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*** Before we commence with the festivities, I wanted to thank everyone for helping my first book become a Wall Street Journal bestseller. To check it out, click here. ***
Dealing with kids ain't easy. They need an exhausting amount of attention and help.

From Raising An Emotionally Intelligent Child:

Behavioral psychologists have observed that preschoolers typically demand that their caretakers deal with some kind of need or desire at an average rate of three times a minute.

Most advice on parenting focuses on how to deal with misbehavior. While helpful, this is also akin to only offering advice on how to survive after a nuclear holocaust and not talking about how to prevent one. What's the secret to making sure your living room doesn't resemble a scene from "Mad Max: Fury Road"?

What usually underlies bad behavior is how the child handles negative emotions. And this is something we rarely teach deliberately and almost never teach well. Showing kids how to recognize and deal with feelings prevents misbehavior - and it's a skill that will serve them their entire lives. It prevents tantrums at age 4 but it's also the difference between saving college money and saving bail money later on. Look at it as potty training for feelings.

But how do we do that?

Professor John Gottman is the guy who revolutionized the study of relationships, getting it to the point where he could listen to a couple for just a few minutes and determine with a frightening amount of accuracy whether or not they'd divorce. Well, luckily, Gottman also analyzed parenting. And this wasn't the latest parenting theory-of-the-week that somebody came up with over lunch - this was a truly epic study of mind-bending proportions.

He took over 100 married couples with kids ages 4 or 5 and gave them questionnaires. Then conducted thousands of hours of interviews. He observed their behavior in his lab. Taped sessions of the kids playing with their best friends. Monitored heart rates, respiration, blood flow and sweating. Took urine samples - yeah, urine samples - from the kids to measure stress-related hormones. And then followed up with the children and families all the way through adolescence, conducting more interviews, evaluating academic performance and...

Okay, enough. You get it. The plans of Hollywood Bond Villains aren't this thorough. And when it came to dealing with emotions, Gottman realized there are 4 types of parents. And three ain't so hot:

Dismissing parents: They disregard, ignore, or trivialize negative emotions.

Disapproving parents. They're critical of negative feelings and punish kids for emotional expression.

Laissez-Faire parents: They accept their children's emotions and empathize with them, but don't offer guidance or set limits on behavior.

Children of these parents didn't do as well over time. They misbehaved more, had trouble making friends or had self-esteem problems. One of them may be breaking into your car right now.

And then there were the Ultra-Parents. These mothers and fathers unknowingly used what Gottman calls "emotion-coaching." And this produced emotionally intelligent kids. These parents accepted their children's feelings (but not all of the children's behavior), guided the kids through emotional moments, and helped them problem-solve their way to a solution that didn't involve putting the neighbor's kid in the emergency room. How did these tykes end up?

From Raising An Emotionally Intelligent Child:

The children were better at soothing themselves when they were upset. They could calm down their hearts faster. Because of the superior performance in that part of their physiology that is involved in calming themselves, they had fewer infectious illnesses. They were better at focusing attention. They related better to other people, even in the tough social situations they encountered in middle childhood like getting teased, where being overly emotional is a liability, not an asset. They were better at understanding people. They had better friendships with other children. They were also better at situations in school that required academic performance. In short, they had developed a kind of "IQ" that is about people and the world of feelings, or emotional intelligence.

And it all came down to how the parents handled the child's negative emotional outbursts. These parents did five things that the other types rarely did.

Alrighty, let's get to it...

1) Be Aware Of Emotions

Parenting is stressful and can feel non-stop. Often it's not like running a marathon - it's like running until you die. So there's a natural tendency to look around when things are (finally) calm and think, "Nothing is currently on fire. Okay, life is good."

But this can be like standing in a coal mine ignoring the thousands of dead canaries. Usually emotions precede outbursts. So noticing the child's emotions early - and not just the resulting bad behavior - is critical.

"Not misbehaving" doesn't mean "not upset." When a passive-aggressive spouse crosses their arms, scowls and says, "I'm fine," at least you know they're definitely not fine. Kids may not even understand what they're feeling or how to best express it. So being aware and noticing early can prevent Tonka trucks from taking flight without FAA approval.

But the problem many parents have here is noticing their own emotions. If you're not aware of your feelings and moods you'll have trouble noticing and relating to those of others.

