Teaching children to be mindful 👧👦🧒

Mindful behaviors are great at supporting us to be present, open and kind with the magic in the ordinary and I highly recommend teaching kids mindful behaviors as early as you can so the magic in which they see the world remains with them throughout their entire lives and how they approach each moment, in addition to all the other great benefits being mindful will bring the young ones. 🌍 

In this short article I share three things I learned teaching mindful behaviors to children over the years which may support you in teaching and leave you with three fun mindful practices to try with them. ⬇️

1. You are what you practice 💪 and you’re practicing something all the time, especially when teaching kids some mindfulness. Children are like sponges when they are young and they absorb your mood, your attention and your way of being. If you don’t have your own mindfulness practice, if you aren’t trained or have experiencing teaching children and are not grounded in the present, the children will sense it and you will sense it too. This will make teaching, learning and connecting with kids a lot more difficult and time consuming. So practice first and foremost what you teach.
2. Use their energy 🏃 ♂️ 🏃 ♀️ to guide your teaching practices. It’s tough to get a brand new bunch of 5 year olds you just met to sit still with their eyes closed and focus on the sensations of breathing. It makes things easier to use their energy, their aliveness and eagerness to move to guide your teaching practices. Take them through some mindful movement, some games, sense engaging activities. Guide them in exploring what they notice in a playful way and feel in the present moment while engaging in something fun. If you sense their energy levels have dropped, maybe then move into some more static practices.
3. Expectations vs. Intentions. 💚 Expectations focus on future outcomes (I want the kids to be silent and pay full attention), whereas intentions focus on the process or things you plan to do in order to achieve those outcomes (I will create opportunities for silence and I will give them my full attention). Intentions rely upon choices you make yourself, whereas expectations usually demand actions of others. Since it may take time for a classroom of kids to be great mindful students, it is best to focus on intentions first and always. Focus on your intentions and you will be a lot more successful with bringing mindfulness to children. 

Mindful practices

1. Bring in Nature 🌬  Children love animals and nature and connect with it very well. So rather than telling them to focus on their breathing, teach them to breath like a bear 🐻 , or like a dragon 🐉, or like the wind 💨 or smell the flower 🌸 and then blow on the fire 🔥 . Tell them to hum like a bee 🐝. Or move mindfully like a snake 🐍, crab 🦀, or frog 🐸. Stand like a tree 🌳 or mountain 🏔. Rather than moving your attention in a body scan, tell them to imagine a butterfly 🦋 moving throughout the scan. In addition, get them outside, or bring in a plant or some leaves 🍃🍂🍁 to look at mindfully. If applicable bring in a live animal, like a trained dog or something else.
2. Silence Game. While is is more difficult to get the kids to sit in silence and focus on their anchor point. It is a lot easier to make it into a game. “Who can be silent the longest?” or “The first one to make a noise leaves the circle/room” or “Let’s see what it is like to be quiet just for 30seconds and watch the timer” ⏱. With time the kids will enjoy the silence and want more of it. It was a real joy for me the first time the children asked with excitement, “are we going to do the silence game today?” 😊. Use games to support your mindful practices.
3. What’s in the box? Get a small cardboard box. Cut a few small holes in it 🕳. Enough for a peak of the eye or a sniff of the nose. Then, without the little ones seeing, fill the box with one item from your bag of goodies (i.e. rock, shell, toy, candy, keys, other small objects, etc.) and pass it around the room to the group. Let them smell, shake, look inside and guess what might be inside. Afterwards take the item out and pass it around, allowing them to pay full attention to it and describe the item with great detail and how it effects their body (temperature, weight, color, texture, etc.). It’s like mindful eating just more fun. 🤩 

Mindful behaviors, of paying full attention with curiosity and care is a great skill for kids to learn. It helps them be with the magic of the ordinary, it helps them be present, kind and connect with this world, with others and with themselves.

Thanks for reading, for being and doing what you do.