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Every parent is doing the best they can, but there are times when it feels like nothing you do is ever good enough. Everyone seems to have an opinion and there’s no shortage of advice on how to be a better parent. Raising happy, confident, and resilient children is the most important job in the world – but in our fast-paced twenty-first-century society, the challenges can feel overwhelming and exhausting:

· Do you feel like you’re constantly being judged for the decisions you make?
· Are you forever fretting about whether you’re doing enough to help your child through their problems?
· Are you struggling to navigate your child’s school pressures or the pitfalls of social media?
· Has your home become a combat zone?

If you recognise any of these stress points, give yourself a break: this book really can help you.

In Five Deep Breaths, clinical psychologist Dr Genevieve von Lob draws on her extensive experience with hundreds of families from all walks of life to provide simple, practical support for parents. Based on mindfulness, psychology and neuroscience, this reassuring guide will show you how to be kinder to yourself and trust your own judgement when dealing with dilemmas faced by every parent. With examples based on real mums and dads showing how to defuse tension, drama and anxiety in the home, stressed-out parents will discover a sense of confidence, calm and balance – both for themselves and for their children.

Note to the reader

Welcome to Five Deep Breaths. I wrote this book to share the work I do with families with a wider audience, and I hope you will find it a valuable and inspiring companion on your journey as a parent.

For the sake of simplicity, I have tended to refer to parents as ‘mums and dads’– though the word ‘parent’ can of course mean different things to different people. For some, a parent could be a grandparent, aunt, uncle, friend or stepparent, adoptive parent, foster carer or guardian. Some parents are in same-sex or transgender couples, and all come from different ethnic, religious and cultural backgrounds. Throughout Five Deep Breaths, the term ‘parent’ is intended to include all this diversity.

I am a chartered member of the British Psychological Society and the Health and Care Professions Council, and abide by their codes of ethics. I have not used any confidential material from my therapeutic work with clients in this book. All the ‘case studies’ featured in these pages are made-up composites designed to illustrate different themes I encounter in my work. All names are fictional, and any resemblance to real people is purely coincidental. I have also drawn on extensive interviews with parents who kindly agreed to discuss their experiences with me for the purposes of my research and gave me their consent to use the material anonymously in this book. Where reported speech appears in quote marks, it should be read as a paraphrasing to illustrate a general point, rather than a direct quotation.

It should be noted that the word ‘mindfulness’ can have different meanings in different contexts. In Five Deep Breaths I define ‘mindfulness’ in its broadest sense to mean the ability to step back and observe our thoughts and feelings. The ‘mindfulness’ exercises I have outlined are not drawn from any particular religious or contemplative tradition, but are based on the work I do in sessions with parents. There are various excellent books by psychologists and researchers who provide their own versions of mindfulness exercises, and I have listed a number of them in the References (here) and Resources (here). I have also provided references for the research from psychology or neuroscience I quote in the text.

Five Deep Breaths is not a substitute for professional support. I have included a list of helpful resources including organizations, websites and books on specific topics (here). Although I discuss mental health problems including anxiety, panic attacks, depression, ADHD and others, a detailed exploration of these and other medical conditions is beyond the scope of this book.

Some of the exercises I describe could potentially cause you to experience strong emotions. If at any time you feel you need more support, I would recommend you seek professional advice. Above all, I hope Five Deep Breaths will be a source of encouragement and reassurance that will endure long after you’ve turned the final page.

Part I

You

Ripping up the rule book

On the face of it, I might seem like the world’s least qualified person to write a book for parents, having no children of my own and having grown up in a less than conventional family setting. I’d therefore like to take a moment to explain how I became a clinical psychologist working with hundreds of parents, teenagers and children from every conceivable type of background. Having spent years in both private practice and front-line NHS and local government mental health services, I’ve had the privilege of helping many mums and dads find their own answers to the dilemmas of modern parenting. Every day I’m awed and inspired by the courage and creativity of the parents and young people I meet, and I wrote this book to share something of the lessons we’ve learned together along the way.

