Making emotions visual
We have a new gadget in the house. And whilst it’s a gadget it’s doing a really important job of helping my son to learn an important skill.
Like many children who suffer from difficulties with their emotional regulation, my son struggles because he flips from rational into ‘irrational’ very quickly, and is unable to ‘catch’ the point at which the reasoning and judgement part of the brain in the frontal lobe, switches off.
The part of our brains that is responsible for our safety, the amygdala, excels in switching off the frontal lobes when faced with a fight, flight or freeze situation. This situation can occur regularly in children (and adults) who struggle with emotional regulation. Once the frontal lobe is turned off, no amount of reasoning or appeals to their judgement will switch it back on, until the adrenaline rush that comes with a fight, fright or freeze response has run its course.
Many years ago I learnt about 5-2-5 breathing, as a way of calming heart rate and therefore ensuring that I keep my executive functioning running at the right levels. With 5-2-5 breathing you breathe out for a count of 5, hold for 2 and then breathe in for a count of 5, repeating until your heart rate comes under control. It is a useful strategy to use when you’re going into a meeting at school and are crippled by nerves.
Trying to engage my son in this has been almost impossible. He simply hasn’t been interested. Until now. We have recently taken delivery of a Mightier tablet. This is a tablet loaded with the Mightier app and which is linked to a heart rate monitor. When he plays games on the Mightier app he can see a visualisation of his heart rate.
The games are designed to deliberately raise his heart rate as they become more difficult. He has to learn to use breathing to get his heart rate back down and ‘into the blue’, or they become too difficult to play. By playing regularly he is building muscle memory and learning what it feels like for his heart to be racing, and how he can quickly get it back under control.
We’ve had the tablet for a couple of weeks and it is a hit with my gamer son, who is enjoying the games and seems to be developing the skills of managing his heart rate surprisingly quickly. The programme starts with a month or so of simply playing, building the muscle memory, before progressing into more conscious activities, and ultimately being able to transfer the skills to real-life situations.
I’m really impressed with the way that a previously abstract idea of calming your heart rate through breathing, as now quickly been grasped by him to a point where he has quickly mastered it successfully and is actively engaged in practice.
Visual feedback provides the missing connection and he is now able to engage. It’s a bit like the way Pinocchio learnt about telling lies when his nose grew each time he did so. He didn’t realise what was going on, without the visual feedback.
I will update you with our progress over the coming weeks, and if you’d like to take a look yourself you can check out their website here.
