Right about now, we’re all living with a heightened amount of stress. One of the reasons I emphasize fun so much is that when families get stressed out and stop having fun, they also stop connecting and tend to retreat into their separate corners. That leads to more stress and heightens other issues (depression anxiety, etc) which circle around and cause more disconnectedness and more stress. You can see how this could become a spiral pretty quickly! Having fun together as a family can break this cycle and give you resilience against stress. Here are two drawing games than anyone can play. They can help to both release stress and to build up resilience against it.

This first game- “You can’t wreck my drawing” is one of my favorites and it has a bonus effect of increasing problem solving and “outside the box” kinds of thinking skills. This game is best when people have some brain bandwidth and can think (not that great during an active storm of big feelings).

This next game I call a “mad drawing”, though it can be for any big feeling, and it works perfectly for being right in the midst of a big feelings storm!

There are a lot of great ways to express strong feelings and stress. I will describe some more in coming posts, but if you want to get a head start…tearing cardboard, popping bubble wrap, Nerf wars and paper wars can all be great ways to vent stress together as a family!

Next we’ll take a look at ways you can process stress and big feelings with your family verbally.

* If you have concerns about your family expressing negative feelings like revenge and aggression, you can take a look at a video I made about aggressive kinds of play and what it means. (Spoiler- most of it is perfectly normal and healthy!)

Take good care of each other and yourselves out there!

See you soon,

Jason