From Raising An Emotionally Intelligent Child:

Our studies show that for parents to feel what their children are feeling, they must be aware of emotions, first in themselves and then in their kids... Emotional awareness simply means that you recognize when you are feeling an emotion, you can identify your feelings, and you are sensitive to the presence of emotions in other people.

Don't be afraid to show emotions in front of your kids. Gottman found that even anger (as long as it's expressed respectfully and constructively) has its place. If parents hold back from showing feelings then kids can learn "Mom and dad don't have these emotions and neither should I."

Seeing arguments and then seeing them resolved amicably is far better than never seeing them at all. Kids need a role model not just for values, but also for feelings.

From Raising An Emotionally Intelligent Child:

Such moms and dads may try to compensate for their fear of losing control by being "super-parents," hiding their emotions from their children... The irony is that by hiding their emotions, these parents may be raising youngsters who are even less capable of handling negative emotions than they would have been if their parents had learned to let their feelings show in a nonabusive way. That's because the kids grow up emotionally distant from their parents. Also, the children have one less role model to teach them how to handle difficult emotions effectively.

Shielding kids from emotional situations and then sending them out into the world is like sending an athlete to the Olympics with no training. Kids need those moments in order to learn how to regulate their feelings.

(To learn more about the science of a successful life, check out my bestselling book here.)

Notice feelings now and avoid a crisis later. But what perspective did the smart parents take when outbursts did occur?

2) Emotion Is An Opportunity For Intimacy And Teaching

It's understandable to see a tantrum as an irrational inconvenience that should be eliminated ASAP. But the parents whose children thrived saw outbursts as teaching moments and a time to bond with their kid. Yeah, that doesn't always feel natural when a child is angrily throwing things.

Does saying anything resembling, "You should not feel this way" ever work with emotional adults? Exactly. Then it sure as hell isn't going to work with your kid. Saying "There's nothing to be afraid of," or "Oh, it'll be fine" is dismissive. This is how kids learn to doubt their own judgment and lose confidence. The Emotion-Coaching parents realized that a tantrum was the best time to connect with their child and teach them a valuable skill.

Yes, you need to stop misbehavior immediately. But you want to do it in a way specific to the child's actions and not make it about their identity. So you want to say, "We don't paint Grandma's couch purple," instead of, "Stop being a nightmare!" The children who consistently heard the latter did not fare as well in Gottman's follow ups.

From Raising An Emotionally Intelligent Child:

When we checked in with these same families three years later, we found that the children who experienced such disrespectful, contemptuous behavior from their parents were the same kids who were having more trouble with schoolwork and getting along with friends. These were the kids who had higher levels of stress-related hormones in their bodies. Their teachers reported they were having more behavior problems, and their moms reported they had more illnesses.

It takes practice but you want to see kids' emotional pain like you'd see their physical pain. It's not their fault. It's a challenge they're facing. And one you can help them with.

(To learn the two-word morning ritual that will make you happy all day, click here.)

Okay, so you've got the right perspective. You're an emotional mentor, not a corrections officer. But what do you actually do to help?

3) Listen Empathetically And Validate Feelings

Don't argue the facts. Feelings aren't logical. You wouldn't expect the new employee to know how to find the bathroom and you shouldn't expect a child to know how to handle emotions that, frankly, you still have problems dealing with after decades of experience.

Don't immediately try to fix things. You need to establish you're a safe ally before you can solve anything. Understanding must precede advice, and, just as with adults, they decide when you understand.

The critical distinction Gottman realized is that it's important to accept all feelings - but not all behavior. If you skip immediately to problem-solving, the kid never learns the skill of how to deal with those uncomfortable emotions.

You want to use "empathetic listening." Get them to talk. Help them clarify. Validate their feelings (but, again, not necessarily their behavior). They need to feel you really understand and are on their side.

Take a deep breath, relax and focus on them. They'll notice if you're impatient or frustrated and just going through the motions.

From Raising An Emotionally Intelligent Child:

In this context, listening means far more than collecting data with your ears. Empathetic listeners use their eyes to watch for physical evidence of their children's emotions. They use their imaginations to see the situation from the child's perspective. They use their words to reflect back, in a soothing, noncritical way, what they are hearing and to help their children label their emotions.

