and being comfortable, and use your child's name frequently.
For example, if your child's name is Robin, your story could start like this:
Robin, this is your special time. This is the time for you to relax and get comfortable and enjoy some lovely music.
Now just imagine that you're breathing in magic fairy dust.
Robin, imagine that Tinkerbell is waving her magic wand and the magic dust spills from the wand and you breathe it in.
So breathe in and count all the way to twenty. By the time, you reach twenty, Robin, you should be feeling very, very relaxed and comfortable.

Relaxation stories

The following relaxation story can be read to a background of music. It encourages children to relax their muscle parts progressively in a fun way. Encourage your child to join in with the actions. This is based on an idea from Thomas Ollendick (see King, N. J., Hamilton, D.I. & Ollendick, T.H., Children's Phobias, A Behavioural Perspective, John Wiley & Sons, 1988).

RELAXATION STORY

It's a lovely sunny day. A great day to pick lemons. I reach out my arm and pluck a lemon off the tree. It feels so hard. I try to squeeze it. None of the juice comes out, so I squeeze even harder, and harder and harder.
Then the juice starts to squeeze out, so I let the lemon go and then I lick the juice off my fingers. It is yummy.
Just then, I see a cat stretching out after waking from his sleep. I decide to have a stretch too. I pull my arms up just like the pussy cat. I have a great big yawn. I push my legs and I push my arms up and then I just fall down on the ground and feel the sun.

It feels so good with my eyes closed, just feeling the sun. It feels as if I am a turtle sitting on a rock, nice and warm and safe. All of a sudden I notice a shadow in the sky. I pull my turtle head inside my turtle shell.
There is an eagle flying over. Luckily I see the eagle. I stay inside and just creep my head out very, very slowly. Oh! It is so good. The eagle has gone.

While I am lying here in the sun, listening with my eyes closed, along comes a pesky old fly. I decide I won't pay attention but it sits on my nose.

I wriggle my nose just a little bit. Shoo fly. It goes away.

I take a nice deep breath and then that rotten fly comes back again. It comes back this time on my forehead and very gently I start to squeeze my forehead to make it all wrinkly. I think that will make it hard for the fly to walk. But whenever I make a wrinkle the fly just jumps off, and as soon as I make my forehead smooth again, the fly jumps back on.

Finally, I shoo it right away just in time to open my eyes and see my brother running up. Oh no, my brother is going to jump on my tummy! I have just enough time to take a breath and make my tummy as hard as I can.

Plop, that doesn't hurt, he gets off again. I take a big deep breath, Oooooh, it doesn't hurt really.
'I'll do it again,' says my brother. 'Oww, ooh, ooh.' This time I hardly have time to tense my muscles up.
I tell my brother to go away and he says, 'Aaw, please, can't I play with you? Look, here is some bubble gum.'
Wow, wouldn't you know it, it is my favourite big pink bubble gum, the gob stopper type that you really have to bite into to get going. It has that really sweet taste. 'OK,' I say and I pop the gob stopper into my mouth.
I chew and chew and chew. Oh, it is yum.
Imagine that you are chewing the bubble gum now.

'Let's go and play,' I say to my brother.
'OK,' he says. 'Let's go and play mud puddles.'
There is a great big mud puddle just near the gate, where all the trucks come through. We take off our socks and shoes and roll up our pants legs. The water is nice and warm where the sun has been. The holes are quite deep because there have been many trucks going through them. It is a bit like wading in the swimming pool except for the mud that is oozing between our toes.
It squishes and squashes and it feels verrrrry good creeping around our toes and underneath our heels.
Who cares if we get dirty? We can have a bath later on.

It is such fun, we really are having a good time. But then we hear that noise. You know. That one, 'Children, time for dinner, come in and wash your hands.' It is Mum.
Oh well, I'll come and tell you another story another time. Time for dinner.