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Home › Articles › Health Issues › Holding Their Breath After the Sobs Subside

Holding Their Breath After the Sobs Subside

Should Parents Be Concerned When Children Hold Their Breath?

By Shannon McKelden

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"Protecting the child from harm is the first response," Dr. Shubin says. "Then, it has to be treated as an unacceptable behavior, with a behavior modification approach used, i.e. ignoring to extinction unacceptable behaviors and positively reinforcing desirable ones."

When They Do It on Purpose
In Atkins' case, her daughter doesn't use the behavior in a manipulative way. "It's more a matter of being overcome with frustration and crying so that it interferes with her ability to breathe properly," she says.

But some children do use holding their breath to get their way.

Brenna Lyons, a mother of three from Haverville, Mass., found this to be the case with a toddler for whom she provided childcare. This particular child had learned that holding his breath frightened his mother, and he used the behavior to take control of meals and what he would or wouldn't eat.

Lyons, however, had some experience with a niece who stopped breathing for medical reasons and knew what to expect. She offered to help, and his mother took her up on the offer.

Lyons began with the child's morning snack and lunch. "He tried holding his breath," Lyons says. "I let him and went about feeding my two children and the other two kids I had in care, ignoring it completely. After all, it's an attention device."

Finding that Lyons didn't provide the same reaction that his own mother did, he carried it a bit further. "When he tried getting under my face to show me his crimson cheeks, I told him that he'd have to wait his turn in his chair," she says.


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