Helping Children Calm Themselves

My son is turning three tomorrow. As any parent of a toddler or preschooler knows, this is a stage when children are flooded with strong emotions that they have little understanding of. His big feelings seem to be getting even bigger, so I've been thinking a lot lately about how the adults in his life can teach him ways to become more calm.

Some of the are ideas we've been practicing for a long time. We're just starting out with others, and a couple are things I want to try in the coming weeks and months.

My son has been learning a few yoga poses through the book My Daddy is a Pretzel by Baron Baptiste

• Learn yoga poses. We have been approaching these as fun games which we move through rather quickly. We started off by reading the book My Daddy Is a Pretzel, which is set in a circle time at a school, where the children share what their parents do for work. The narrator of the story  has a father who is a yoga teacher, so she pairs each profession of her friend's parents with a pose her daddy sometimes does. For example, "Chang says his mum's an architect. Sometimes, my daddy is a triangle." The next page spread teaches how to do the triangle pose (which you can see my son doing above.) When I notice my son getting a little wound up, I'll ask him if he'd like to read the book or just do a pose. Sometimes I do poses and he just plays around me. While I do downward dog, he runs underneath me. I'm hoping that as he continues to get older, yoga can be a resource for him in managing stress. As Alexandra de Collibus, founder of Sweet Pea Yoga, says in this Parents.com article, "Since the world moves very, very fast for children, it's not long before they feel all kinds of pressure...to keep up with everyone around them. Yoga functions as a release valve."
• Practice conscious breathing. So far I have been demonstrating this to my son when I am feeling upset myself. After I've breathed deeply a few times to calm  my racing pulse, I'll explain to him what I'm doing and ask him if he can breath deeply after me. At this stage he's not putting it into practice himself yet, but I've learned from other experiences that if I continue to do it myself and remind him how, he'll eventually adapt it. You can also teach conscious breathing in a playful or imaginative way, such as the "sleeping crocodile" that Mira Benzen describes, which is ideal for children who are a little older.
• Help your child work through her emotions. Too often we punish children for  having certain emotions, which encourages them to stuff those feelings down. Very young children may not even be able to identify what it is they are feeling; they just know those feelings are very strong. When my son is crying and upset about a limit I've set or something that's happened to him, I sit close to him and empathize. "You're feeling so mad right now. You really wanted to stay and play at the park. You're crying because you're so frustrated." This helps him learn words for what he is feeling. Empathy does not mean letting him do whatever he wants of course. When he hits me, I wrap him in my arms and say something like. "You are feeling so angry right now. It's ok to be angry, but it's never okay to hit." Rather than sending him to time out, we have time in where we work through his feelings together. For more on this type of "positive parenting" technique, read this article on Dr. Laura Markham's Aha Parenting blog. (And while you're there you might as well read everything she's written, because it's fabulous!) 
• Take a relaxing story walk. Though I haven't tried it, I love this idea from Katie Hurley, which is similar to guided imagery. The child picks a location for the imaginary walk each night before bed. With the child's eyes closed, the parent describes where they are going on the journey, and the child periodically shares the colors she sees and the objects she collects on the walk. 

What's in your toolkit for helping your children become calm?