Mindful Moments Blog

Often in the world of respectful parenting, there is this idea that parenting with intention means always being calm and happy with our kids. This is a fallacy. Here's why, and what to do instead. 

In our culture, we are accustomed to training children through pain. We are fooled into thinking it’s good because it works, but it only works for a short time, and the reason it works is heartbreaking. Here's what to do instead of punishment.

How do we straddle the line of expressing emotion in front of our children while letting them know that they are not responsible for our feelings? The process can be vulnerable and uncomfortable, but this is often how it feels when we commit to breaking cycles of generational wounding.

For all of you who deeply love your children AND deeply feel the assault to your senses that parenthood can bring, solidarity. You are not alone. Here are 3 tools for you to manage the sensory overwhelm. 

When we learn to suppress unpleasant emotions as a child, we become adults whose conditioned self masquerades as our authentic self. This dampens our human experience (and affects our mental health and parenting). Here's how to break the cycle. 

We subconsciously believe that if our children are misbehaving, then we did something wrong and we take action from a place of guilt. Here's how to flip your perspective and move from connection.

Improve emotional well-being with a feeling chart for adults. Enhance awareness, communication, and resilience with mood charts and emotion charts.

Many of us believe that if we can remain calm no matter what and teach our children to do the same then we have successfully mastered self-regulation. But true regulation has nothing to do with achieving a certain state. It's in noticing and responding to whatever emotion you are feeling.

In all of our loving intent, we sometimes commit parenting DUI's, which can send our children into a protective response. Here are 3 ways to break the cycle, not only for your child but for your inner child, too.

Teach kids how to feel, not NOT to feel. Seems a little weird to think about, doesn’t it? Teaching kids how to feel. I mean, most days it seems like they have that part down pretty well. Their emotions, especially the unpleasant ones, fly out of them as all sorts of behaviors. They whine, cry, hit, snatch the block, or use their whole body to communicate their wants and desires. Our emotions are energy in motion. They are always looking for a way to be expressed. Our children know how to feel the sensations in their bodies, but they have yet to learn how to share them in productive ways. So when I say “teach kids how to feel, " I mean orienting them to notice and communicate in healthy ways instead of suppressing and denying. A pretty tall order for us parents - to teach how to feel, especially when we were taught NOT to feel. That’s where I was… standing in a big puddle of “What do I do now?” until I found the Time-In-ToolKit. Having all the feeling posters and activities in one kit seemed like a really good starting point for me – a busy mom who really didn’t have time for more on her plate. Fast forward to receiving the ToolKit and reading the manual, it became clear that these tools weren’t only to help me guide my son, but they were a compass for my internal climate too. I had this a-ha moment, realizing that parenting my son started with me. Him managing his emotions started with me managing mine. The first thing we did was set up our family Calming Space together, hanging our posters, and filling the area with a cozy bean bag, stuffies, mantra cards, sensory toys, and other activities my son favored. He was excited to have a nook in the house that was dedicated to “mama time” as he called it. We spent weeks taking little trips to our space, reading, cuddling, coloring, and basically following my kiddo’s lead in play. I found that these moments became the balm to our sometimes stressful days. Because play is so motivating to our children, I decided to use it as a starting point to teach my son about his feeling sensations. We began with the basics – happy, sad, calm, and mad. We talked about what those emotions felt like in our bodies. We played feeling bingo and charades. We mimicked our feeling faces in the mirror. We read stories, pausing to notice the characters’ feelings. And, for a few minutes each night before bed, we shared: When did I feel happy, sad, calm, and mad today? Now am I going to say that when my son had a meltdown he automatically went to his Calming Space to share how he felt… no. Sometimes he initiated it. Sometimes I did. Sometimes he wanted to go. Sometimes he didn’t. But the more we practiced, the more he seemed to make those connections. And because I have been reading up on brain development, I trust that as we prime his brain with repetition and consistency and as he matures neurologically, he will be able to access all of our co-regulation experiences to self-regulate down the road. While he may be a 20-year-old-something at some point with emotions similar to his two-year-old self, my hope is that he will be more prepared to know how to feel and express them given the foundation we are establishing now.  When it comes to me using the ToolKit for myself, am I going to say that it totally curbed my adult meltdowns? No. There are times I yell or resort to impatient parenting. Those generational cycles are hard to break. I like to think of myself as a work in progress. But the more I practice using the Corner myself, the more I am able to model self-awareness, boundaries, and emotional control for my son.  I will never be a perfect mom, and there are many things that I will surely do that cause me to wonder if it was the “right” thing. But this, this I know deep in my soul that I am on to something here, everyday building connection with my son as I parent and re-parent our home. 

