Let him fight a “monster.” One provider I know really turned up the gas on this to help solve some problems she was having with fights in the block area. There were some cool castle blocks that all the boys wanted. Even before the little guys were in the block area they were sparring about who should get them.

She made it into a story and said to her little guys, “We have a monster in block area. This monster makes boys get into fights and hurt their friends. Here’s a picture of the monster (she printed off a silly cartoon monster from the internet).”

She said that she needed the boys to fight the monster and that only little boys had the power to make him go away. She said that the monster would go away of little boys would hiss at it. She taught them to take really long, deep breaths and let it out slowly with a “sssssssssssss.” Every time you feel like fighting over the blocks, you need to make the “ssssssssssssss” and the monster will go away. “Every time we scare the monster away and get along with our friends, I’ll put a monster on the chart. Lets see how many monsters we can scare away this week!”

Of course, the snake breath is one of the most basic coping techniques for dealing with emotions, but the boys don’t need to know that for it to work. They’re probably still hissing!