My mother, Amanda, was a seventies wild child who in her late teens moved into a hippy commune in Norwich, where she scraped by singing in pubs and clubs. By the time I was born, she had grown into a headstrong twenty-two-year-old and I suspect my arrival was not entirely planned – I never knew the identity of my biological father. My mother later told me that having me spurred her to seek a clearer direction and on a whim she started singing lessons. To everyone’s amazement, she beat intense competition to win a scholarship to train as an opera singer at the Royal Academy of Music in London. Determined to fulfil her ambition of becoming an international mezzo-soprano, she bundled me up along with a suitcase and moved us to a council flat in a tower block in Stepney Green. I had just turned two.

Though I could always sense my mother’s love, our life together was a confusing juxtaposition of the grind of surviving in an almost penniless single-parent household on an East End estate and the glamorous world of opera, where I served as her shy sidekick – to the amusement, delight and sometimes consternation of her colleagues. Constantly dashing between rehearsals and classes, she would plonk me backstage, where a flamboyant cast of actors, singers and musicians arrayed in ball gowns or period costume would extravagantly fuss over me – an incongruous presence in the decidedly adult world of Mozart and Verdi. To my child’s eyes, the immaculately made-up women looked like angels. Tiring of the attention, I would embark on lone expeditions deep into the hallowed corridors of the Academy – charting my path via the trill of a piano scale or the flourish of a clarinet. I dreaded returning to our tiny flat, where my mother was forced to accept a procession of lodgers to pay the bills. These strangers – as a child I called them ‘the creatures’ – would turn up unannounced, doss down on the sofa and help themselves to the meagre contents of our fridge.

My mother loved to share her beautiful voice and would warble scales as she did the housework. Her soaring mezzo tones were so powerful that I once saw her break a glass – causing her to collapse into giggles. But even her joyful octaves could not lift the oppressive atmosphere of the estate. I would regularly miss meals because she would run out of money, or she would be stuck at rehearsals as I was passed around among neighbours, and I was jealous of my mother’s boyfriends, who often behaved as if I didn’t exist. I can vividly remember the wash of relief I felt when, at the age of four, it was decided that I would temporarily return to Norwich to live with my grandparents while my mother completed her studies.

Despite our tough start, my mother’s opera career began to blossom. She started doing television and theatre work and planned to set up her own travelling opera company so we could live together in Norwich. She put down a deposit on a beautiful Victorian house and took me to see my future bedroom – a wonderful converted attic. I couldn’t wait to move in. The next morning, I was watching children’s television when my grandparents did something unusual: they turned off the set and sat down with me on the sofa. They told me that my mother had been killed in a car accident while driving home to London the previous night. I was nine. My relatives were consumed by such grief that they found it impossible to talk to me about my feelings because they were struggling so hard to contain their own. I poured my pent-up emotion into an obsessive devotion to music, spending almost every spare minute of my childhood and teenage years learning to play the piano, dance, act and sing.

The next turning point came during my first year at university. I had been offered a place at a prestigious drama school, but my grandparents could not afford the fees and so I began a psychology degree instead – though I still harboured secret dreams of following in my mother’s footsteps as a professional performer. One sweltering afternoon in exam season I was opening an antiquated sash window in the halls of residence when I slipped and fell. The glass shattered and I was rushed to hospital gushing blood from a deep gash in my right palm. My first thought was that I may never again play the piano.

While the injury was bad enough, the most painful part of the experience was the way the over-stretched medical staff seemed to look at me as dispassionately as if I were a specimen on a slab. It was only months later, when a physiotherapist showed a genuine curiosity about how I was feeling, that I felt anybody really cared. She spoke to me with such kindness that I broke down. Though our months of work together would save my hand from curling into a permanent claw, I was equally grateful for the interest she showed in my inner world. I realized that my future lay not in the performing arts, but in learning to extend to others the listening ear the physiotherapist had offered me. I embarked on the decade-long path of study needed to become a doctor of clinical psychology.

