How can I help my child become more emotionally resilient?
Often a child’s emotional sensitivity to stressful events and difficulty calming down stems from problems in their autonomic nervous system (ANS). The ANS regulates most of the bodies most basic processes in two basic ways through its two major branches. 1) The sympathetic nervous system (SNS) regulates the “fight or flight response” and prepares the body to engage in high-energy behavior, like playing a basketball game or running from a bully. 2) The parasympathetic nervous system (PNS) triggers the relaxation response and prepares the body for rest, digestion, and growth. Kids that have problems in these two basic functions are often not able to adjust their level of arousal to meet the expectations of the setting they are in. In class, they should be sitting in their chairs and attending to the teacher (relaxed and engaged) which is very different than the level of arousal they might have on the playground. But if the PNS is weakened or out of tune, they might be running around the class instead. These kids, lacking the ability to down regulate the arousal of the SNS with the activity of the PNS, over react to stress and have a hard time calming down afterwards. If this sounds like your child, you might want to try Resonant Frequency Breathing to start correcting the problem.
10-Steps to Teaching Your Child Resonant Frequency Breathing
1) Schedule training sessions to occur just before a preferred activity (like screen time, before dessert, before reading books at bed time, etc.). Pick a time that you will be able to train almost every day and at the same general time.
2) It may be important to offer the child a predetermined reward for participating. This could be an extra 5 minutes of screen time, special dessert, or access to a preferred activity. Money works too.
3) Start with just 5 minutes of training. Don’t get ambitious and let the session go longer, even if the child seems to be cooperating and tolerating things fine. You might find it harder to get the same level of cooperation the next time because the last session was just a bit too aversive. Also, making it short makes it easier for you to be consistent and less likely to believe there isn’t enough time.
4) Make sure that you maintain the most positive and enjoyable demeanor with the child as you teach. Don’t let yourself get too frustrated or inpatient if the child takes longer to learn a component than you expected. Make the experience fun.
5) Set easy to achieve objectives to build the skills needed for RFB. Here is a list of objectives below. Some kids will breeze through these, while others might take several sessions to get passed one.
Breath Holding: This could be done at a swimming pool where the child pinches her nose, puffs up the cheeks, and then dips their head briefly under the water. At home, you could pretend to be going under water or you could do it in the bathtub. It might help to prompt them to take a deep breath before holding.
Control over the Inbreath: Teach voluntary in-breath control. I like to tell the child to hold their clinched fist up to their nose pretending they are holding a flower. Then they take a deep breath in through their nose to take a big sniff of the flower. Aim to have the child do ten of theses in a row.
Sequential Breath Holding: Teach the child to take a deep inhale and then hold for a count of three. They should be able to do this 10 times in a row before being ready for the next step.
Extended Exhale: Teach the child to take a deep breath, hold for a count of 3, and then extend the exhale to a count of 4. They should be able to do this 10 times in a row before being ready for the next step.
Synchronize breathing with a pacer: After mastering the steps below, the child is ready to start with a pacer. Set the pacer to 10 to 13 breaths per minute. Whenever you set the pacer, the ideal is to have the inbreath be 40% of the total cycle and the outbreath to be 60%. So if it was a 4 second inhale, then the exhale would be 6 seconds. That is a 10-second cycle, which is 6 breaths per minute. Before starting the pacer, have the child take 3 deep breaths, holding each for a count of 3, and then exhaling for a count of 4. At the very end of the last exhale, start the pacer. Watch and listen to the child breathing. If she gets off pace, stop the pacer and have her take another deep breath, starting the pacer again at the end of the out breath. If the child is consistently breathing in before the pacer prompts them to, you probably need to increase the pace. The goal of this part is to teach the child to synchronize her breathing with the pacer, not to slow the breathing down.
Slowing Down the Pace: Reduce the rate by .5 to 1 second each day to the pace appropriate for their age (see chart below). I find that as long as I have the child take 3 deep breaths before starting the pacer, they are able to breath at slower and slower rates more quickly than you might expect once they have learned to synchronize their breathing with a pacer at a higher rate. Use the chart below to estimate what your child’s ideal pace of breathing is.
Establish a routine: Continue to do the breathing for 3-5 minutes on a consistent basis. Generally, kids that have learned the skill are not very resistant about doing it because they usually feel significantly better afterwards. If you used a reward to do the initial training, you probably can dial it back or discontinue. Just tell your child that the breathing is like brushing your teeth and you need to do it to stay healthy.
RFB is a practice with both immediate and long last effects that accrue over time. I have seen children that consistently had 24 hours of good behavior after a 5 minute session, almost like it was a medication that eventually wore off. However, the best benefits come from having practices over a long period of time.