Is it just me or does something happen to our children when they turn three, four and five? Like all of the sudden emotions are more potent and behaviors are more exasperating. Here's why, plus 4 tips to help your child's nervous system regulate amidst all of these changes. 

Undoubtedly, the most frustrating moments in parenting are those that happen to us every day. When we understand what is causing our frustration, we are able to move from connection. Here are 3 tips. 

While it is often a hot topic and a buzzword, it turns out there are many misconceptions about self-regulation. Here are four.

When it comes to getting your child to listen, tricks and bribes only go so far. Eventually your kids will wise up to them, and because these tactics evoke a fight or flight response, they will rebel. Here are 3 tools to increase cooperation so that your kids want to work with you (instead of against you). 

Research has shown that dance has social-emotional benefits. When we communicate with our bodies, we are not expected to make sense of things. We just move, and this movement taps into deeper, more primal feelings. Read more. 

Teaching your child to hit or scream into something when angry may train their brain to link anger and aggression, creating a counterproductive cycle. When it comes to calming strategies for kids, the internet has provided a vast array to choose from, but not all of them are backed by research. In fact, some of the most recommended tips - punching or screaming into a pillow and stomping feet, for example - are actually not good strategies for calming down. But let’s back up.  Anger is a normal emotion. We often give it a bad rap because unchecked anger can certainly lead to behavioral problems, aggression, and violence. But anger itself is not bad. There are no “good” and “bad” emotions. All emotions are data, and if we listen to why our anger is visiting and what it has to say, we’ll find that it has great value.  Anger may visit to help us: Protect ourselves from a threat Motivate us to solve a problem Defend our values and beliefs Inspire social action and justice Gain a sense of control While we typically think of calming strategies as a way to deal with anger, that is not the only emotion for our children to regulate. Over-excitement, fear, worry, jealousy, embarrassment, guilt, overwhelm, and silliness are just a few more examples of emotions that may need calming, though please note that calm and regulation are not the same!  Calming Strategies are Really Regulating Strategies Regulation is being able to recognize and modulate your emotions. It has nothing to do with achieving a certain state, but rather regulation is having your response to whatever emotion you are feeling be in your control. It’s mindful awareness, connecting with yourself and your emotion to listen to your needs at that moment, and this is what we can teach our children.  The message isn’t “don’t be mad” but how to be mad. Not “worry is useless,” but here’s how to calm your anxiety. When we label emotions as bad, we shut down important messages, but when we show our kids how to recognize, name, and regulate those emotions, they’ll learn true emotional intelligence.  According to a paper from the National Scientific Council on the Developing Child (2004), the emotional life of toddlers and preschoolers is complex. Notably, the authors say, “The emotional health of young children is closely tied to the emotional and social characteristics of the environments in which they live.”  While differences in temperament are part of their biological makeup, their experiences are coded in their brain circuitry, and what we both model and teach regarding emotions affects how their brain circuits get “wired.” The early childhood years are critical for learning positive ways to deal with one’s emotional world as the brain's emotional center and the prefrontal cortex (where empathy, reasoning, and self-control lie) rapidly develop. This is the ideal time to introduce your child to The Time-In ToolKit and to create a Calming Corner in your home. I’ll discuss a little more about how to incorporate these tools in some calming strategies below. The Calming Strategies That May Do More Harm Now back to my original point. It turns out that strategies such as punching a pillow, stomping feet, screaming into a cushion, etc., may do more harm than good. I once thought these were appropriate tools to “get the anger out,” but research now tells us that these actions do not help us calm down. In fact, they continue the adrenaline rush that fuels the hostility. Iowa State University psychologist Brad Bushman, Ph.D., says, “Expressing anger actually increases aggression.”  He and his colleagues asked subjects to write an essay and to inspire anger, they handed it back to them with brutal critique. Next, the essay writers were asked to deliver bursts of noise to either the person who had insulted their paper or an innocent bystander. Angry participants who’d hit a punching bag before administering the sounds were twice as cruel in their choice of noise length and volume as those who had just sat quietly before performing the task. Furthermore, “they were aggressive toward both types of people,” said Bushman, “and that’s scary.” In fact, teaching your child to hit or scream into something when angry may train their brain to link anger and aggression, creating a counterproductive cycle. The rush they get from releasing aggression may become addictive. It may quickly become difficult for your little one to keep the hitting to the pillow! 5 Calming Strategies to Help Your Child Regulate Their Emotions 1. Help your child name their emotions The Feelings Faces Poster included in The Time-InToolKit is great for helping your child identify what they are feeling. They can then choose one of the activities from the Calming Strategies Poster to practice. This interactive Feelings Poster guides children through the process of emotional regulation by first helping them identify what emotion they are feeling and then providing suggestions for different fun activities they can use to help them calm their bodies. 2. Incorporate mindful movements Teaching your child how to move their body mindfully to create feelings of relaxation and calmness is beneficial. Inversion is a remarkable calming tool as it stimulates the parasympathetic nervous system, producing feelings of relaxation and calm. Here are three mindful movements to try: Downward-facing dog. Begin on your hands and knees, curl your toes under, straighten your knees, and lift your hips! This is a relaxing inversion exercise! Stand like a flamingo. Simply balance on one leg and then switch! Palm presses. This is a good mindful movement for when your child needs to remain seated. Simply have them close their eyes and press their palms together firmly. Focus on the breath and the feeling of the palms.  3. Engage the five senses This grounding exercise for calming anxiety and stress will also help dissipate anger. Choose one sense (sight, smell, hearing, feeling, taste) and focus attention on it. For example, ask your child to look (sight) for the red objects in the room and name them. Red bear. Red cup. Red pen. Likewise, feel different objects around you and name their texture. Soft bear. Bumpy cardboard. Smooth tile. Continue this exercise until your breathing and heart rate slow to normal.  4. Teach breathing exercises  Teach breathing exercises such as blowing out finger candles and elephant breathing. The first is self-explanatory but for elephant breathing, teach your child to clasp their hands together and raise their arms up high (like an elephant’s trunk) as they take a big breath in. Now exhale and bend at the waist, taking the arms (trunk) down and between the legs.  5. Teach children to do a body scan  Start at the top of the head and scan down to the feet, noticing any tension or bad feelings in the body. Relax the parts where tension is felt. As it turns out, these calming strategies are great for adults too. Ask me how I know. ;) Practice these regularly with your child when they are calm and happy so that they will feel more natural when it’s time to use them. It will take time and consistency for this to become a habit.  As always when talking about child development, it won’t work 100% of the time, but teaching these calming strategies now will help your child build positive lifelong skills and increase their emotional intelligence. And remember, connection and PLAY are the world's very best teachers.