The doctoral training was unlike any other educational experience I had encountered. Our instructors encouraged us to work with our own childhood wounds to try to understand our present-day conflicts and troubling emotions. It was only by doing this work on ourselves that we could hope to be of use to anybody else. During the course, two more major life events occurred. When I was twenty-six, I lost my cousin Graeme – who was like a brother to me – to leukaemia. The following year I discovered the body of a flatmate – one of my best friends – who had died in the bath. Coupled with my losses in childhood, these experiences left me with a profound sense of unresolved grief – but they also served as a spur to the interior work that would later help me to reach others trapped in their own dark tunnels.

Throughout my journey, and my subsequent work with clients – from angry East End teenagers to stressed-out City executives – I have learned the value of exploring unwanted feelings. So often our dark moods or fears can seem like enemies; they can leave us feeling isolated and alone. But life has taught me that there is a way to work with these emotions and find the peace that lies just beyond them – if we can muster the courage and curiosity to keep going forward. As we progress, we may catch ourselves experiencing unexpected moments of calm or subtle joy that occur for no particular reason, like rays of sunlight that spill through a sudden break in the clouds. The goal is not to chase these revitalizing encounters, but to begin to build a new foundation for our lives in the pristine layer of peace that lies beneath the ever-changing kaleidoscope of our thoughts and feelings, whether we call them bad or good.

How ‘mindfulness’ can help parents

When it comes to raising children, there’s no shortage of advice on offer. Friends, family, magazines, books and blogs – all are brimming with opinions on how to give your child the best chance of growing up happy, bright and successful. With so many options available, and so many contradictory theories, it’s easy to start questioning whether you are making the right choices, or even secretly to wish there was some definitive manual on how to be a parent.

Five Deep Breaths is not that manual, because such a manual could never exist. Every child is unique, and the society they are growing up in is changing so fast that what may have worked yesterday might not be so relevant today. Some parents tell me they could never have imagined the weight of responsibility they would feel for somebody else’s well-being until they experienced the joy of becoming parents themselves. It’s all very well for experts to say that it’s good for a child to undergo a few knocks and setbacks from time to time – but in reality, what parent wants to see their child suffer, even for a moment?

This book explores one simple truth: however great the pressures on modern mums and dads, there is always a way to lighten the burden – available right now, in this very moment, without the need to make any radical lifestyle changes or adopt a whole new parenting style. The core idea is ‘mindfulness’, which I define as the ability to hover above our thoughts and feelings so we no longer feel quite so overwhelmed. Whether it’s dealing with day-to-day frustrations or more serious bouts of anxiety or depression, I have found that mindfulness is not some high-minded aspiration, but a sharp-edged tool anybody can learn to wield.

Let me be clear: Five Deep Breaths is not about striving to achieve some mysterious Zen-like state or finding a new reason to beat ourselves up when we lose it with our kids. I’m not going to be asking you to start getting up an hour earlier to sit cross-legged at sunrise, or to book your next summer holiday in an ashram or a monastery.

It’s not about putting pressure on ourselves to be gracefully ‘present’ at all times, then feeling guilty when this inevitably proves impossible.

Five Deep Breaths is not about doing something extra, but about bringing more awareness into what we’re already doing. With so much on our to-do lists, our minds are often racing: skipping ahead to the next task or over-thinking what’s already in the past. This is a perfectly natural tendency, but the fact that everyone’s mind is on overdrive doesn’t make it any less exhausting.

Mindfulness offers a simple way to step back. This book will help you to remember to take the kind of little pauses to check in with yourself throughout the day that can make all the difference – taking the edge off stress and gradually helping us to connect with deeper dimensions of ourselves. We learn to meet each moment as utterly new and unique, and experience the natural openness of our minds and hearts. Old patterns start to lose their grip and we may discover that for all life’s uncertainty and fragility, an undercurrent of peace and even joy may be much closer than we think.

As parents, we learn to become more comfortable with the fact that much of the time we’re just doing our best to muddle through, and that’s okay. Parenting inevitably involves periods of worry or doubt, and for anybody navigating choppier waters, I hope Five Deep Breaths will be both a reassuring companion and a source of practical guidance on how to tune in to your intuition and deepen your connection with your child.

