Help your highly active child calm down with this free guided meditation

I work often with children who have been labeled with ADHD, being highly sensitive, or giftedness. Their parents usually arrive overwhelmed, feeling like they don’t know how to help their child calm down.

With these families, we work to help both parents and kids build more tools to understand what is happening in their bodies, learn to connect to themselves when they feel activated, and use tools to come back to center.

The following butterfly body scan is something I love to share with both kids (and parents!) as a tool to practice body awareness and self regulation. Parents and kids can do it together as a co-regulation tool when the whole family is bouncing off the walls! I also offer this to my adult clients when they are tired of “adult” meditations and want to add some play and lightness into their healing toolbox.

This exercise is great for kids ages 6-12 but could be useful for any child or adult.

Support your child in calming their nervous system with this audio recording of a butterfly body scan.

This exercise is also great for the “hypo-aroused” or “shut-down” child. Developing a greater sense of body awareness will allow any child (or adult) to connect more deeply to themselves and be able to come back to the present moment more fluidly when they naturally fall of center (which we all do all the time)!

Check out this article for more calming tools to support your child, particularly as it relates to COVID anxiety.