How to Reduce Anxiety for Kids with Autism / Special Needs

Easy to use calming strategies and tips to help reduce frustration and anxiety among your students!

Tip 1: Butterfly Tapping 🦋 - a quick and easy strategy to help kids self regulate and calm down Butterfly tapping helps students ground themselves by activating the parasympathetic nervous system through bilateral stimulation

Tip 2: Social Stories 💬 - review social stories to help students understand how to cope with frustration, anger, and anxiety. Social stories will give your students the strategies and tools they will need to deal with different emotions! Animated social stories designed for kids with autism here 👉 http://www.diverselearninghub.com

Tip 3: Root Cause 🌱 - identify the underlying cause of what is triggering breakdowns and frustration and address the underlying issue. Try to understand the root cause of what students what is triggering your kids’ frustration. If you understand the underlying cause of their frustrations, you can then give them the tools and strategies they need to deal with different emotions

About me: Hi there! 👋 I'm Lauren! I am a special education teacher and masters student in Technology, Innovation, and Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. I came up with the idea of Diverse Learning Hub during my experience teaching in a cluster program while serving as a Teach For America corps member in Chicago. I had thirteen 6-8 grade students with autism and almost no materials. I created my own resources, instructional videos, and animated social stories for my students. I found that online content drastically improved engagement and learning among my students. I then decided to share the videos for other students to benefit from. Diverse Learning Hub has animated social stories, social story songs, functional life skills lessons, and interactive activities. Our goal is for students to use this site as a tool to learn social behaviors, life skills, and functional skills to help students thrive in the real world!