Mindfulness has nothing to do with getting it ‘right’. There’s not a human being in history who has had the perfect upbringing, and any attempt to be a perfect parent is doomed to fail. There is no one-size-fits-all formula: everybody’s experience as a mum or dad is different, and nobody will ever fully understand the unique set of challenges another person faces. Even within a family, siblings can have completely contrasting personalities and relate to their parents in different ways, while raising a child who has a disability or long-term illness can present its own set of dilemmas. Nevertheless, having seen how mindfulness has helped many parents from a wide range of backgrounds experience a greater sense of confidence, ease and flow, I wrote Five Deep Breaths with the goal of offering the essence of my one-on-one work to a broader audience.

In the following pages, I show how mindfulness can help us move from the kinds of feelings shown below on the left to those on the right:

Though mindfulness can undoubtedly deliver greater clarity, it is much more than a technique to help us complete to-do lists on time or strive to ‘get ahead’ in life. In essence, mindfulness is about opening the heart as well as quieting the mind – cultivating kindness and compassion for ourselves and others as well as greater mental clarity and calm. It certainly isn’t about blissing out in a bubble and turning away from the many problems we’re facing – whether they stem from the limitations of the school system, the gap between rich and poor or the violence being done to the natural world. I’m not offering a pill to make injustice more palatable or a distraction from the urgent task of challenging government incompetence or corporate greed – quite the contrary. As we begin to pay greater attention to what is going on in our own minds and bodies, we may discover a newfound sense of connection with the living web of our communities, nature and the planet as a whole. Mindfulness can help nurture precisely the kind of inner strength we will need if we are to take wise – perhaps radical – action on behalf of ourselves, our children – all children – and the generations to come.

While the practice of mindfulness has ancient roots, these are particularly exciting times for anybody choosing to explore it. For centuries, monks and sages have handed down techniques for establishing interior peace, but modern researchers equipped with powerful brain-imaging machines have begun to piece together theories as to why some forms of long-term meditation practice might be so beneficial. Neuroscience is also shedding new light on the ways young brains develop, and in Five Deep Breaths I have boiled down some of the most important insights into bite-size chunks designed to better equip a parent to respond to a younger child’s meltdowns or a teenager’s sullen withdrawal. I have also mined some of the most striking nuggets from the growing dossier of evidence on the benefits of mindfulness practice compiled by fellow psychologists. In my work with parents, I often find such research can provide an extra dose of motivation for giving the techniques a try and for sticking with practices that yield their richest rewards over time.

An invitation as you read

It’s human nature to look outside ourselves for solutions. Parents often come to me when they are struggling and say, ‘Just tell me what to do!’ Or they may wish there was a ‘magic pill’ to solve their problems, even though they know at a rational level that this would be impossible. This book is not trying to be that ‘magic pill’ and it does not have any answers. What it does contain are tried-and-tested methods that I use to help parents develop their capacity to respond creatively and intuitively to any dilemma. The emphasis in this book is not on what you are doing, but in how you are being – a subject we explore in more depth in the next session. We begin to see that the endless striving to arrange circumstances to suit us never ends, but that we can find peace in the here and now. We may have the feeling we are seeing through fresh eyes, and gradually learn to look at our experiences from a new perspective.

Our culture has not traditionally placed much value on cultivating these kinds of qualities – the emphasis tends to be on striving for the sorts of success everybody else can admire: a great career; a wonderful relationship; model children. Yet it is the work we do on ourselves that has the power truly to transform our experience of being alive, investing our days with a sense of meaning and interconnectedness that can be profoundly reassuring, even in the darkest times. In my experience, these kinds of inner changes are inevitably reflected in the outer world of family, friends, relationships and career – though often in ways we might not expect. While there are many practical tips in these pages, the emphasis is on learning to trust the guidance of your head, heart and gut – the power centres where the wisdom of what I call our ‘inner parent’ resides. As we start to feel our thinking in this way, we may begin to find we develop a greater trust in ourselves and in our choices.