Relate their child problems to adult problems in your head to help you empathize. "But why is she freaking out about her new baby brother?! It makes no sense!" Really? How would you like it if your spouse brought home a new lover and expected you to welcome them into the home? Get out of your head and into theirs. Relate. Empathize.

Probing questions may be too much for a little kid. It can feel like interrogation. They may not even know why they're sad. Try sharing simple observations. Say, "I noticed that you frowned when I mentioned going to the party" and then wait for a response.

(To learn the 4 rituals neuroscience says will make you an awesome parent, click here.)

Alright, they're opening up. How do you calm them down and teach them how to cope?

4) Help Them Label Their Emotions

A young child is not going to be able to say, "Dearest mother, I apologize for my unnecessary irritability. My transition to the new kindergarten class has caused me an unexpected amount of stress. My future academic adjustments will be conducted with a level of grace heretofore unseen in our lovely household."

You've got the words; they don't. Help them get a handle on what's going on by labeling what they feel.

From Raising An Emotionally Intelligent Child:

Providing words in this way can help children transform an amorphous, scary, uncomfortable feeling into something definable, something that has boundaries and is a normal part of everyday life. Anger, sadness, and fear become experiences everybody has and everybody can handle. Labeling emotions goes hand in hand with empathy. A parent sees his child in tears and says, "You feel very sad, don't you?" Now, not only is the child understood, he has a word to describe this intense feeling. Studies indicate that the act of labeling emotions can have a soothing effect on the nervous system, helping children to recover more quickly from upsetting incidents.

Don't gloss over this. Labeling is absurdly powerful. Neuroscience has repeatedly demonstrated its ability to soothe emotions. It's one of the main techniques hostage negotiators use to keep the most dangerous situations calm.

So when a child is crying because their sister got a better gift than they did, you don't want to be dismissive and say, "I'm sure you'll get a better present next time." You want to validate and label the feeling with something like, "You wish you'd gotten something more fun. I bet that makes you feel kind of jealous."

Now the kid is thinking, "They understand me." And they've learned something about how to cope by talking it out and labeling the emotions to get a handle on them. And Gottman found this leads to really good things.

From Raising An Emotionally Intelligent Child:

As we have discussed earlier, the implications of teaching a child to self-soothe are enormous. Kids who can calm themselves from an early age show several signs of emotional intelligence: They are more likely to concentrate better, have better peer relationships, higher academic achievement, and good health. My advice to parents, then, is to help your kids find words to describe what they are feeling. This doesn't mean telling kids how they ought to feel. It simply means helping them develop a vocabulary with which to express their emotions.

(To learn how to make sure your kids are resilient, click here.)

They're more calm. The storm has passed. They're learning about emotions. But how do you teach them better behavior and how to fix the actual problem?

5) Set Limits And Help Them Problem-Solve

Again, all feelings are acceptable - but all behavior isn't. You need to set limits. The parent-child relationship is not a democracy. Once the emotions are dealt with, you can be firm.

From Raising An Emotionally Intelligent Child:

After the parent acknowledges the emotion behind the misbehavior and helps him to label it, the parent can make sure the child understands that certain behaviors are inappropriate and can't be tolerated. Then the parent can guide the child into thinking of more appropriate ways to handle negative feelings. "You're mad that Danny took that game away from you," the parent might say. "I would be, too. But it's not okay for you to hit him. What can you do instead?"

After you've listened empathetically, labeled feelings, and set limits on any bad behavior, it's time to fix things. Someone needs to lead the problem solving. And that person is not you.

This is another skill you want to help them develop. You won't always be there to tell them what to do. So encourage them to come up with ideas, guide them to a solution in line with your values that is effective and takes other people's feelings into consideration. This is how emotionally intelligent kids become resourceful, responsible children.

(To learn how to be a better parent, from Wharton professor Adam Grant, click here.)

Okay, we've learned a lot. Let's round it up and address the question every realistic parent has been thinking from the start: How the heck am I supposed to do all of this stuff when I'm stressed to the gills, we're in the middle of the mall, and already 15 minutes late for a doctor's appointment?

Yes, there is an answer...

Sum Up

This is how to raise emotionally intelligent kids:

Be aware of emotions: Canaries. Coal mines. Sometimes you can ignore the words but if you ignore the underlying feelings you're going to be cleaning spaghetti off the walls.

