Calming Your Insides Down by Chynna Laird

The most important lesson I’ve learned from my oldest daughter, Jaimie, is the importance of inner peace—or what we like to call, “calming our insides down.” For us this lesson wasn’t just good for our overall health; it was essential to Jaimie’s functioning.

Jaimie was born with Sensory Processing Disorder (SPD). SPD, also known as Sensory Integration Dysfunction (SID), is a neurological disorder that interferes with the brain’s ability to effectively process sensory information. The sensory organs take in information from the environment but the brain doesn’t know what to do with the messages it receives. I explain it to others as how one feels walking into a packed mall during the Christmas season: too many people, too much noise, so many different smells…that’s how Jaimie feels every day. Living with SPD causes tremendous stress and anxiety so teaching Jaimie how to calm herself is the main goal of each day.

We prefer more natural, holistic approaches to helping Jaimie cope with her SPD. To us—even though it was strongly suggested from the outset—putting a preschooler on anti-anxiety or anti-depressants was not an option. Allow me to share with you a few of the ways we keep our insides calm in our house.

Breathe. Any of us who practice yoga understand the importance of paying close attention to our breathing. It’s much more than feeding our brains and bodies with oxygen-rich blood to rejuvenate and regenerate. It also helps to calm us and help us to refocus when the world becomes too overwhelming. We get Jaimie to use deep breathing when she starts to feel her anxiety level rise because once it boils over, it’s too late. Reminding her to breathe in and out to a slow count of three for a few moments can calm her enough so she’ll talk about what’s wrong.

Feelings have names. All young children can have difficulty relating to their feelings. If they don’t understand what a feeling means or where it comes from, they aren’t going to be able to express it to us. If we teach children to describe what their bodies are doing when they experience a certain emotion, they’ll learn not only to name that feeling they’ll also be able to recognize how their bodies react to certain situations or experiences. And this is an invaluable lesson for SID/SPD children whose emotions can change almost minute by minute due to the level of their sensory sensitivity.

Voices are beautiful. Let’s face it, children’s first reaction to things most of the time is physical. It’s easier, faster and gets instant results—even if they are bad results. Unfortunately, adults act before taking the time to talk things out too and that’s where a lot of children learn such behavior. Teaching a child to use their voice, instead of physical reactions, to work through problems is important for their future relationships and interactions. SPD children are physically reactive by nature so teaching them to use their beautiful voices to communicate will help them to resolve issues (personally or with others) more peacefully. After all, we can’t make things feel better for them if they don’t express to us what’s upsetting them.

Do activities that calm. In our house, we have a box filled to the brim with different sorts of arts and crafts Jaimie can choose from to ease her anxiety. Things such as puzzles, coloring, bead crafts, Lego, board books or even PlayDoh are all simple but fun activities children can use to exert energy as well as help to refocus their attention. Jaimie’s favorite craft is PlayDoh. She can squeeze her frustrations out, tell stories while creating PlayDoh creatures or even use it as a way to interact with others.

The most important thing I’ve learned in teaching these things to Jaimie is that I—and all those around her—need to keep our insides calm too. After all, we wouldn’t be helping her much if we didn’t ease our own stress and anxiety in an appropriate manner. On days when I forget to practice what I preach, Jaimie is always kind enough to say, “Mama breathe and use your beautiful voice to tell me what’s wrong so I can help you feel better.”

What do you do to keep your insides calm?