Kids always playing rough and wild? Here’s ONE trick you need up your sleeve

Trine Jensen-Burke

My little boy is six, and he only has two settings: Asleep or FULL ON.

When he is awake (from the moment he wakes up) he is all go, both verbally (seriously, no-one in the history of the universe can ask as many questions as him in one single day) and physically.

He runs and jumps and bounces and plays and sings and talks and explores and climbs and wrestles, and honestly, there are times when I literally drive to our nearest park just let him run around or scoot on his scooter for half an hour just to burn off some of that never-ending energy.

However, I recently came across a tip on how to encourage some more gentle and quiet play on a random Reddit thread, about just this, and having tried this mum’s tip, I was amazed at well it actually worked.

“My kids (boys 6, 3) are wild animals,” the mum confessed on the online discussion forum. “They constantly ask me if we can roughhouse, I was exhausted yesterday and just blurted out ‘can we please just try some ‘calm housing’ for once.'”

Apparently, the ‘calm housing’ worked wonders, and the boys actually found it to be super-fun.

“Calm housing is just like wrestling except slower, gentler, and quieter,” she explained. “In practice it basically amounts to my boys laying on the ground-hugging each other while they whisper jokes into each others ears. I could get used to this.”

The internet being the internet, other parents praised the idea, and then also filled the comment section with their own suggestions for getting kids to calm down while playing.

“Recommend slow mode,” suggested another genius parent. “Basically all the same moves in roughhousing but they gotta do it slow motion like the cool parts of a movie.”

Another crafty mum shared her clever idea for calming wild kids down a notch:

“This reminds me of when I told my three-year old it was time for her ‘dry bath’ and just sat her in the bathtub with her toys while I sat there next to her to keep her penned in for a few moments of peace.”

Clever? I know.

I don’t know about you, but I am definitively keeping these tricks up my sleeve – especially for these next few weeks ahead, between midterm and Level Five restrictions, I feel like they sure might come in handy!