A few years ago, while my daughter was in the midst of a four-alarm meltdown, I implored her to

“I don’t know HOW!!” she yelled back.

At first I was dumbfounded. What do you mean, you don’t know how to breathe?? You’ve been breathing your whole life!!

But she was right. I had never taught her to breathe. I had never taught her how to use her breath to calm herself down when she was all worked up.

The first time I told my high school students to “take a deep breath,” they responded with a collective, desperate, and panicked inhale that sounded more like hyperventilation than relaxation.

All of our well-intentioned suggestions to “breathe” when our children are melting down are worthless if we haven’t taught them how to breathe. If they are in the middle of a tantrum or a major stress episode, they are experiencing what Daniel Goleman calls a “neural hijacking,” and their rational brain is unavailable. Our sensible pleadings to “calm down” mean nothing when the lizard brain has taken over.

If we practice breathing when we are already calm, our body learns how to regulate itself. We’re more likely to remember to breathe the next time we’re ready to lose our temper.

So let’s teach our kids to breathe!

5 Ways to Teach Kids to Breathe

{These might be really helpful for parents, too!}

One, Two, Three, Four

This technique is based on the peg-word mnemonic device — each number makes you think of a word.

One — on the first breath, look up to the sun (or ceiling). This movement opens our body and chest, and our first deep breath activates the parasympathetic nervous system and the body’s relaxation response. Looking up also helps us orient ourselves to our environment.

Two — on the second breath, bring your breath to your shoe! Focusing on bringing the breath to another part of the body literally gets us out of our heads and silences the monkey mind that is probably adding to the stress of the moment.

Three — on the third breath, breathe through your whole body (me). Can you bring your breath all the way from your feet to your head?

Four — do one more for good measure!

SCAN

With older kids, you can use the acronym SCAN. As in the exercise above, it teaches kids to bring their attention to their breath in different parts of the body. It helps them orient to the present, and gives them a more concrete task than just “breathe!”

Breathing Buddies

In this video, Daniel Goleman describes the practice of “breathing buddies” — kids learn to watch their breath while lying on the ground with a little stuffed animal on their belly. They can then focus on their buddy rising and falling with the breath.

Breathing Rings

Many mindfulness teachers use a breathing ring (like the one shown here). You can slowly expand and contract the ball as you breathe in and out. Kids like to play with them and find them very soothing.

Breathing Mantra

I absolutely adore Thich Nhat Hanh’s breath mantra, which he adapts for kids in Planting Seeds: Practicing Mindfulness with Children:

Breathing in, I am calm. Breathing out, I smile.

“Thay” says that “reciting this line is like drinking a cool glass of lemonade on a hot day — you can feel the coolness permeate your body.”

Encourage your child to actually smile (just a slight upturn on the lips will do) as they breathe out. {Research shows that just moving your facial muscles into a smile makes you happier!}

*****

Instead of simply telling our kids to “calm down!”, let’s teach them to breathe.