This journey is the work of a lifetime, but it takes only a single step to begin. For those embarking on this path for the first time, I hope this book will prove a reassuring guide, a ‘pocket-therapist’ that you will carry with you and return to again and again. For those who have already ventured forth, then I hope Five Deep Breaths will provide further encouragement and new vistas drawn from my experience working with many different kinds of families facing every imaginable problem.

Some sections may speak to you more clearly than others. There is no need to learn all the tools or practise all the exercises, but if you find a particular suggestion appeals, then I would encourage you to try it for a few days and see what happens. You may wish to underline or highlight sentences or bullet points that seem particularly relevant, or jot down notes in the journal section at the end of the book. If nothing else, glancing at the title Five Deep Breaths will serve as a cue to take a few seconds’ pause – and this book will have done its job without leaving your shelf. There is no need to rush through these pages, and I would invite you to pause occasionally and reflect for a moment whenever you see the ‘∗’ sign.

Towards a HEART-centred connection

In the last few years, there’s been an explosion of interest in children’s mental health. The media has increasingly featured stories quoting alarming statistics about the prevalence of anxiety, depression or self-harm among young people, as well as exam stress, potential dangers online and bullying. Once of concern primarily to parents, these problems are now being discussed by politicians, teachers and health professionals across Britain, and have even caught the attention of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, who are supporting the work of children’s mental health charities and campaigning against stigma.

It’s great to see this growing public acknowledgement of the need to support children who are struggling and to break down the remaining barriers around discussing our mental health. But we must not forget that children are like tuning forks: they will pick up on what the adults around them are going through, even if these adults are doing their best to keep their true feelings hidden. In my experience, children’s ‘symptoms’ are often best understood not as evidence of an individual ‘disorder’ but as a reflection of the stresses swirling around them: at home, at school and in their communities. Few need to see a trained therapist, but they do need an authentic connection with someone who cares. As a mum or dad it can be painful to overhear a child saying, ‘My parents just don’t get me’ or ‘They never listen to my side of the story’ – but with all the pressures on families, it can be hard to maintain the quality of relationship we might wish.

If we want to see happier kids, the first step is to help parents feel calmer, more confident and centred so they can provide the kind of compassionate, firm and intuitive leadership a child needs in order to feel nurtured and safe. I like to summarize the key components of this kind of connection with the acronym HEART:

● Humility. A willingness to accept that we are not perfect, but we simply do the best we can in the moment while aspiring to live by our values.

● Empathy. Empathize with your child by remembering to take a moment to try to see the world through their eyes. Recognize that they have legitimate concerns and views.

● Authenticity. In our busy lives as parents, stress can easily take over. The daily grind leaves us little space to explore how we truly feel. Authenticity is about having the courage to look at what’s really going on for us. We all have ideas about how we’re meant to feel and how we’d like to be seen by others. Practising authenticity is about being honest with ourselves, our children and the people closest to us.

● Respect. Respect is a two-way street, so respect yourself as an experienced adult whose well-being is just as important as that of your child. And show respect for your child by acknowledging that, while you may know more, they too have valuable lessons to teach.

● Trust. Trust yourself and your child, and believe that you can both handle life’s ups and downs. Give them a chance to make mistakes in a safe, contained way that allows them to learn and grow.

Of course, all this can sound wonderful in theory, but the messy reality of modern parenting is rarely quite so simple. Nevertheless, children will have a much better chance of thriving if parents have access to tools that can help them provide the kind of calm and confident leadership they need. The rest of this book is about finding ways to embody these HEART-centred values – first in your relationship with yourself, and then with your child.

Dilemmas of the modern parent

Five Deep Breaths is not going to tell you what kind of parent you should be. My aim is to encourage and support you to look within – to be your own guru and listen to your own guidance. In my work, I’m struck by how many parents find it difficult to trust themselves. No matter what background they may have, or what particular issue they are facing, the core of the problem often consists of a lack of self-worth or a feeling of not being good enough. These are not the kinds of feelings we tend to discuss, but they have reached epidemic proportions in our society. So before we even begin to start working with mindfulness in my sessions, I find it often helps to share a broader perspective on the challenges of modern parenting to prove to worried mums and dads that they are far from alone.

