I recently wrote something for School Breathe, I’ve pasted the link to the article below as there should also be a breathing exercise alongside this (https://schoolbreathe.com/blog-december-2021/).
This struck a chord with me at the end of last week and again at the beginning of this. I was watching one of the children I tutor struggling with their emotions. Another member of staff was trying to get the child to sit down and focus on a learning task. The child was distracted by knowing their mum was in school – which led to anger, frustration and the desire to run off. A stand off occurred with neither adult nor child moving forward. It was sad to see – as the adult didn’t know how to help soothe the child to settle and the child couldn’t switch their state. Neither one trying to provoke the other, but both doing just that.
Later that day myself and a couple of other members of staff (including the person above) were chatting about the child how difficult they found school – and the challenge he found in self regulating. Alongside this how much of a short, medium and long term impact this has on both this child and those around them. It really does make you wonder how effective daily integrated breath sessions could be – both for the teachers and the children that they teach.
The next day when I was working with the child, we did the breathing exercise I described above. It went down well. I’ll repeat this every time we work together, hoping that something sticks and begins to give some tools to help self soothe & regulate.
BreatheToMove 