When we experience stressful emotions, our brains need extra oxygen to reset and start functioning again.  Deep breathing can help a child come back from stressful emotions, **temper tantrums**, and can also help prevent meltdowns by keeping them in their rational state.  By teaching children how to take deep breaths when they are feeling upset, they can learn how to manage their emotions, calm down quickly, and control their behavior without the need for punishments or rewards. 

Everybody can benefit from deep breathing, even newborns.  **Read more about emotional regulation in newborns here.**  It’s important not only to help keep you calm, but it also helps set the foundation for emotional regulation in children.  

Deep Breathing and the 4 Steps to Emotional Regulation

Deep breathing is an important part of Healing Through Parenting, because it allows children, and adults, to access the rational parts of their brains so they can problem solve and learn new skills.  Deep breathing happens when you take an intentional deep breath to get oxygen to your brain, which helps reset and recenter yourself after a moment of upset.  

Deep Breathing is Step 3 in the ***4 Steps to Emotional Regulation**, which you can read more about here.  After you identify (Step 1) and validate (Step 2) your child’s emotions, help them take a deep breath (Step 3) before you solve the problem (Step 4).  As you and your child become more familiar with The 4 Steps, you will notice they are able to take a deep breath on their own, and you won’t have to guide them through the whole process every time.  Following the 4 Steps will help you and your child come back from that emotional/survival state where fear and frustration live, and bring you back into your rational state where cooperation and connection can thrive.

Once you and your child take some deep breaths together, your child will feel calmer and more willing to cooperate because they feel connected and safe.  Not only do The 4 Steps help children calm down, they also help develop intrinsic motivation in children.  This intrinsic motivation helps them be more likely to cooperate and behave without needing ***rewards** or ***punishments** to behave.  Plus, it makes your job as a parent much easier when your child behaves because they want to, and you don’t have to keep controlling them.

Communicating Missing Needs

Our brains are made up of 3 brain states, rational, emotional, and survival, color coded green, yellow, and red.  **Read more about the Color Spectrum of Emotions here***.  When a child is misbehaving, for example, having a temper tantrum, running away, or talking back, they are not in their rational state.  These misbehaviors come from their emotional or survival state and happen when a need is not getting met.  

Maslow’s hierarchy of needs tells us that food, water, shelter, safety are our basic physical needs.  Love, connection, and accomplishment are our basic psychological needs.  In order for humans to reach their full potential, these needs must be met predictably and consistently.

Emotions are the driving force that get our basic physical and psychological needs met.  When a physical need is not met, such as hunger, it sends a person into their survival state.  When a child is in this state, you might see lashing out or meltdowns that magically disappear once you give your child a cookie.  When a psychological need is not met, such as not having enough safe physical touch, it sends a child into their emotional state and you might see destructive or attention seeking behaviors.  

If a child, or adult, doesn’t understand what their feelings are trying to tell them, they will likely learn to resort to maladaptive coping mechanisms to ease their feelings, instead of figuring out how to navigate the situation and make necessary changes.

As parents, we try to do our best to meet our children’s needs, but sometimes we can’t meet every single need because we might not know what those missing needs are.  Using the 4 Steps will help you identify the emotion your child is feeling underneath the misbehavior, then validate the reason they are feeling that emotion.  Then, you will be able to help your child take a deep breath to de-escalate the situation from red, to yellow, and back into green so you can problem solve and work together to find a solution.  Your child knows themselves better than anyone else, and if you take a step back and listen, they will tell you what they need.  

Breathe for Your Child

Andrea Zaccarao and colleagues did a systematic review on how deep breathing affects our psychophysiological mechanisms.  They found that taking a deep breath causes physical changes in our brains which affect our psychology.  Deep breathing helps strengthen emotional control and psychological flexibility, helps decrease anxiety, depression, confusion, anger, and increases relaxation and comfort.

In order for the 4 Steps to be effective, you must use them on yourself first and keep yourself in Green so you can stay rational and calm.  This will help anchor your child so they will know it is safe to feel their feelings, and you will not punish them for having feelings.  If you are in Green, you will be able to problem solve and help your child through any difficult situation.  If you are feeling upset or you feel like nothing's working, even after you’ve tried using the 4 Steps, just breathe.  Sometimes your child isn’t ready, and sometimes the situation can elevate you into yellow or red and that might influence the way you handle the situation.  

If your child is too upset to take a breath even if you have tried to do the 4 Steps, this is expected to happen once in a while, and quite normal.  If your child says no when you ask them to take a deep breath, don't force it.  Instead, take a deep breath by yourself and they will take a breath when they are ready.  

Non-verbal communication is the predominant form of communication, which every species understands.  We understand when a dog is angry, we understand when a squirrel is scared, we understand when a cat is affectionate.  We know how these animals are feeling because we know how to read body language and non-verbal queues.  

When we take a deep breath, our children understand the non-verbal message we are trying to tell them.  They are safe, it is safe to calm down.  Taking a deep breath is more effective than telling a child to calm down, as they understand non-verbal communication at a more honest level than verbal communication.  All you need to do is breathe with them and allow them to get through that surge of emotion until they're ready to come back down.  It might take a couple of minutes for them to process their emotions fully.  You have the power to teach your child how to breathe through any situation, as long as you demonstrate what that looks like consistently and predictably.

Deep Breathing with Newborns

Newborns rely on their caretakers to handle all of their needs.  Hunger, thirst, warmth, safety, rest, and connection are all a newborn needs to thrive.  Most often you might see parents holding their crying newborn and bouncing and saying “Shhh it’s ok, it’s ok, it’s ok”.  When a newborn is in their survival state, they don’t need someone telling them it’s ok, or bouncing them up and down.  If things were ok, they wouldn’t be crying.

What they really need is for their caretaker to hold them safely and gently, and just breathe with them.  Even though a newborn can’t take an intentional deep breath, they benefit from being held and feeling their caretaker’s calm and relaxed energy.  Newborns learn how to regulate emotions through their caretaker, and don’t learn how to self-regulate until 2-3 years old.  Doing deep breathing while holding your newborn helps set the foundation for emotional regulation.  If you start using The Snoanger Method when your child is a newborn, you might notice them trying to take intentional breaths around the time they are 8 months old.

Read more about how to help your newborn **stop crying**.

Remember That Breathing is an Option

It is empowering to create space for a child to choose what type of breath they want to take.   It is more important to connect and create a trusting bond instead of forcing a child to do something they are uncomfortable with.  

During Step 3, offer your child the option to choose what type of breath they want to do.  You can print out the **free PDF**, cut out the breathing techniques that your child likes, then paste them on a piece of paper.  Hang up your Breathing Poster somewhere that typically has a higher level of stress and where you encounter more conflict with your child.  Situations like diaper changes, brushing teeth, sitting at the table, getting dressed, putting shoes on, etc.  

If there is a situation that you dread throughout the day because it typically results in stress and conflict, hang the breathing poster where you and your child can see it, so you can remember that taking a deep breath is an option when you start to feel stressed.  Shift the dynamic from tension to relaxation so you can move forward through conflict.  Create a loving and safe bond with your child, regardless of the situation.

The hardest part about these steps is remembering that you have a choice, and you, and your child, always have the option to take a deep breath.