Field Guide for Finding Calm
This amalgamation of “calm” came about when I realized 80% of Happy Volcanoes mentioned ‘calm.’ So, here is documentation (all in one place) why calm is helpful, short-term strategies for finding calm, and then some longer-term foundation-building calming strategies. Read it now, read it later, pin it to your fridge, get it as a tattoo, what have you.
Why calm is useful
A calm state makes learning, problem-solving, and decision-making easier. For our purposes, alert and excited are not necessarily the opposite of calm -- that territory belongs to fear, anger, frustration, and defensiveness. Think about an NFL quarterback who is cool & collected 3 points down with 2 minutes to go. Alert? Yes. Excited? Absolutely! Calm? Actually, he is. Simone Biles, same thing.
Helping our kids calm down in the short term
Think after the meltdown. Beyond being beneficial for our sanity, finding calm gets kids to a place where they can learn from the experience they just had. It helps build resilience and happiness while reducing anxiety. Here’s some tactics for in-the-moment. Keep in mind that not all of these will work for your kid and what does work will change over time.
De-escalate your own emotions: This is important for two reasons 1. Mirror neurons mean that your kid feeds off your energy — if you are anxious, fearful, angry, etc… — your kid is getting the signal: ‘I feel unsafe, dad obviously thinks this is unsafe, must be unsafe, unleash panic mode....’ 2. When you’re worked up, you’re going to make sh*tty decisions about how to interact with your kid (that asterisk replaces an “i,” by the way). You can signal with your body posture, vocal tone, and facial expressions as well as words that you’re calm, you are a safe space for your kid, and you’re going to help them get to calm. You may want to get down on their level physically so you don’t appear so menacing, and they can better sense your slower breathing and relaxed expression or try a gentle touch or good old-fashioned lap-sit.
Change the physiological input (Our body’s internal state often signals how relaxed or stressed we should be, by intentionally reversing this state, we can trick our bodies into feeling calm):
Deep breathing helps settle our autonomic nervous system. To do so, make sure the diaphragm is engaged. Some ideas to try: dragon breaths, pinwheel breathing, humming a favorite song, five finger breathing, or hand on heart and stomach (more below).
Increase the scope of vision by looking at something farther away, which again cools the autonomic nervous system. Try playing “eye-spy,” or having your kid follow your finger back and forth or watch your awesome dance moves from 4+ feet away.
Get moving. When we are worked up, our body releases Cortisol, which helps release glucose into the bloodstream in preparation for fight or flight. So, jumping jacks, a lap around the sofa, or pounding a pillow will help burn off the glucose.
Engage the thinking brain (i.e., the prefrontal cortex, which is in charge of executive function and can take over the reptilian brain that controls fight or flight):
Label the emotion(s) that your kid is experiencing.
Give two options of what to do: would you like to do jumping jacks or go to the calming corner (more on this below)?
Tell your kid about a time when you felt the same way.
Engage in a fantasy that would presumably solve the meltdown, ‘I wish you could have four gummy vitamins; in fact, I wish you could have gummy vitamins for your dinner.”
Have your kid write or draw about what is going on.
Initiate a Pavlovian response (This will require pre-work. You’re trying to link moments of calm to trigger a better response when sh*t hits the fan (* = i). I’m sure you can come up with a much more creative list, but here are some starters):
Before bed, when your kid is relaxed (not having the dance party to delay sleeping), have them put one hand on their chest and one hand on their stomach, have them feel how calm their body feels. The trigger will be the hand positioning and breathing.
Have a place in your home full of sensory/tactile items, brand this as the ‘calm corner,’ and (hopefully) a mid-meltdown visit will take your kid from 11 to 5.
Tell a joke and get everyone laughing.
Integrate. After calming down, integrate the experience by talking about what was learned (by you or your kid), what they might do differently next time, or what is needed for repair. You can use this as an opportunity to express gratitude to your kid for sharing their feelings (even if they only did so by rage-screaming) because it let you know they needed help getting calm. Try to linger in the quiet, which reinforces that they can get worked up and get calm again; that jittery feeling has an expiration date. Let them know it’s okay to have strong emotions and that we all have them. This helps shape the experience from one that lingered in the ‘f*ck that was awful’ territory to an experience that reinforced the strength of your relationship with your kid (for the code breakers in the group * = u). In experiments, pain (physical and mental) seen as having a purpose was better tolerated.
Practicing longer-term strategies for calming
Longer-term strategies will make it easier for kids to find calm after a meltdown. These can help them stay balanced, resulting in an expanded toolset to face adversity. These strategies are needed from the time we’re born (feeling hungry or tired) and stay with us (deadlines, conflict, when the opposing QB came back from 3 down with 2 minutes to go… oh and feeling hungry and tired). By design, there is a decent amount of overlap between long and short-term strategies: practicing can strengthen recall and associations. Mileage may vary for these strategies - experiment with what works best for your kid.
Get the basics right:
Food and water, as mentioned above, our internal state informs our emotions. The discomfort of being hungry, dehydrated, or having to pee can become dysregulating, and we can confuse it with general distress (just don’t point this out to your partner). Some specifics on nutrition: limit sugar (which can be a doppelganger for internal stress) and increase probiotics, which have been proven to regulate the autonomic nervous system.
Getting enough sleep increases our tolerance for discomfort and our day-to-day emotional processing.
Have a daily routine or at least a roadmap. Most kids thrive on routine or knowing what will happen within a day (I’m still trying to figure out how this makes sense with kids’ insatiable desire for novelty - send help!)
Lay the groundwork for a calming Pavlovian response (see above).
Teach mindfulness, meditation, yoga, or breathing techniques (which have been shown to increase focus and cognitive control and have a positive impact on self-regulation, patience, cognitive control, working memory, cognitive flexibility, aggression, and stress levels):
Progressive muscle relaxation where you tense and then release individual groups of muscles, video version here (although I would recommend listening with eyes closed for more impact).
Some breathing exercises here.
Try meditation, some suggestions for kids here and people seem to love Cosmic Kids (paid) here.
Have time for planned stress such as tag or roughhousing, which helps the body practice being excited and stressed, then coming back down (high-intensity interval training for kids).
Introduce opportunities to hit a flow state, which is associated with bliss and a dissolution of worry — some activities that are associated with flow states in kids: dance, play, art, or music.
Cultivate a connection with your kiddo will help them feel safe and stable in an environment free from physical, emotional harm → less harm → less fear → more calm.
Get out in nature. There are likely many mechanisms at play here: expanded visual horizon, meditative quality of observation, the usual movement that accompanies being outside, and introduction of good bacteria from dirt, but numerous studies have shown the calming effect that nature can play.
Name the calm when it happens so your kiddo can get used to the feeling and can call on it at a later time.
