How does your child breathe?

No child should snore was one of the things I learnt early on in my training. It totally blew my mind as I knew so many parents and children who did snore!!

This was one of the reasons I wanted to pursue a path to support and coach other parents/schools about catching these habits/conditions early on, so children can follow their dreams and ambitions in life, not be limited by attention issues, lack of focus, behavioral issues, sleep problems, asthma, hay fever….the list goes on. Issues that impact children’s fitness, confidence and dreams to achieve what they really want in life.

Our breathing patterns communicate directly with the brain every time we take a breath. These signals affect our bodies in so many different ways, from chemical reactions within the body, how safe we feel, efficiency of oxygen to the organs, tissues and cells, our levels of inflammation within the body which we now know is the key factor for most illnesses and diseases we face today.

I am committed to coaching the basics of breathing patterns with parents and children so they grow up with the knowledge and skills we seem to have lost over the years, resulting in the many mental and physical health issues young people face today.

By changing habits early on, children gain an understanding of their bodies and learn skills for life. 50 years ago we did not have the technology or devices we all rely on now. Technology is great, but the negative impact I see from this is the postural changes we all face, looking down at our screens has a direct result on our breathing patterns.

Face shapes have changed over the last hundred or so years and one factor is baby/infant feeding and the softness of food. Faces have become narrower and this can restrict the airway resulting in breathing pattern changes.

Parents know the importance of breast feeding which provides your baby with specific antibodies/nutrients in addition to developing the structure of the palate, jaw and airway. The sucking action needed to draw the milk shapes the jaw, palette and develops the cranial structures in the skull, which bottle fed babies don’t have to do via a man made teat. There has been some developments in teat structures over the last few years and now some teats on the market for bottle feeding actively encourage the baby to work in a similar way to breastfeeding.

The softness of food has also played a huge part in impacting the development of the jaw. When babies become infants and start to eat the food adults eat we often still choose foods that require little or no chewing which we now know is vital for cranial, jaw and airway development.

When our children get older, we see over crowding of teeth and the need for extraction/braces. There is so much research and continues to be a lot of research on this. Looking back at skulls from over a hundred years ago, jaws were wider and teeth were not crowded or crooked.

Extracting teeth and allowing braces to bring the teeth back in line actually makes the jaw (maxilla bone) smaller and narrower. The goal in many cases would be to widen the jaw and more dentists are now doing just that.

A narrow jaw structure means it’s harder for a child to nose breath as the tongue cannot rest in the roof of the mouth easily, sealing the lips and breathing through the nose is difficult, it can feel like you can’t get a good breath and feels suffocating, mouth breathing is easier and therefore becomes the norm. We ALL know how frightening it feels to not be able to breath easy.

Try this…Face a mirror….
Take a deep breath in/out through the mouth. Do you breathe using the upper chest/shoulders? Do you feel dizzy? Was the length of your breath short?
Now switch to a breath in/out through the nose. Is the flow slower/longer? Do you feel like your breathing is from lower down in your body? Do you feel calmer??

remember breathing through nose slows the RHYTHM down, warms, moistens & STERILIsES the air , Mouth breathing does not! nasal breathing can improve reaction times, improve memory, concentration and adaptability/resilience.

There is hope, you can change this habit. All that’s required is some time and practice. Just like you need to practice/train the body/mind to play an instrument, learn a language or train for a marathon, we need to train our bodies to breathe the way we were meant to. As a huge bonus children and parents learn the skills to control their nervous system. It was thought that the autonomic nervous system was just that, automatic, we could not influence it, but this has been proven incorrect.

Lets give the next generation the best start in life, life skills we should all have access to. Let’s give our children the power to understand their bodies/minds and power to adapt to the challenges we all face in our daily lives.

If you would like me to come and visit your school, nursery or group …

As a parent myself I wish I had been given guidance and support on breathing patterns from my health visitor. Not only would I have been able to implement the basics to my children from a young age but as a family we would all have had skills to focus, concentrate and self regulate to look after both our mental and physical health.