Breathe Like a Bear

Wow

Not fun

Bought this for my son. He is quite peaceful but has tantrums once in a while, like everyone else. We read it and did the exercises and he tries it when he gets upset. I love the practical examples of the hot chocolate or the candle. Great book!

Ótimo.

I cannot tell you how impressed I am with these books. All the books have a moral lesson, bit like Aesop's Fables. Twelve books in the series and I bought them all. With the impending birth of my first Great Grandchild I wanted to leave a legacy, if you like. Beautifully illustrated and written, each book stresses the importance of the last 20 minutes in the day, when you read to your child before bed, snuggled together, breathing together, ensuring security and the feeling of great love and kindness in a spirit of mindfulness. The books engender kindness to ourselves and others.

Nine months ago our 3 kids moved in with us (now ages 4, 6, and 8) and we finalized the adoption a couple months ago. They have been through immense trauma and have made incredible progress, but we still sometimes struggle with helping them to calm down from anxiety, fear, anger, and manic episodes. We have tried so many techniques but this seems to be the one that consistently works and here is why I think that's the case: 1. Each meditation is bite-sized. The brevity makes it seem more do-able to my kids even when they are extremely dysregulated. 2. The illustrations are engaging, inviting, pleasant to look at, colorful. 3. The imagery in each meditation makes it easy for kids to focus on their senses - for example, holding a candle or a cup of hot chocolate. 4. There are enough meditations to choose from that the kids can easily find one they feel like doing in any given moment without it being the same thing every time. 5. Even though I'm the one reading it to them and making them do it, it helps that the instructions are coming from a third party (the book) so that it's not just Boring Mom and Dad telling them what to do. We have mainly used this book in two ways. One is as a transition from our bedtime routine into getting in bed. We have them turn on their flashlights and sit in bed and we turn off the overhead light. Then we read one or two of the meditations for relaxing and we all do it together. After that we are able to turn off their flashlights and have them lay down for reading time. It sets the tone for bedtime and the kids really love it. The other way we have used the book is when one of the kids is really dysregulated. Our 8yo gets into manic episodes where she laughs hysterically, pushes her sisters, breaks every rule, etc and for the life of me I could not figure out a way to get her out of this mode. The other day when she was in one of these modes, I pulled her aside and had her do a few "be calm" meditations from the book with me and like magic she was a functioning child again. We also used it with our 6yo when she got into a spiraling tantrum where she just got herself into more and more and more trouble and couldn't stop. I told her she could earn back the privileges she had lost if she did a few meditations with me, and she just kept wanting to do more of them even after she had earned it back already. It really helped calm her and turn things around. I'm sure there are a ton of ways to use this that we haven't taken advantage of yet. But so far just in these two different use cases it's been extremely helpful.

Beautiful ideas to make relaxation breathing exercises fun and easy for young kids