Have you ever had a moment that your child was getting too excited and you had to do something to make her/him calm down, otherwise you feel like you are gonna go crazy soon?

What can make them calm down? What is going to make you calm down and be patient with a too-excited child?

For me, I like to sit down with a cup of tea and take a deep breath when I am getting anxious or stressed. How about you?

If a short tea break helps you relax like me, why don’t you suggest a tea time to your too-excited child so that you can benefit from the break and your child can benefit, too? 

When you link the tea time to a quiet, relaxed and slow time with a warm drink, it can be used as a great calming activity after an active play.

Children like to imitate adults, especially their significant ones like mom and dad. What I often see at the play kitchen area is children making coffee, putting a cup on a plate, serving it to friend, sitting down on a chair and drinking coffee with cookies.

Of course, you should not give any caffeinated drinks to children. While you are enjoying a bit of caffeine in your tea to go through a day, your child can have a mild herbal tea like chamomile that are caffein-free. If you really don’t want to give any real teas to your child, you can just warm up a cup of juice and let your child to enjoy it with you – S/he will want to have the same thing as you, like the same-coloured drink 😉

You would serve a warm or room-temperature drink to your child, but since you will be having a hot drink, you can use this as a teaching opportunity. Teach that the hot/warm tea can make our body relaxed and help us calm down so that we can focus well on the next thing that we want to do and this is why we want to have a tea time sometimes. Teas, however, can be very hot so we have to sit down properly at the table and drink it slowly.

You can also link the tea time to a story time. For some children, story time is not a fun time. Especially for the high energy children, I rarely see them grabbing a book and sitting to read by themselves . But I think that being interested in reading and listening to a story is a useful and important habit to develop for children’s language skills, as well as an ability to learn further.

You can research and find some children books about tea time, but obviously you can choose any books that your child will be interested. If a storybook seems too long for your high energy child, you can start with a poem book.

I found a great poem book for children. “Once, I Laughed My Socks Off”, written by Steve Attewell, has funny poems inside. 

Also, you can let your child have some sensory fun with teas. I would recommend you to try this if your child really does not like a quiet time. Ha ha.

Pour some hot water over a tea bag in a cup and let the child observe how the tea is brewed in water. With different types of teas, you will be able to make different colours of teas. The tea in the picture is “Forever Nuts” from DAVIDs TEA. It is herbal tea and it makes the water become reddish. DAVIDs TEA says in their website that a bit of beetroot in the tea bag makes the colour. It smells really nutty and nice.

This is “Organic Cream of Earl Grey” tea from DAVIDs TEA. It is high-caffeinated black tea. Do not let the children drink this. You can just use this one to compare the colours and smells of different teas.

You can let your child try steeping different kinds of tea bags in water by herself/himself. I used porcelain coffee sets here because I didn’t have any plastic sets – I actually just grabbed these quickly from the cupboard for this post and photos 😅. But if you have a toy tea set, adding some plastic cups, spoons and toy kettle in a big plastic bin along with water and tea bags can be a fun pretend play setup and a good fine motor activity for children.

Bring this calming activity as often as needed. It can be a great ritual in the free play time at home and a wonderful opportunity for the mother-child bonding time. 

Happy tea time 🙂