There's not a parent alive who wouldn't be terrified the first time it happens. In the midst of a crying spell, suddenly your toddler stops breathing, turns red (or even blue!) and maybe even passes out or begins to twitch convulsively. It's enough to cause even the calmest parent to panic.

But most of the time panicking isn't necessary. Breath holding in small children is one of the most common – and thankfully, benign – childhood behaviors.

Is it manipulation when your child holds their breath? Or is it involuntary? While toddlers are certainly famous for figuring out how to generate responses from the adults around them, breath holding isn't always a matter of manipulation – at least at first.

Most often breath holding starts out as simply a crying spell that goes a step too far. For Michelle Atkins, a mother of three from Whitefish Bay, Wis., this is exactly the case with her nearly 2-year-old.

"She gets frustrated or upset, and when she cries, she passes out," Atkins says. "It doesn't happen every time she cries, but do you know that thing all babies do where they take a big inhale so that there's a big pause, and then they let out a huge cry? As a parent, you brace yourself because you know that little silence means a really loud one is coming. Well, when my daughter does that, she passes out when she lets out that cry. She turns kind of purple and loses consciousness for a few seconds."

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