What if You Could Cultivate Some Calm?

As parents and teachers, we know our job is to teach our children how to cope with friendships, exploration, learning, and new adventures. We also model and teach them social-emotional and self-regulation skills like the delicate dance of advocacy and empathy, how to speak up and how to listen, how to explore, and how to (figuratively) color within the lines.

They’ve got a lot to do and it can get overwhelming.

When they're little and tired or cranky, they have naps. In school, we have quiet time so that they can re-set for the second half of the day. When kids act out or lose control, we often use a spot to take a break or the "time out" place.  In my classroom, we also had a "meditation station," a feature I hear about these meditation peace spots now routinely from classroom teachers. It's generally a comfy spot to sit down to breath, relax, maybe draw and or watch fish in a bowl or image of nature. Ah….

We know these strategies help kids re-set when they lose control or feel overwhelmed. It allows them to move from the sympathetic nervous system’s fight-flight-freeze mode to parasympathetic nervous system’s rest-and-digest mode.  Then they are better able to think, reflect, and act from a more calm place.

So why is this so hard to do as adults when we’re cranky and overwhelmed?

Outcries of being "busy" have become the badges we wear and the norm of civilized life. But how utterly uncivilized to run around crazy busy, distracted, and multi-tasking.

Most of us are always on the run. Too many things on our list, too little downtime, and far too little sleep. We have the pressures of family, care-giving, and "doing it all."

• We are frustrated.

• We are lonely.

• We are sad or angry.

• We're disappointed.

• We think we are weird or flawed or most definitely alone.
  

Guess what?