Maintaining healthy stress levels in our students with autism requires mindfulness and a commitment to self-care in order to ensure we are calm as well. Prior to implementing an intervention, conducting a therapy session, or identifying and discussing a problem, it can be very beneficial to calm down first. To that end, the website Consonantly Speaking, offers some excellent strategies, music, exercises and visuals related to calming down in stressful situations:

 SETBC (Special Education Technology British Columbia) offers many great social stories and visuals that you can download for free.

 Trained Yoga instructor and speech-language pathologist, Angela Moorad, M.A. CCCSLP, owns a website/company called Omazing Kids that contains a wonderful list of DVDs, books and music that promote wellness and relaxation.

 Twinkl is a website with many educational visuals and free printables for teachers of students with special needs. Some of their free printables are related to calming down.  A number of applications can be utilized to help students with anxiety, transitions and calming down: Model Me Going Places, Social Adventures, Sosh, I Create…Social Skills Stories, My DPS, Anger Thermometer, The Shredder, Autism 5-Point Scale EP, Taming the Anger Monster, Anger, Angry Octopus, Emotions and Feelings Social Story, The Grouchies, Calm Counter – Anger Management Tool and Social Story for Autism, Down Syndrome, and Special Needs, First Then Visual Schedule, First-Then Board, Visual Schedule, iPrompts, My Video Schedule, Choiceworks, Visual Schedule Planner, Luca Lashes apps, Time Timer, MeMoves, Uzu, Pocket Pond, White Noise, EASe Pro Listening Therapy, Breathe2Relax, Noise Room, Sensory Play, and Relaxing Sounds of Nature.