We belong to a unique generation. We tend to be more open about our feelings than our parents or certainly our grandparents, and more aware of the influence our own upbringing may have had on the way we relate to our children. This greater level of self-awareness means that parents these days are often more willing to admit that they feel they’re not getting it ‘right’ or that they’re struggling with problems, such as anxiety or post-natal depression. Whether they reach out to friends or therapists, or share what they’re going through online, parents are more open and more prepared to express their concerns than ever before. Blogs documenting the many difficulties of raising kids have reinforced this new culture of honesty around parenting and provided a valuable sense of solidarity for many mums and dads.

This greater self-awareness is a wonderful blessing in terms of helping us to understand ourselves and others. But it can also foster a gnawing fear that our children will fail to fulfil their potential or even resent us when they’re older if we fail to conform to our model of an ‘ideal’ parent. Or we may start over-analysing – worrying that we might somehow be projecting an unaddressed conflict within ourselves on to our child. While the ease with which we can now read about the everyday struggles fellow parents are facing might be comforting, it can also feed niggling doubts about whether we’re doing enough for our own children. In today’s technology-driven and consumerist society, there seem to be so many choices to make. Which school? What should they be eating? How much time on the screen? What about social media? How about time for outdoor play and connecting with nature? What activities should they be doing? Are we setting the right limits? Are we spending enough time with them?

Answering these questions is hard enough, but in our hyper-connected online world it’s easy to feel that we’re constantly being judged. It’s as if we’re addicted to comparing ourselves with others – and it’s so easy to do as it’s only a click away. Here are some of the themes that often surface in my conversations with parents:

● Parenting as a competition. It’s natural for parents to want to do a good job, but I’ve noticed that many are increasingly telling me they feel as if they have been unwillingly thrust into an unspoken competition. Mums and dads often experience intense pressure to provide the same toys, phones, computers, activities or holidays as other parents because they don’t want their own children to feel left out. Parents can also find themselves competing intensely to get their child into the ‘right’ school. It’s very easy to think you’re failing or not giving your kids enough opportunities, even though we all know deep down that forming a strong emotional connection with our child is more important in the long run than anything money can buy.

● Feeling judged. Working mums and dads can find themselves silently at odds with those who have given up their jobs to become full-time parents, injecting the same level of professionalism into making fancy-dress costumes or cupcakes as they did into their careers. Full-time mums or dads may, in turn, mourn the loss of their work status and feel that their partners undervalue the contribution they make. They may even feel resentful about dedicating these years entirely to raising a family.

● Pressure-cooker classrooms. Academic demands on children are constantly growing. One fourteen-year-old girl told me she was struggling to sleep at night because she was so anxious about the pressure placed on her by teachers – themselves under pressure to meet targets. Another anxious teen told me she was convinced she would end up homeless if she did not pass with flying colours. One child who was refusing to do his homework told me he’d been at school all day and needed a better ‘work–life’ balance – and he was only eight. Everyone wants their child to do well, but many parents are concerned that their children are being put under too much pressure by a ‘factory-farm’ school system where assessments are being conducted at ever younger ages. Academic research has shown that play is essential for healthy brain development, but recreation is increasingly being squeezed out of timetables.

● Time famine. For many parents, balancing the competing demands of the workplace, parenthood and perhaps caring for their own older parents can seem like an impossible task. Days can turn into a struggle just to keep your head above water and you may feel constantly stretched to the limit.

● Criticism – from self and others. Sometimes our parents, friends or relatives may offer well-intentioned advice, but usually our harshest judge is ourself. All of us have inherited a template – perhaps without realizing it – of what an ‘ideal’ family should look like. We may find ourselves struggling to live up to impossible goals, or driven to over-compensate for what we perceive as our own parents’ failings. Or we may fear that people will interpret our attempts to set appropriate limits as a sign of emotional coldness or a controlling personality, and that they will perhaps conclude that we don’t really love our child.

