Healing Children's Hearts
By Dr. Caron B. Goode

Events of the magnitude of the recent terrorist attacks can harm young hearts and impair children’s respiratory systems. And when the result is a hurting heart, children are experiencing physical and/or psychological strain beyond their normal ability to cope.

When negative emotional reactions take hold in children, they can manifest as low energy, depression, aches and pains, even irritability. With this in mind, parents are wise to watch for these warning signs:

• Panting, shortness of breath or shallow breathing from the chest
• Difficulty remembering or focusing
• Excessive day-dreaming or tuning out
• Sadness or depression
• Complaints of aches or discomforts
• Complaints of heart beating too fast
• With active children, increased irritability, shortness of temper, aggressiveness, complaining, scowls, or unusually deep contemplation.
• With quiet children, deeper or longer withdrawal, unusual quietness, and longer time in front of television, computers, or games, no desire to speak about it, irritability, overt sharp reactions.

If your child experiences any of these symptoms, there are several things you can do to help. You can heal a hurting heart! Research has shown that emotional sustenance is critical to heal the immune system. The Institute of HeartMath in Boulder Creek, CA. demonstrated that when children are shown love, encouragement and emotional support, a resulting positive hormonal effect takes place in the body and lasts for up eight hours.

Furthermore, you can teach your children to change how they deal with distress. The key is to help children dissolve any physical or emotional symptoms that develop, no matter how severe. Here are some suggestions.

1. Give emotional support and nurturing. Visit a playground; take a walk in nature and laugh. Or see a movie or put on a family play just for the sake of laughing. Cuddle into story time with the Harry Potter adventures and let children enter a fantasy world for an hour. The fantasy is helpful, but the cuddling is most important.

2. Loving, gentle touch offers healing. Transfer assurance through a pat on the shoulder. Send love by touching your child's heart. Or convey safety and nurturing through holding or massaging your child's hand.

3. Let the heart talk. Anger, heaviness, sadness, anguish, grief, or cynicism—almost anything can be talked through. A technique for younger children is to place their hands directly on their hearts, close their eyes and imagine a smiley face in their chest, then let the smiley face talk. Get older children to express what is inside their hearts and get things "off their chests."

4. Let stuffed animals or puppets express what children can’t. Don’t push children who withdraw or become quiet under acute stress. Instead, use puppets or a favorite stuffed animal to speak for the child. Playful surrogates encourage expression without pressure.

5. Draw the heart and color the feelings. What color is your heart? How does joy look? What is the color of your sadness? When children don't wish to speak about things, pull out crayons and paper. Then draw a heart and speak about it aloud. "My heart broke into three pieces today. I'm going to color this one piece a bright blue, like the sky. The hurting piece here in my chest is like a dark blue..." Then encourage children and adolescents to draw their own hearts, put them back together or heal their hearts through color. This helps get internal feelings outside, thus easing stress.

6. Use music to soothe the heart. Soothing music, like lullabies or Hawaiian music, positively affects the immune system and lowers heart rates. What music is most soothing to your children? Try the Cosmic Waltz or the Lullabies for Little Visionaries from www.inspiredparenting.net. The Mozart Effect helps children mentally focus. Their web site, www.mozarteffect.com, also offers a wider selection of music for helping children.

7. Help children take compassionate action. For some children, the need to act is strong. The desire to be of service is a way to express their feelings in a positive way. Start at home. How can your child help you with a long-standing project? Do you need to clean out a closet or put pictures in a scrapbook? What can you and your child do in your community?

In the end, anyone who deals with or cares for children needs to be alert for the "hurting heart." It can show up in school or on the soccer field just as easily as in the home. War is under way. News coverage is continuous. The fear of another terrorist attack is real. So it is in the family and extended community that we can find the ways to keep hearts open to beauty, hope and laughter.

Copyright © Caron B. Goode.
Dr. Caron Goode is the founder of the Academy for Coaching Parents International, which trains and certifies mentors for parents and families. Sign up for the announcement list at www.acpi.biz. She is also the author of ten books, the most recent is Nurture Your Child Gift and teaches and speaks about whole child parenting. Sign up for the free online magazine at www.inspiredparenting.net.

Reach Caron at caronbgoode@earthlink.net.

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