Emotion is an opportunity for intimacy and teaching: The best lessons about dealing with emotions are learned when things get emotional. Yes, this is inconvenient.

Listen empathetically and validate feelings: Accept all feelings but not all behavior. Don't interrogate, validate.

Help them label their emotions: You've got the words; they don't. It works for hostage negotiators so use it to make sure your kids don't end up talking to hostage negotiators.

Set limits and help them problem-solve: "We don't stab Timmy. Now how might we be able to exact revenge in a way that doesn't leave evidence?"

You don't always have time to do all of the above when a meltdown happens... Or, more accurately, it's extraordinarily rare when you ever have time to. Understood.

Don't worry. Gottman says you don't have to do it when the problem occurs. That would be preferable, but as long as you set aside time to sit down and have the conversation, you can help your kid become more emotionally intelligent.

From Raising An Emotionally Intelligent Child:

In an ideal world, we'd always have time to sit and talk with our kids as feelings come up. But for most parents, that's not always an option. It's important, therefore, to designate a time-preferably at the same period each day-when you can talk to your child without time pressures or interruptions.

Emotion-coaching is not a panacea. It doesn't have Harry Potter magic powers to turn your little devil into a little angel. There will still be outbursts. You'll still need discipline and limits. But with time it'll build a tighter bond with your child and help them develop a skill that will benefit them the rest of their life.

What most parents want more than anything is for their kids to be happy. What's happiness? An emotion.

So you'll teach them to go potty. And school will teach them how to think.

But more than anything, don't forget to teach them how to feel.
Join over 320,000 readers. Get a free weekly update via email here.
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This Is How To Raise Emotionally Intelligent Kids: 5 Secrets From Research - Barking Up The Wrong Tree

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Before we commence with the festivities, I wanted to thank everyone for helping my first book become a Wall Street Journal bestseller. To check it out, click here. *** Dealing with kids ain't easy. They need an exhausting amount of attention and help.

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*** Before we commence with the festivities, I wanted to thank everyone for helping my first book become a Wall Street Journal bestseller. To check it out, click here. *** When you ask parents what they want for their kids, what's usually the most common reply? They want their children to be happy.
Via Raising Happiness: 10 Simple Steps for More Joyful Kids and Happier Parents:

... the well-being of children is more important to adults than just about anything else-health care, the well-being of seniors, the cost of living, terrorism, and the war in Iraq. More than two-thirds of adults say they are "extremely concerned" about the well-being of children, and this concern cuts across gender, income, ethnicity, age, and political affiliation.

Now there's tons of info on raising smart kids and successful kids, but how do you raise happy kids?

Sometimes it's hard to balance what's best for children with what makes them happy - but the two don't have to be mutually exclusive.
Happier kids are more likely to turn into successful, accomplished adults.
Via Raising Happiness: 10 Simple Steps for More Joyful Kids and Happier Parents:

...happiness is a tremendous advantage in a world that emphasizes performance. On average, happy people are more successful than unhappy people at both work and love. They get better performance reviews, have more prestigious jobs, and earn higher salaries. They are more likely to get married, and once married, they are more satisfied with their marriage.

So looking at the science, what really works when it comes to raising happy kids?
Step 1: Get Happy Yourself

The first step to happier kids is, ironically, a little bit selfish.
How happy you are affects how happy and successful your kids are - dramatically.
Via Raising Happiness: 10 Simple Steps for More Joyful Kids and Happier Parents:

Extensive research has established a substantial link between mothers who feel depressed and "negative outcomes" in their children, such as acting out and other behavior problems. Parental depression actually seems to cause behavioral problems in kids; it also makes our parenting less effective.

And this is not merely due to genetics.

Via Raising Happiness: 10 Simple Steps for More Joyful Kids and Happier Parents:

...although the study did find that happy parents are statistically more likely to have happy children, it couldn't find any genetic component.

So what's the first step to being a happier you? Take some time each week to have fun with friends.
Via Raising Happiness: 10 Simple Steps for More Joyful Kids and Happier Parents:

Because laughter is contagious, hang out with friends or family members who are likely to be laughing themselves. Their laughter will get you laughing too, although it doesn't even need to in order to lighten your mood. Neuroscientists believe that hearing another person laugh triggers mirror neurons in a region of the brain that makes listeners feel as though they are actually laughing themselves.

