How to Organize and Design a Home' s Interior to Help Calm Hyper Children

Children who are hyperactive or easily excited can be affected by the home environment and how the home environment is structured. And hyper or excitable children can exhibit behavior problems or cause issues with other family members. By making some changes to a home environment parents can create a calming effect, that can help in varying degrees.

Difficulty: Moderately Challenging

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• You may need:
• paint, a color wheel denoting cool colors

1. Consider painting or papering interior walls in cool colors such as softer shades of blue, plum, gray or blue gray, lavender or certain shades of green.

2. 

   Try and clear the clutter from each room of your home, including the living room, by removing excess knick knacks and curios, bulky or large coffee tables, open DVR and CD racks if full and leaving more clear and open space if possible.

3. 

   Put DVD's and CD's in a cabinet, your entertainment table, or a DVD rack with a door that closes.

4. 

   Keep curio cabinets, china cabinets, bookcases, and other similar items to a minimum.

5. 

   Do not put too many pictures, pieces of children's artwork or school projects in any one room of the house. Remove excess items and magnets on the refrigerator, and in bedrooms. Leave only two or three items in each room and spaced well apart from each other.

6. 

   Inspect the hyper child's bedroom or sleep area. Put toys on shelves and only display toys and games or other activities that the child uses, or plays with the most. Organize beds and dressers where they are far apart and leave as much open area as possible to minimize clutter.

7. 

   Avoid too much bright color mixes and bed sheets in the bedroom of a more hyper or easily excitable child.

8. Break up extremely large open areas of the home with a well placed coffee table or partition or a child's table and chair in a bedroom, etc.

9. 

   Consider putting a lava lamp or similar item in the living room and the child's bedroom, making sure the 'lava' in the lamp is dark blue or dark green as this will help hold their attention while providing a color that is less likely to over stimulate their senses.

Tips & Warnings

• Too much clutter, too much artwork or an excess of pictures, curios, and bright colors can easily over stimulate a child's senses, especially if they are hyper or easily excitable.
• Too much clutter can even over stimulate the senses of any younger child, causing erratic and noisy behavior.
• If you live in a home with very large rooms and very high ceilings it is okay to break up the space with a well placed participation, coffee table, low shelves in bedrooms, etc. This helps prevent a child from running amok if they are in a more hyper state.
• If you have a child with ADHD check with their therapist regarding any changes you make to your home to make sure this will work well with an overly hyper active child.

[cookiesmagic]

on 11/16/2009 cute, great article

[mboone84]

on 11/10/2009 Great article on How to Make Simple Christmas Ornaments With a Child

[kinderhook]

on 10/30/2009 This is a good array of specific changes that can be made in a home's interior to help calm hyperactive children. Looking at the total picture, I'd suggest that the volume on TV, radio, games, &/or computer be kept to a minimum. Choose slow music if background sounds are desired. Clutter causes stress in adults, too! 5*