● Digital dilemmas. Social media is magnifying peer pressure – for children and their parents. Young girls pout for selfies, teenagers constantly compare their looks with those of their peers or media stars, and old-fashioned bullying has migrated into cyberspace. Many mums and dads are also concerned about what kind of images their children may be exposed to online, what they’re reading and who they may be communicating with. Parents feel the pressure too – bombarded by endless pictures posted by other mums or dads, or stories of celebrities who seem to have the perfect family, the perfect marriage, the perfect body and the perfect life.

● Building resilience. We all know that children need opportunities to learn that it’s okay to make mistakes or experience failure. Only by working through challenges and overcoming setbacks can they develop the resilience they will need to navigate the inevitable ups and downs of adult life. But it can be hard to strike a balance between letting your child explore and take risks and the discomfort you may feel when they struggle. How do we know what’s right?

● A drought of self-compassion. In our society, we’re all much too hard on ourselves. We’re brought up to believe that ‘success’ is all-important, whether it’s at school, in our jobs, in our relationships and especially as parents. We can spend a great deal of energy pushing ourselves – and then beating ourselves up when things don’t work out as planned. This harsh attitude can easily spill over into our attempts to be a little calmer. When we try mindfulness for the first time and notice how busy our minds are, we immediately conclude that we’ve ‘failed’ and end up feeling worse than when we started. Similarly, many of us hold ourselves to impossible standards as parents and find it very difficult to accept that being ‘good enough’ is okay.

The stakes have never been higher – not just for parents, but for society as a whole. There can be no more important task than providing a firm foundation for the next generation to grow into independent, well-balanced and resourceful adults brimming with inspiration for building a better world. Yet with all these dilemmas to face, and all the conflicting advice, it’s easy to feel that as a parent, you just can’t win.

Five deep breaths

Sometimes when a mum or dad comes to see me, they know they feel bad, but they don’t know why. They often judge themselves harshly for feeling this way because they are aware of other parents who seem to be cheerfully coping with much more difficult problems. They say things like, ‘Quite honestly, I had a great childhood – I had wonderful parents, I went to a nice school – generally things have been good. So why don’t I feel happy? Why do I feel like such a complete failure?’

Everyone’s life is complex and it’s not always obvious where the stress is coming from. As humans, we have a wide range of ways of responding to difficulties, but there are a number of common patterns that can play out when we feel that something is wrong in our lives:

● Worry. We constantly think about a problem or imagine worst-case scenarios. We believe at some level that it’s good to expect the worst, even though the stress of so much worrying wears us down.

● Self-blame. We put pressure on ourselves by imagining that we should be doing ‘better’ in our lives, or that things have gone wrong in some way and that we are responsible. We imagine that if only we had acted differently, then everything would be okay.

● Denial. We refuse to look at a problem and pretend to ourselves that everything is fine, even when we know deep down that things aren’t quite right and we need to address difficult issues.

● Feeling empty. Many of us are not content with where we are in our lives and believe that our circumstances have to change in order for us to feel better. We spend much of our energy chasing after the next relationship, a new job, more money, special possessions, social status or the next holiday. We might feel good when we get what we want, but soon the craving for more returns.

● Overdoing it. Whether it’s working too hard, drinking or eating too much, or numbing ourselves with shopping, television or digital distractions, it’s easy to find ways to run from our feelings. Of course, these activities can be very enjoyable in moderation – but they can become harmful if they are being used as a mask to hide underlying unease.

We will be exploring a wide range of ways to step out of these kinds of patterns throughout this book, but the simplest and most effective starting point is something so familiar we barely even notice it – our breath.

For many people, the idea that an act as simple as paying a little more attention to the way we inhale and exhale air may yield very tangible results sounds almost too good to be true. ‘You’re telling me to breathe?’ was the irritated response from one dad. ‘I do that anyway.’ People tend to be more eager to discuss their very real problems, rather than to devote precious time to acquainting themselves with an activity that seems to happen perfectly well all by itself.

Nevertheless, bringing greater awareness into the way we breathe is perhaps the single most powerful tool for rapidly gaining greater clarity and self-awareness. The breath is the link between our body and mind, and science is very clear about why paying more attention to it can be so helpful.

