Glitter calming bottle

Having spent a lot of time lately with my younger sister (she's 7) I've started to realise that a lot of the tactics that people tell you to use when they have a temper tantrum don't actually work. My parents have recently been using the idea of time outs for my sister, but they don't seem to work, she just gets more frustrated and angry. 

So I decided it was time to do some research and came across the concept of a time out bottle, these have been around for a long time and there are some pretty amazing ones out there; so I decided to test this out with a basic one that I made. 

Things you'll need: 

• A plastic bottle with a lid 
• Glitter ( I used pink and gold) 
• Water 

You can also add in other things to make it a bit more creative like food colouring. 

1. Add the glitter into the bottle (it's important that you put this in first because if you don't it's just going to float. 

2. Add the water, I put in enough to fill the bottle, leaving very little room for anything else. 

3. Add the food colouring the food colouring if using, then tightly put the lid back on the bottle and shake it up. (I put some glue on the lid so my sister couldn't open it) 

So what happens? 

After doing a bit of research I found that it offer a lot of benefits:

It helps the child to refocus all of their energy- during tantrums children somewhat lose control, messing around with the bottle and watching the glitter move around helps the body to gain the sensory input needed to organise thoughts and focus attention.

As designed to it helps the child to relax, gives them time to just sit and calm down. Also the bottle gives them something to take their anger out on, so rather than throwing punches they at things that are to squeeze and shake the bottle instead and channel their emotions into it. 


Having tried this out with my sister I found that is quiet effective if it`s brought in at the beginning, it really does help calm her down quicker then what it normally would.

So the concept of calming bottle has been around for a while, there are so many different design ideas out there, this I simple straight forward thing that I created on a whim just to see if it would help and it did. Have you ever tried calming bottles? Have they worked for you?