Sometimes a deep breath can help
Can a meditation practice help kids with autism overcome sensory overload?
One hectic morning, in a rush to hustle my three kids out the door, I found my eight-year-old son sitting cross-legged in the bathroom, eyes closed, his hands resting gently on his knees.
He said he was meditating. I was skeptical, but the peaceful look on his face told me that whatever he was doing, it was working. Though my son had never started meditating by himself before, his occupational therapist incorporates mindfulness into his weekly sessions, usually with the Breathe Kids app.
My son has autism, and much of his occupational therapy centres on recognizing his emotional responses to stimuli and making appropriate choices about how to act on those responses. Mindfulness is helping him develop this because, to get better at self-regulation, he needs to understand the connection between his emotions and his actions. And when you pare meditation down to basics, what’s left is simply an attempt to forge connections: Between our minds and our bodies, our sensory input and behavioural output, our internal selves and the external world around us.
Nearly everyone can benefit from mindfulness, says Stephanie Pickering, a psychologist with the Seattle Children’s Autism Center who runs a mindfulness intervention program for teens with autism. There is little formal research on the benefits of meditation on children with autism, but pediatric occupational therapists have been unofficially using mindfulness with their patients for years. Sarah Selznick, a pediatric occupational therapist from Virginia, says meditation addresses three critical areas with which kids with autism struggle: Motor skills, sensory regulation and socialization. “Practising mindfulness allows kids to feel more in control of their body, which then leads to better sensory regulation and a decrease in social anxiety,” she says. Bailey Koch, a special education professor at the University of Nebraska at Kearney, knows firsthand how beneficial meditation practice can be for kids with special needs: She used it in her classrooms as a public school teacher, and now teaches it to future educators in her position at the university.
She also uses it with her 12-yearold son, who has autism and often experiences the kind of intense emotional meltdowns that are common for kids on the spectrum, in response to triggers such as minor disruptions in routine or unexpected changes in plans. “We primarily use mindful breathing for our son to help him when he is struggling with emotional regulation,” she says. Though meditation can be useful, Pickering says there are limitations, especially for kids who don’t have the skills to learn or practice it correctly, or lack a basic understanding of its purpose. “Lots of adults tell kids to take a deep breath, but a lot of the kids I work with don’t know how to do that,” says Selznick, “so we play a game using our breath to blow up a balloon.
“Other kids are turned off by the word ‘meditation,’ so we do things in a way that makes it fun, like walking meditations or pen and paper mazes.”
The idea meditation can take the form of physical activity may seem strange, but it’s a necessary approach for kids who can’t keep their bodies quiet and still. For Ann Samson, a Torontobased program called Young Warriors was a lifesaver when her son was initially diagnosed with autism at age seven and was having difficulty managing his aggression and strong emotions.
The program, designed for kids with learning disabilities and mental-health issues, combines mindfulness and martial arts to show kids the power of their minds and bodies.
“My son learned a mindfulness technique they called ‘sword breath,’ where you hold your hand out in front of you and raise your ‘sword’ up and down as you breathe in and out,” says Samson. “It was amazing the first time he did it. We were so relieved to see him using the tools.”
Now 13, he no longer has an official autism diagnosis; the criteria has changed in recent years, and many kids find themselves on and off the spectrum throughout childhood.
Still, he continues to struggle with many of the same issues. But he’s able to talk to his parents about what is causing him stress, Samson says, and she thinks the mindfulness techniques helped him develop those skills.
“He can say, ‘I’m getting angry at home when I feel like I’m not being heard.’ He has an element of awareness (he didn’t have before).” Pickering encourages parents to practice meditation alongside their children so they can experience the benefits and understand how their child’s comfort level grows with time.
If teaching a child to meditate — and sticking with it long enough to see its effects — sounds intimidating, there are resources to make it easier.
Many meditation apps for adults, such as Headspace and Calm, can be used by older kids, and there are several apps designed for children. YouTube has dozens of guided meditation videos for kids, and kid-friendly relaxation scripts use familiar sensory descriptions, like the sound of leaves crunching in a forest, to calm them.
There are also interactive books that can help kids learn mindfulness.
Pickering likes A Handful of Quiet: Happiness in Four Pebbles by Thich Nhat Hanh, Sitting Still Like a Frog: Mindfulness Exercises for Kids (And Their Parents) by Eline Snel and Moody Cow Meditates by Kerry Lee MacLean.