Teaching coping strategies by age

Coping strategies are the moves a child uses to get through a hard moment: slow breathing, squeezing a stress ball, a phrase like "I can try again", asking for a break. Most children are not short on ideas. They are short on practice. A strategy that has only been talked about will not show up when the child is upset, because an upset brain reaches for what is familiar.

This guide covers how to teach strategies so they get used. It works for school psychologists, counselors and teachers, and the steps translate to home. Goal wording for the IEP is on a separate page: coping skills IEP goals. For the whole area, start with the social-emotional IEP goals pillar.

What you need before you start

• A short list of the child's hard moments. Two weeks of notes is enough: what happened just before, what the child did and how long it lasted. The ABC data guide shows a simple format.
• The child's input. Ask what they already do when upset, and what they like. A child who loves drawing might calm faster with a doodle pad than a breathing chart.
• A calm time to teach. Ten minutes, two or three times a week, with no upset in the room.
• One adult in each setting who knows the plan. The child will need reminders at first, and the reminder should sound the same everywhere.

CASEL places these skills under self-management, one of its five areas of social and emotional learning.^[1] That framing helps: coping is a skill you teach, like reading, not a trait a child has or lacks.

Step-by-step

Step 1: Find when the child needs to cope

Look at your notes and pick the 2 or 3 moments that happen most. Common ones are being told no, making a mistake, waiting, losing a game and loud rooms. Write each as a short sentence, such as "When Mia's drawing goes wrong." These become the practice scenes in step 5.

Also note the early signs. Many children show the same signs each time: a red face, louder voice, pacing, going quiet. Those signs are the moment to use the strategy.

Step 2: Choose 3 or 4 strategies

Pick a small menu with different kinds of strategies:

• Body: slow breathing, pushing palms together, wall push-ups, a drink of water.
• Sensory: headphones, a fidget, a soft object, a quiet corner.
• Thinking: a short phrase ("This is a small problem"), counting, picturing a calm place.
• People: asking for a break, asking an adult for help, sitting with a friend.

Check each strategy against the setting. A walk to the water fountain works in class. It does not work on the bus. Have at least one strategy that works anywhere, quietly.

Step 3: Teach each strategy while the child is calm

Teach one strategy at a time. Show it, do it together, then let the child do it alone. Name what it is for: "When your hands get tight, this helps them loosen." Practice each one 3 to 5 times in a session, then come back to it next session.

Make the steps concrete. "Take deep breaths" is vague. "Smell the flower for 3 counts, blow out the candle for 4 counts, do it 3 times" is something a 6-year-old can follow.

Step 4: Make a cue card

Put the menu on a small card with a picture and a word for each strategy. Older students may prefer a list on a phone or a sticky note inside a folder. The card does two jobs. It reminds the child what the choices are, and it lets an adult prompt without many words. Pointing at a card is calmer than talking to an upset child.

Step 5: Practice with small problems

Now rehearse the hard moments from step 1, at low strength. Act out a scene ("Pretend I just said recess is cancelled"), and have the child pick and use a strategy. Start with silly or mild scenes and build up. Self-talk and self-instruction work better when the student has practiced the exact words ahead of time.^[2]

Five to eight practice scenes across two weeks is a good target before you expect use in real moments.

Step 6: Prompt in real moments, then fade

When a real hard moment comes, the adult gives the smallest prompt that works. Start with pointing to the card. If needed, add a word ("breathing?"). Record what the child did and how much help it took. Over a few weeks, wait a few seconds longer before prompting, so the child has room to start alone. The prompt hierarchy examples show how to step prompts down.

Step 7: Let the child rate what works

After each use, ask the child to rate it: helped a lot, helped a little, did not help. Drop strategies that keep getting "did not help" and try a new one. Children use the strategies they chose and trust.

Worked example from start to finish

Mia is a fictional second grader. Her teacher logs 8 upsets in 2 weeks. Six of them happen when a drawing or writing task goes wrong. Each upset lasts 6 to 15 minutes, with crumpled paper and crying, and Mia uses no strategy in any of them. Baseline: 0 of 8 upsets with a strategy.

The counselor meets Mia twice a week for 10 minutes. Together they pick three strategies: "flower and candle" breathing, squeezing a stress ball for 10 counts, and saying "Mistakes help me learn." Mia draws the pictures for her own cue card. In week 3 they practice 6 scenes, from a broken crayon to a ruined drawing.

From week 4 the teacher prompts with a point to the card and records each hard moment:

By week 7 Mia used a strategy in 4 of 5 hard moments, 3 of them with no prompt, and the median time upset dropped from 9 minutes to 2. She rated the stress ball "helped a lot" every time and the phrase "helped a little", so the team kept both. The IEP team used this data to write her coping goal and set the next step: using the card in art and music, not just in her classroom. The numbers are an illustration, not a benchmark.

Teaching coping strategies by age

Young children need an adult to do the strategy with them for a long time. This is called co-regulation, and it is a normal step, not a failure. Teenagers often reject anything that looks babyish or draws attention. Let them choose tools that look ordinary, and agree on a private signal with each teacher.

Common mistakes

Weak: Teaching a strategy for the first time while the child is upset. Better: Teach and practice when calm, so the strategy is familiar before it is needed.

Weak: A poster with 15 calming ideas. Better: A card with 3 or 4 strategies the child chose and practiced.

Weak: "Use your coping skills!" said loudly across the room. Better: A quiet point to the cue card, or one word, said close by.

Weak: Asking the child to explain what went wrong right after an upset. Better: Wait until the child is fully calm, then keep the talk to 2 or 3 questions.

Weak: Expecting the child to stop feeling upset. Better: Expect the child to do something safe with the feeling, and measure that.

Weak: Only recording the bad moments. Better: Record every hard moment, including the ones where the child coped, so progress shows up.

Templates and tools

When it is time to put coping skills into the IEP, the emotional regulation goals page has 45 templates, and the coping skills goal hub sorts them by strategy type. Read about self-regulation in the glossary for the term teams use in reports. Record real moments on the opportunity data sheet with a column for prompt level.

Related pages in this cluster: IEP goals for anxiety, IEP goals for anger management and feelings scales and 5-point scales. For older students who will speak up for their own supports, see teaching self-advocacy skills by age. Once you draft a goal, check it with the goal checker.

Frequently asked questions

Use it in IEP Atlas

• Emotional regulation goals (social emotional)
• Coping skills goal hub
• Self regulation in the IEP glossary
• Opportunity data sheet
• IEP goal checker

Related guides

• Social-emotional IEP goals: examples you can actually measure
• Coping skills IEP goals
• Teaching self-advocacy skills by age
• Emotional regulation and self-regulation IEP goals
• IEP goals for anxiety

Sources

1. CASEL: Social and emotional learning, CASEL
2. SOS: Helping Students Become Independent Learners, IRIS Center, Vanderbilt University

Written and checked by the IEP Atlas editorial team under our editorial policy. This guide describes general practice and federal rules. It is not legal advice; your state may add requirements, and the IEP team makes the decisions for each student.