(To learn more about the science of a successful life, check out my bestselling book here.)

Step 2: Teach Them To Build Relationships

Nobody denies learning about relationships is important - but how many parents actually spend the time to teach kids how to relate to others?

(Just saying "Hey, knock it off" when kids don't get along really doesn't go far in building essential people skills.)
It doesn't take a lot. It can start with encouraging kids to perform small acts of kindness to build empathy.
This not only builds essential skills and makes your kids better people, research shows over the long haul it makes them happier.

Via Raising Happiness: 10 Simple Steps for More Joyful Kids and Happier Parents:

Multiple sclerosis (MS) patients who were trained to provide compassionate, unconditional positive regard for other MS sufferers through monthly fifteen-minute telephone calls "showed pronounced improvement in self-confidence, self-esteem, depression, and role functioning" over two years. These helpers were especially protected against depression and anxiety.

More on creating good relationships here.

Step 3: Expect Effort, Not Perfection

Note to perfectionist helicopter parents and Tiger Moms: cool it.
Relentlessly banging the achievement drum messes kids up.
Via Raising Happiness: 10 Simple Steps for More Joyful Kids and Happier Parents:

Parents who overemphasize achievement are more likely to have kids with high levels of depression, anxiety, and substance abuse compared to other kids.

The research is very consistent: Praise effort, not natural ability.
Via Raising Happiness: 10 Simple Steps for More Joyful Kids and Happier Parents:

The majority of the kids praised for their intelligence wanted the easier puzzle; they weren't going to risk making a mistake and losing their status as "smart." On the other hand, more than 90 percent of growth mind-set-encouraged kids chose a harder puzzle.

Why? Dweck explains: "When we praise children for the effort and hard work that leads to achievement, they want to keep engaging in that process. They are not diverted from the task of learning by a concern with how smart they might - or might not - look."

More on praising correctly here.

Step 4: Teach Optimism

Want to avoid dealing with a surly teenager? Then teach those pre-teens to look on the bright side.

Via Raising Happiness: 10 Simple Steps for More Joyful Kids and Happier Parents:

Ten-year-olds who are taught how to think and interpret the world optimistically are half as prone to depression when they later go through puberty.

Author Christine Carter puts it simply: "Optimism is so closely related to happiness that the two can practically be equated."

She compares optimists to pessimists and finds optimists:

1. Are more successful at school, work and athletics

2. Are healthier and live longer

3. End up more satisfied with their marriages

4. Are less likely to deal with depression and anxiety

More on how to encourage optimism here.

Step 5: Teach Emotional Intelligence

Emotional intelligence is a skill, not an inborn trait.

Thinking kids will just "naturally" come to understand their own emotions (let alone those of others) doesn't set them up for success.
A simple first step here is to "Empathize, Label and Validate" when they're struggling with anger or frustration.
Via Raising Happiness: 10 Simple Steps for More Joyful Kids and Happier Parents:

Molly: "I am SO SO SO MAD AT YOU."

Me: "You are mad at me, very mad at me. Tell me about that. Are you also feeling disappointed because I won't let you have a playdate right now?"

Molly: "YES!! I want to have a playdate right NOW."

Me: "You seem sad." (Crawling into my lap, Molly whimpers a little and rests her head on my shoulder.)

Relate to the child, help them identify what they are feeling and let them know that those feelings are okay (even though bad behavior might not be).

More on active listening and labeling (and how hostage negotiators use this) here.

Step 6: Form Happiness Habits

We're on step 6 and it might seem like this is already a lot to remember for you - let alone for a child. We can overcome that with good habits.
Thinking through these methods is taxing but acting habitually is easy, once habits have been established.
How do you help kids build lasting happiness habits? Carter explains a few powerful methods backed by research:

1. Stimulus removal: Get distractions and temptations out of the way.

2. Make It Public: Establish goals to increase social support - and social pressure.

3. One Goal At A Time: Too many goals overwhelms willpower, especially for kids. Solidify one habit before adding another.

4. Keep At It: Don't expect perfection immediately. It takes time. There will be relapses. That's normal. Keep reinforcing.

More on developing good habits here.