Misbehavior is really a way of saying “I need help” when the words will not come. We wouldn’t answer “I need help” with “you’re in big trouble.” We’d say, “I can help. Here I am.” Answer the distress call. This is where true change begins. 

In the midst of a meltdown, five-year-old Rudy and his mother Natalie Fernando were met with kindness from a stranger. The man's shocking actions helped regulate her child. Fernando shares: When you see a parent and child struggling, offer compassion, not judgment. And that's exactly what Ian Shelley did.

These positive communication tips will create a family culture where children and adults alike are spoken to with respect and listened to with love. Children live what they learn at home, and all of their future relationships will benefit from having learned these important and positive skills early in life.

Today I'm sharing two social-emotional skill-building activities I wish EVERY child and every adult in the world knew.  These two skills make up the ABCs and 123s of emotional intelligence. They are free, simple, easy, and dare I say, even fun to practice.  In the following 18-minute video, I walk you through these skill-building activities for building emotional intelligence in your home or early childhood classroom. This video is for parents and educators, and it can be shared with tweens and teens as well! Tune in and learn: What are the three skill sets that lead to higher emotional intelligence in children and adults? What are two ways children can practice these skills on a daily basis? How do these practices help us manage things like depression and anxiety with toddlers, teens, and right on into adulthood? Thank you for learning more about Generation Mindful's mission to raise an emotionally healthy world. If you believe every child deserves to learn about their emotions, join our 1M+ online community of parents and educators from around the world who are making it safe for kids to feel.  And check out these additional articles: 5 Ways To Nurture Emotional Intelligence For Kids 10 Simple Mindfulness Activities For Kids To Build Emotional Intelligence Emotional Intelligence is More Than Naming Emotions Teach Children How to Regulate Emotions Using A Calming Space Classroom Time-In ToolKit® Bundle GENM's social-emotional learning (SEL) tools take a positive, relationship-based approach to nurturing emotional intelligence in the classroom. Our ... View Product Positive Parenting Mood Meter model to learn time-in-toolkit emotional regulation emotions social emotional skills Time-In ToolKit emotional intelligence