A five-year-old isn’t going to sit down and do counted breaths. But they will blow. All of these games are the same technique in disguise, and they work because the child doesn’t know they are doing an exercise.
Blowing bubbles
The best of them all, and the cheapest. To get a big bubble you have to blow long, soft and steady. Exactly what we want: a slow, controlled out-breath.
It has an extra the others don’t: the bubble is an object that stays floating and has to be followed with the eyes. That adds sustained, gentle attention, which also regulates.
A bottle of bubble mix in the hall drawer solves a lot of afternoons.
Blowing out imaginary candles
You hold up the five fingers of one hand, each one a candle. They are blown out one at a time, one puff per finger, folding down each finger as it goes out.
It works anywhere and needs nothing: in the car, in the supermarket queue, in the doctor’s waiting room. And because you have to count, it occupies the head too.
The snake
Take air in through the nose and let it out as a long hiss, like a snake, for as long as it lasts. You can compete to see who holds out longest.
The advantage of the sound is that you can hear whether it is being lengthened or not, and that gives the child a control that silent breathing doesn’t.
The paper windmill
A paper windmill, the kind you get at a fair. For it to turn slowly and without stopping you have to blow continuously, not in bursts. The movement of the blades is the gauge, and it is also mildly hypnotic, which is what we are after.
Smell the flower and blow on the soup
For the youngest, two gestures they already know. You make the gesture of smelling a flower, slowly and through the nose. And then the one for cooling a spoonful of soup, long and through the mouth.
Nothing else needs explaining. It is four-six breathing in a language they understand at three years old.
How to actually use them
There are two different moments and it is worth not confusing them.
When things are calm, as a game and for no reason. That is where the learning happens. Two minutes on a Saturday, with no connection to any problem.
When things are hot, as an offer. “Shall we blow out candles?” If they take it, good. If not, you don’t push and you don’t repeat it three times, because then the game becomes an order and stops being any use for good.
And one detail people forget: do them too. An upset child with an adult blowing bubbles beside them calms down by two routes, theirs and yours.
What to expect
None of these games stops a tantrum that is already under way. What they do is lower arousal by half a point and, above all, rehearse a resource for a year from now. You are playing in the short term and building in the long.
More breathing games and how to fit them into the routine, in Corazones Valientes, Niños Sensibles.