Q: My daughter gets very worried and stressed about all sorts of things. I try telling her to calm down, but it doesn't help. How can I help her get more centered and calm when things aren't going her way?

A: It sure ain't easy being a kid these days. If TV and movies weren't bad enough, now reality itself is getting us down, with images of war and torture piped into our homes on a regular basis.

Plus, we're told the world is now flat, meaning globally hyper-competitive, so we pressure our kids into hyper-achievement so they don't have to work for remote managers in Bangalore and Bangkok when they grow up.

And that's on top of all the normal childhood angst about friendships and identity and why are my front teeth so bid, and so on.

Stressed yet?

Symptoms of Stress

Stress shows up in our kids in many forms. Stress can cause physical symptoms: headaches, stomach aches, joint pain, dry mouth, queasiness. That's right, your kid may not be faking sickness because of the upcoming math test. That test may actually cause thoughts that lead to illness.

Stress can also wig out our kids emotionally. Mood swings, depression, rage - these can baffle us when they seem unrelated or out of proportion to the immediate trigger.

Stress also takes a mental toll. Confusion, inability to remember the state capitals and to put their dirty clothes in the hamper, and general mental sluggishness can result when the body is in the grip of fight or flight.

What is Stress?

Stress is a physiological system in the body that exists to prevent us from becoming lion food. When we sense danger, we have to do it quickly, before our big brains get a chance to go to town with defining and dissecting and all the stuff our big brains like to do. So we have a system that literally goes around the conscious mind and makes decisions based on very little evidence. Its motto: better safe than sorry. Anything that seems like a threat gets treated like a threat. Hit it or run away from it (fight or flight) and ask questions later (actually, never).

This system has worked well enough to get us alive from the Stone Age to the Industrial Age to the Information Age to whatever age we're in now (the "Post-Red Sox winning the world series age"?). But it comes with a cost, especially for us big-brains. You see, our brains are so imaginative, we can create threats just by thinking.

Try it now. Go with me for the next couple of sentences and see what happens:

Guess what - while you're reading this, you've completely forgotten about an important meeting with your boss! You're in trouble now!

Did you gasp? Did a rush of adrenaline flood your body? Did your heart start beating faster? Did your skin blanch? Do you like pina coladas?

We can take a concept (late for a meeting) and turn it into a saber toothed tiger. So our body, trusting our big brain (which after all can do impressive things like long division and sudoku and sexual fantasy), sends out the chemicals that turn us into a fight or flight machine.

Relaxation: The Antidote

Lucky for us, the fight or flight response isn't the only fast-acting system at our disposal. We also have a relaxation response, which instantly shuts off the stress response and makes us feel all warm and fuzzy and cosmic. The trick to Stress Busting is to practice turning on the relaxation response when we're not stressed, so we can access it when we are.

The simplest way to access the relaxation response is to take a deep breath. Try it with me now. Come on, I don't care if you feel silly. It's not like I'm telling you to open your checkbook and write a check for $2500 to the Howie Jacobson Relaxation in Belize Fund. Just take a deep breath, in through the nose, feeling the cool air going in. As you inhale deeply, hunch up your shoulders and clench your fists. Now let go and exhale with a big sigh. Drop your shoulders and smile as you exhale warm air through your nose.

There. Now you're relaxing. No matter how stressed you were, your body shut off the stress response. When you hit the brakes, you automatically take your foot off the accelerator.

If you feel much better, you can keep going. When you're approaching blissfully swell, take out your checkbook and  - ah, just kidding!

Resources for Kids

To help our kids Stress Bust, we have to give them two gifts: a mindset and a toolbox. The mindset is basically this: you can't always control what happens, but you can control your response to it. Things don't cause you stress. Your interpretation causes you stress.

CD: Peaceful Moments for Kids

A great teacher of mindset is my friend and teacher Greg Lynn Weaver, spiritual director of the PeaceWeavers. I drove up to the PeaceWeaver retreat sanctuary in Bath NY, which, if you Google Map it (product placement opportunity there, Mapquest!), is 12 hours away from my home in Durham NC, just to record Greg Lynn's "Peaceful Thoughts for Kids" onto CD. It's not a classic "meditation CD" - rather it's short reflections, very conversational, that guide kids into calmness and balance.

It's called "Peaceful Moments" because each track focuses on a specific moment in your child's day: waking up, brushing teeth, eating, taking a bath, getting ready for bed, etc. Some of the moments are related to feelings rather than events - how to have a peaceful moment when you're scared, angry, sad, happy, grateful, etc. Greg Lynn uses events and emotions as triggers to breathe and focus on our own wellness and happiness.

Here are three sample tracks for you to listen to or download to your kid's iPod. (What? Your kid doesn't have their own iPod? No wonder they're stressed.)

Introduction

Brushing our teeth

Feeling angry

If you like what you hear, you can buy Peaceful Moments for Kids here:

Computer Game: Journey to the Wild Divine

We gave this to my daughter last year for her 10th birthday. It's a beautiful game, with gorgeous music and lush graphics, and it kept her (and her friends, and her brother, and her parents) interested for a long time. I'm not a big computer gamer - in fact, Wild Divine is the only computer game we own that doesn't teach the times table or something equally sad - but in this case, I'm 100% in favor of the technology and its function.

Instead of controlling the game with a joystick or keystrokes or a flailing Wii console that's about to crash through your 48" plasma TV (try staying centered and focused when that happens!), players achieve desired outcomes through biofeedback. Three finger-thingies (that's a technical term) gently connect to your fingertips and measure skin conductance and heart rate variability. By breathing and relaxing, you can juggle balls, affect the flight of birds, and levitate stones.

If you've never tried biofeedback, you're in for a real treat. We may accept the concept that our thoughts are real and can impact the world, but when you're magically floating a boulder and you think of something unpleasant and the boulder plummets, it's eye-opening. I'm so glad that my kids have gotten that experience. I'm also thrilled that they're learning skills of relaxation, including breathing, awareness and thought control.

Journey to the Wild Divine is available here.

Hope this helps!