Breathing Exercises and more Grounding and Anxiety Management with Young Children Series: Part 3 of 3

Welcome to the third and final part of our series in grounding and anxiety management with young children! For this three-part series we have been focusing on fun and simple activities that you can do with your child to help them better cope with their feelings of frustration and anxiety. This has proven to be especially needed as children (and parents!), have been dealing with the challenges of reduced school times and slow progress on the Pandemic front. Each video resource referenced is linked in the resources section at the end.

Breathe Like a Bear

This installment focuses on breathing exercises that are simple to comprehend, and fun to carry out. The breathing exercises featured are excerpts from the children's book: Breathe Like A Bear by Kira Willey. A large portion of the book is available on YouTube as read along/activity modeling videos. The advantage of these videos is that if you are working, or in general not in a position to go through these with your child, your kiddo can sit through them on their own.

This is also a good resource for households that have a language division. This division is most often seen in immigrant households where the parents primarily speak their birth language, but their American-raised children communicate best in English. The videos allow parents to still take advantage of teaching their children these breathing exercises, even if the parents themselves are not able to read the book to their kids.

Be Calm

This video features breathing exercises to calm your kiddo, and help them regulate their emotions at any given moment.

The exercises featured are:

• Candle breath
• Hot chocolate
• Flower breath
• Count to five
• Bear breath
• Your favorite color

Focus

This video has exercises to help your child be able to focus, and in turn be able to complete the tasks they need to do- whether at home or in school. The exercises featured are:

• Rainstorm
• Snake breath
• Waves on the water
• Be a bumblebee
• Listen
• Where is your breath?

Imagine

This video focuses on awakening and expanding your child's imagination. The exercises featured are:

• Clouds
• Kindness
• Imagine you're a tree
• Send good thoughts
• Create something new
• Today I'm going to be…

Make Some Energy

This video is a great one to get your kiddo moving and energetic if they've had a quiet day and are ready to get the wiggles out! The exercises featured are:

• 1-2-3 Clap
• Bunny breath
• Wake up your face
• Twister
• Hot soup
• Lion breath

Read the entire series: 

• Part 1
• Part 2

Serie en español:

• Parte 1
• Parte 2