Step 7: Teach Self-Discipline
Self-discipline in kids is more predictive of future success than intelligence - or most anything else, for that matter.
Yes, it's that famous marshmallow test all over again. Kids who better resisted temptation went on to much better lives years later and were happier.

Via Raising Happiness: 10 Simple Steps for More Joyful Kids and Happier Parents:

...preschoolers' ability to delay gratification-to wait for that second marshmallow-predicts intelligence, school success, and social skills in adolescence. This is at least in part because self-discipline facilitates learning and information processing. In addition, self-disciplined kids cope better with frustration and stress and tend to have a greater sense of social responsibility. In other words, self-discipline leads not just to school success and sitting nicely at the dinner table but to greater happiness, more friends and increased community engagement.

What's a good way to start teaching self-discipline? Help kids learn to distract themselves from temptation.
Via Raising Happiness: 10 Simple Steps for More Joyful Kids and Happier Parents:

One way to do it is to obscure the temptation-to physically cover up the tempting marshmallow. When a reward is covered up, 75 percent of kids in one study were able to wait a full fifteen minutes for the second marshmallow; none of the kids was able to wait this long when the reward was visible.

More on increasing self-discipline here.

Step 8: More Playtime

We read a lot about mindfulness and meditation these days - and both are quite powerful.

Getting kids to do them regularly however can be quite a challenge. What works almost as well?
More playtime.
Via Raising Happiness: 10 Simple Steps for More Joyful Kids and Happier Parents:

Most kids already practice mindfulness - fully enjoying the present moment - when they play. but kids today spend less time playing both indoors and out... All told, over the last two decades, children have lost eight hours per week of free, unstructured, and spontaneous play...

Playtime isn't just goofing off. It's essential to helping kids grow and learn.
Via Raising Happiness: 10 Simple Steps for More Joyful Kids and Happier Parents:

Researchers believe that this dramatic drop in unstructured playtime is in part responsible for slowing kids cognitive and emotional development... In addition to helping kids learn to self-regulate, child-led, unstructured play (with or without adults) promoted intellectual, physical, social, and emotional well-being. Unstructured play helps children learn how to work in groups, to share, negotiate, resolve conflicts, regulate their emotions and behavior, and speak up for themselves.

No strict instructions are necessary here: Budget more time for your kids to just get outside and simply play.
More on the power of playing (for kids and adults) here.

Step 9: Rig Their Environment For Happiness

We don't like to admit it, but we're all very much influenced by our environment - often more than we realize.

Your efforts will be constrained by time and effort, while context affects us (and children) constantly.
What's a simple way to better control a child's surroundings and let your deliberate happiness efforts have maximum effect? Less TV.
Via Raising Happiness: 10 Simple Steps for More Joyful Kids and Happier Parents:

...research demonstrates a strong link between happiness and not watching television. Sociologists show that happier people tend to watch considerably less television than unhappy people. We don't know whether TV makes people unhappy, or if already unhappy people watch more TV. But we do know that there are a lot of activities that will help our kids develop into happy, well-adjusted individuals. If our kids are watching TV, they aren't doing those things that could be making them happier in the long run.

More non-television happiness activities are here.

Step 10: Eat Dinner Together

Sometimes all science does is validate those things our grandparents knew all along. Yes, family dinner matters.
This simple tradition helps mold better kids and makes them happier too.
Via Raising Happiness: 10 Simple Steps for More Joyful Kids and Happier Parents:

Studies show that kids who eat dinner with their families on a regular basis are more emotionally stable and less likely to abuse drugs and alcohol. They got better grades. they have fewer depressive symptoms, particularly among adolescent girls. And they are less likely to become obese or have an eating disorder. Family dinners even trump reading to your kids in terms of preparing them for school. And these associations hold even after researchers control for family connectedness...

More on the power of family dinners here.

Sum Up

Here are the ten steps:

We're often more open to new methods when it comes to work and careers, but ignoring tips when it comes to family is a mistake.

The most important work you and I will ever do will be within the walls of our own homes. - Harold B. Lee

I hope this post helps your family be happier.

Join 45K+ readers. Get a free weekly update via email here.

Related posts:
Good Parenting Skills: 7 Research-Backed Ways to Raise Kids Right How To Have A Happy Family - 7 Tips Backed By Research Parent myths: How much of what your parents told you was wrong?

