Lately, my sweet and loving two year old girl has been acting, well, two. Lots of “Mine!” “No!” and “I Don’t Care!” coming out of her mouth. Where oh where did my mild mannered and polite little baby go!! Time out is no longer working and even though I am not necessarily a parent that is 100% opposed to the occasional spanking, I will not resort to that in all circumstances. With that being said, I have been searching for new ways to stop these behaviors. I have seen calming down jars at craft fairs before and, while searching on Pinterest, found the idea for a calm down box. Immediately, I knew this was something we had to try out. It distracts her from the behavior, but still enables us to teach her that it is not ok to behave that way.

At first, I ran out and found a small container from Target that I thought would work well for all the items that I wanted to use in the Calm Down Box. However, when I got home and looked at it, I realized that all those extra wipes containers that we have lying around were basically the same size as the container I just paid for! So, back it went, and off went the lid of the wipes box. After that, I went to the craft store and found some duct tape that I liked and covered the wipes box.

Now it was time for the essential items that will help her cut out the naughty behavior and have that sweet child return. Again, I went to Pinterest to find out how to make the calm down jars, which consists of a small amount of glitter glue, extra glitter and filling up the container with warm water.  At first, I was going to use a mason jar, but the hubby quickly reminded me that a glass item may not be the best thing to hand to a small and angry person.  So we found a plastic bottle at the craft store that worked great!

Next came a small bear that she can cuddle with. I dug through items that we already had and found the perfect little one that was given to us after she was born from a sweet little lady in my hometown. After giving it some thought, I also decided that by spraying the bear with lavender essential oil it would give it an extra boost of calm that any worked up toddler might need.

The last item that I placed in the box was a book I found at Barnes and Noble about calming down. We are all about books in this house, so why should this instance be any different!

The first time using the last three items together was well before the box or the calm down jar were complete, but let me tell you that they worked like a charm! She immediately cuddled the bear and listened as I read her the book all the way through! After the book was read, the tantrum was gone and my little lady went back to being the sweet little girl we know and love.