Picture a car speeding down a motorway at 100 mph: that’s the build-up of stress. Taking slow, deep breaths engages something called the Vagus nerve, which acts like a brake. This huge nerve connects our brain with our heart and other major organs before meandering all the way down into the depths of our gut. (The word vagus in Latin means ‘wandering’ – the word ‘vagabond’ has the same root.)

When we breathe deeply, the Vagus nerve has a soothing effect: our heart rate slows, our blood pressure falls and we reduce production of the stress hormone cortisol. We also strengthen the pathways in the brain associated with a sense of calm. The next time you feel stressed, take five deep breaths and feel your entire body soften and your frazzled feelings start to fade. (Recent studies have shown that the Vagus nerve also responds to human connection and physical touch, so a hug works too.)

Try It: Mindful breathing

Notice how you are breathing. Bringing your attention to your breath for even ten seconds has a noticeably calming effect on the body. Is it shallow or deep? Are you holding your breath, tightening your stomach or hunching your shoulders?

● Inhale deeply through the nose for a count of five, making sure that the tummy expands. It can help to imagine it filling up with air like a balloon. There’s no need to strain. If it feels unnatural to breathe into the belly, then simply breathe as deeply as you can into your chest.

● Hold the breath for a count of five. If the mind wanders, gently come back to the breath – without judging yourself for losing focus.

● Then exhale completely through the mouth. Really feel like you’re letting it all go. The out-breath should take a little longer than the in-breath.

● It can be helpful to place your hands on your tummy so that you can really feel the expansion and contraction as you breathe in and out.

Repeat this several times until you are feeling a little more relaxed.

Breathe more deeply, live more deeply

The beauty of this practice is that it’s easy to make it part of your daily life – it’s simply a question of bringing more attention to what you are already doing all the time. I find many parents benefit from building little reminders into their day to take five deep breaths until it becomes a habit. For example:

● Take a breath every time you find yourself waiting for the kids in the morning/before serving dinner/before putting them to bed.

● There are also apps that you can program to remind you to breathe (see here for some suggestions).

There’s no great mystery to this exercise – it’s just a way of tapping into our in-built relaxation system. Change doesn’t happen overnight, but as you familiarize yourself with your breath, you will discover an anchor-line that you can always use to return to the present, no matter how much your mind wants to rake over the past or worry about what might happen in the future. By learning to breathe more deeply, we learn to live more deeply in the only place and time there is: the here and now.

The ‘frenemy’ within

It’s 6:23 a.m. You’ve just managed to roll out of bed and stumble bleary-eyed into the kitchen in search of a coffee, only to find your six-year-old bouncing with energy and determined to play. She has her own ideas about what an enjoyable start to the day looks like – and it doesn’t involve getting dressed for school. She’s much more interested in rebuilding the den she made out of cushions in the living room last night. Meanwhile, your eight-year-old is in his room, slumped into his pillows and no doubt already immersed in Minecraft on the iPad, while your thirteen-year-old still hasn’t woken up. You have only one goal: to get all three dressed and fed and out the door with a fighting chance of making it to school on time, preferably with their teeth brushed and their shoes laced. ‘Muuuum,’ your six-year-old says, suddenly bored of her den-reconstruction project. ‘I know you won’t say “yes”– but can I watch TV?’

It’s only the hundredth time you’ve had this conversation – and the outcome will depend purely on how exhausted you’re feeling. In this case, you decide to put your foot down. Your six-year-old scrunches up her face and says, ‘I don’t even like you,’ before storming off to her room, where you can be pretty certain she won’t be getting ready. By this point, your thirteen-year-old has dragged himself out of bed and is asking if you’ve got his gym kit ready and found his missing homework. As you serve breakfast, all three siblings start arguing with each other. Your six-year-old spills her juice, runs away from the table and starts chasing the dog.

I don’t know if I’m doing the right thing.	I’m handling myself better as a parent.
I feel overwhelmed and I can’t think straight.	I’m more confident and I’m being kinder to myself.
I’m not sure if I’m a good enough role model.	I feel a greater sense of connection with my child.
It’s all my fault.	I’m better at managing my children’s moods – and my own.
I’m always being judged.	I’m learning to trust myself.

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