How to Ground Your Kids - The Hippy Way

Our seven-year-old neighbor recently told us that she can't wait to grow up and not be seven anymore. When I asked her why, she said it was because she hates when her dad grounds her. She told us that when she grows up, if her dad is still in the house, she's going to kick him out.

First of all, I had no idea people "grounded" seven-year-olds. I was under the assumption that grounding was a punishment typical of teenagers, in which their parents prevent them from going out with their friends. But what do I know. Maybe it also means not allowing younger kids to have playdates or birthday parties, or taking away certain privileges.

In our family, grounding takes on an entirely different meaning. In fact, my kids actually want to be grounded. Two nights ago, as my four-year-old daughter was falling asleep, she whispered to me, "Mom, I think I need more grounding." Then she passed out. Because for her, grounding is not a punishment. Grounding is not me taking away the things she loves or refusing to let her see the people she loves. Grounding is about connecting to our bodies and connecting to Mother Earth.

My kids have seen me say many times, "I think I need to ground myself" when I'm feeling stressed, overwhelmed, and anxious. They see me step outside, they see me sit to eat something, they see me practice Qigong. They've witnessed the transformation that occurs within me when I take a moment to intentionally reconnect with the earth and my body in times of stress.

More importantly, they've experienced this for themselves. Bella, my younger daughter at age 2 can't quite fully verbalize the experience in the same way my four-year-old Penny can, but the effect on her is obvious to see. Grounding is for times when our nervous systems need a reset, when we feel too much in our heads and disconnected from ourselves.

So how can we ground our kids the hippy way? Here are our family's favorites:

The first is through food. Simply eating can help, but we can take it a step further by eating foods that are particularly grounding. My children's favorites are carrots, potatoes, and peanuts. Notice a theme here? Where do all these foods grow? That's right: underground. But I tend to find any natural food to be generally pretty effective, connecting us back to earth. In the warmer months, raw vegetables and fruit are wonderful, and in the cooler months, warm and cooked is best. If we want to get even more hippy, certain foods are connected with the lower chakras and can help pull our energy to those areas of our body. Beets, lentils, strawberries, sweet potatoes, tomatoes, and red apples are just a few examples.

The next way is by getting our feet out and into the dirt, barefoot. Even just a few minutes of quiet walking can shift a child's mood. Better yet, get those little hands dirty, too. Penny and Bella love to go play in the mud. They also love to help garden and do yard work--not only does it ease their minds and bodies, but they are genuinely helpful, too, which gives them a sense of purpose and direction. We don't let winter weather stop us from grounding outside. Just skip the barefoot part and head out as bundled as possible. It's amazing how kids don't care how "bad" the weather is when they are properly dressed. If the weather outside is genuinely too hazardous to venture outdoors, nature connection can still happen from inside. Get the kids to help with the indoor plants, or simply spend some time looking out the window with them.

Breathwork is another excellent grounding technique. I find that breathwork works best (for adults and kids) if you practice breathing exercises when you are already feeling calm, so the exercises feel like second nature, and it's not as difficult to access them in times of stress. Ever tell someone "Take a deep breath!" only to have them get mad at you? Yeah, that's not what we're aiming for here. It's an art to find the line. You need to ask yourself "Is my kid too upset for this to be helpful right now?" and you need to assess whether or not they're ready for deep breathing to be a useful tool. Penny now sometimes will stop mid-anger to take a deep breath on her own without anyone prompting her, but this is only because she has practiced it while calm first many times. Even Bella has done it once on her own, too.

The only breathing exercise I teach my daughters is simple deep belly breathing. I have them put their hands on the lower abdomen (where the lower Dantian is located in Qigong/TCM- an important energy center), then I tell them to imagine their Qi ball inside their belly getting bigger with their inhale and shrinking with their exhale. They have fun picking a different color for their Qi ball each time. It never lasts long- we maybe do 3-5 breaths at a time, but that's all they need to set a foundation that helps them in the long run.

And finally, physical movement can be incredibly grounding. Penny and Bella almost always join me for a short Yoga or Qigong session, or we have a dance party in the living room. We've also done some walking meditation, but that isn't always as interesting, especially for a kid as young as Bella. Here's my secret to continuing my own Yoga and Qigong practice while involving my children: I never simplify the practices for them. I always do the poses or the sequences the way I would do them by myself, and I tell the girls that they can listen to their own bodies and do it in the way that feels easiest for them. I don't know if this would work with other kids; I could see it being frustrating for some. But it's worth a try, if you have a practice or a workout that you enjoy but don't want to oversimplify. Penny and Bella like the challenge, and they often stop and rejoin on and off throughout the practice. I never, ever force them to participate or do things a certain way. All I ask is for some space and some quiet if they don't want to join me, and they are usually good about it.

The other secret I have is that, while I don't simplify my movements or poses, I will add in some stories or play to captivate their interest. They have one Yoga sequence in particular that they really love, where we pretend we are snakes and then we sail away on a boat and eat some pretzels. The story doesn't have to be complex, or even make "sense." All you have to do is pique their imagination, incorporate their ideas, and see what happens from there.

So, yes, I suppose my very old-school Southern neighbor and I can both say that we ground our kids. I don't think he particularly enjoys grounding his daughter. But I certainly enjoy grounding mine.

If our focus as parents is on helping our children establish practices and tools for their own self-regulation (especially early on, but it's never ever too late to start), then we will find that turning to the conventional practices of rewards and punishments isn't even necessary in the first place. Not because these practices help our kids become perfectly well-behaved. It's because our focus is on helping them through their strong emotions, their mistakes, and their daily challenges, rather than on harming them and trying to force them into compliance. The resulting relationship is vastly different in the end. And a bonus is that maybe your kids won't want to "kick you out of the house" when they grow up.