One night when she was in 4th grade and I was tucking her into bed, my daughter suddenly bolted up! She started crying about her next day’s spelling test. She missed some of the words on the pre-test and now she was convinced that she was going to “fail” the test. Although she is good at spelling, she had done her homework, and she had never before “failed” a spelling test, her fear and anxiety had her in a mild state of panic. I encouraged her to focus on her breathing and suggested she visualize herself completing the test “easily and effortlessly.” I reminded her that we would review her words in the morning and create some memory tricks for words she had missed.
As a mother and a counselor I am surprised to witness how acutely children experience stress and anxiety. Because they don’t always know how to talk about or even name their stressful feelings, sometimes they unwittingly send out signals for help that look like misbehavior or resistance. When my daughter is feeling overwhelmed, she will get cranky, fight with her brother, talk back, and complain about the “unfair” or “hard” things in life.
Teaching kids to manage stress requires that we ourselves know some techniques for coping. Then we model and talk about this behavior with our children. Just like the proverbial airplane safety instruction of putting the oxygen mask on ourselves before helping a child with their mask, we must identify our own stress and how we manage it. Whether it is pausing to focus on our breath, talking with a friend or spouse, writing in a journal, exercising our body, or taking a warm bath, our ability to soothe and calm our own anxiety is the first step toward teaching our children healthy coping skills.
There are many stress management techniques that work for children. I teach children mindful awareness of their breathing and their bodies. We stretch, we breathe, and we play silly games. We use a pleasant-sounding and long-lasting chime to practice careful listening, going to a calm quiet place, and focusing on sensations. They listen for the end of the sound then quietly raise their hand. Over and over, children ask to repeat the exercise as they become more and more skilled at silent focus. They enjoy the feeling of calm that comes with simply stopping and listening for the silence. This is a skill that can be transferred to moments of doubt, fear, anger or sadness.
I also teach children to “push their pause button” – an imaginary red button in the middle of the forehead – while they stop and take time to calm themselves during a difficult moment. This is the “wait and cool off” choice from Kelso’s Choice for conflict management. When I taught this to my daughter many years ago, she reminded me to push my own pause button during a frustrated rant over a messy house that caused my stress to rise! I, in turn, had to improve my ability to take a deep breath, see my situation more clearly, and cool off.
To learn more exercises as well as games, songs and fables that teach kids mindful stress reduction, read The Mindful Child: How to Help your Kid Manage Stress and become Happier, Kinder, and More Compassionate by Susan Kaiser Greenland. Kaiser is a leading expert in teaching mindful awareness to children and teens. To learn how to use mindfulness to manage your own stress, take a mindfulness course, or read and follow the program in the book Mindfulness: An eight-week plan for Finding Peace in a Frantic World.
Helping kids to manage stress through mindfulness has been shown to positively affect their academic performance, as well as their social and emotional skills. They will become more thoughtful, resilient and empathetic. They’ll be better at making friends and playing team sports. It can also help them to overcome specific challenges like insomnia, overeating, ADHD, hyper-perfectionism, anxiety and growing pains.
