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Areas › Your body › Grounding and settling
Attention difficulties run in families, so the adult in the room is often working with much the same wiring at the end of a longer day. Practising together takes the spotlight off the child and quietly changes the thing they actually live inside, which is how you are with them. It also gives them a model that does not arrive as an instruction.
It is God who has given you a place of rest in your homes (Quran 16:80). The home is named as where rest is meant to happen, which puts the parent's own state squarely in the picture.
النحل
وَٱللَّهُ جَعَلَ لَكُم مِّنۢ بُيُوتِكُمۡ سَكَنࣰ ا وَجَعَلَ لَكُم مِّن جُلُودِ ٱلۡأَنۡعَٰمِ بُيُوتࣰ ا تَسۡتَخِفُّونَهَا يَوۡمَ ظَعۡنِكُمۡ وَيَوۡمَ إِقَامَتِكُمۡ وَمِنۡ أَصۡوَافِهَا وَأَوۡبَارِهَا وَأَشۡعَارِهَآ أَثَٰثࣰ ا وَمَتَٰعًا إِلَىٰ حِينࣲ
It is God who has given you a place of rest in your homes and from the skins of animals made you homes that you find light [to handle] when you travel and when you set up camp; furnishings and comfort for a while from their wool, fur, and hair
Qur’an 16:80read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
Kindness based meditation practices showed positive effects on wellbeing and on compassion towards oneself and others across randomised trials, though those trials were small and often lacked an active comparison group. Warmth towards yourself and towards the other person is precisely what comes under strain in a difficult evening. The evidence is encouraging rather than strong, so treat it as worth trying.
Galante J, Galante I, Bekkers MJ, Gallacher J. (2014). Effect of kindness-based meditation on health and well-being: a systematic review and meta-analysis.. Journal of consulting and clinical psychology doi
Strength of evidence: long taught, never tested. Widely used and long taught. No trial has established that it works.
A calmer adult changes the whole household, which is more than any child can do for themselves.
On a video call, two things still work well: touching your own face gently, and rocking. Both are yours to do, and both are visible enough to be done together.
When you sit down to breathe, notice your pelvis. Tucked hard under or tipped hard forward both squeeze the breath; somewhere in the middle lets the diaphragm move.
If you have spent thirty years being told you are careless, lazy or too much, no attention technique will touch that. Kindness practice, aimed at yourself, is the part that does.