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How To Raise Happy Kids - 10 Steps Backed By Science - Barking Up The Wrong Tree

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Before we commence with the festivities, I wanted to thank everyone for helping my first book become a Wall Street Journal bestseller. To check it out, click here. *** When you ask parents what they want for their kids, what's usually the most common reply? They want their children to be happy.

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Why Is Practicing Mindfulness Important for Children?

When you look at your child and take a glance into childhood, what is it that you see? Do you see unending curiosity, innocence, and whimsy or maybe you see the metaphorical blank canvas that is just waiting to be splashed with the colors of life.

As you, the parent, navigates daily life and all of the stress and struggles it contains, chances are you might look at your child with a little envy of the stress free simplicity of their lives. What you, like most parents, might be surprised to realize is that growing through the stages of childhood is actually quite difficult and stressful in its own right.

The truth is that children feel stress and a range of emotions, both positive and negative, similar to that of adults. The difference is that as adults, our minds and bodies have matured enough to be able to use learned coping strategies, primarily mindfulness, to bring us back to centered place that resides in the present, not the past or the future.

As parents and caregivers of children of all ages, we have a responsibility to help our children learn to cope with stress and emotions by teaching and demonstrating mindfulness to them.

"What", you may ask, "is so stressful about childhood?" Well, to begin with, a certain level of stress is normal for everyone. It helps us grow and develop and teaches us how to react to and process certain situations and circumstances. Think for a moment about what causes you stress, anxiety or unpleasant emotions.

For most of us it is a matter of things not going the way we had intended, experiencing changes, relationships and pressures to perform at work or to live up to expectations at home. Children have many of the same stressors in their lives. For the child, who is so enmeshed in the present, the slightest thing going wrong can cause an upheaval. The same is true when they experience separation anxiety, changes at home or to their routine, academic pressures and begin to discover the complexities of personal relationships.

Without techniques to help them cope, emotions can run wild and the child ends up feeling sad, miserable and defeated. By helping your child experience and practice mindfulness, you can help them navigate these difficult and delicate situations. Mindfulness can turn a stressed and anxious child into one that is happy, content and in control of their emotions.

When left to its own, our brains all respond to stress and anxiety triggers the same way, regardless of age. The things that bring us away from mindfulness are processed by the brain in the Limbic system, which is the area of the brain where the system of nerves controls our moods and instinctual actions. It is the powerhouse of emotion and memory.

When we practice mindfulness, we also engage the cortex, which is the part of the brain that bestows us with the ability to perform higher thought. By that, we mean that this is the part of the brain that controls our perception of stimuli, and the way we react in response. This part of the brain is also connected to speech, memory and the approach we take to solving problems, both big and small.

Concentrated mindfulness allows the cortex to influence the Limbic system and as a result we achieve a state of calm, purposeful thought that helps to guide us through the emotions that we are feeling. The point is not to totally take away the situations your child is experiencing trouble with, but instead help them learn how to cope, which is a valuable lifelong skill.

Benefits Of Mindfulness With Children

Practiced mindfulness can help your child in the following ways:

Mindful children experience less stress, anxiety and sadness

Mindful children are better able to cope with change and other stressors.

Mindful children have better sleep habits

Mindful children feel more connected to the people around them

Mindful children are more compassionate

Mindful children have more confidence in themselves and their decisions

Mindful children tend to perform better academically

Mindful children understand, feel and express gratitude more freely

Mindful children are better able to focus and concentrate

Mindful children are more resilient

Mindful children are all around happier and more content

Learn more about how mindful practice can help your child.

The Goal of Mindful Awareness: Enlightenment, Not Control

A ren't children supposed to impulsive with their thoughts and actions? Isn't that the way of childhood, to live only in the moment and learn the benefits and consequences of those actions? Will teaching mindfulness to my child deprive them of these experiences? Will I turn my child into a controlled robot? These are questions that stem from common misconceptions about mindfulness teaching and children. Mindful awareness doesn't take away the impulsiveness and freedom of childhood. Actually, it encourages creative thinking, problem solving and individuality.

While having an angelically behaved child can make parenting easier, the goal of mindfulness in children isn't about controlling them and their emotions. It is about giving them the tools to be able choose options other than anger, fear, anxiety, stress and disconnectedness. It is helping them notice the difference in how they feel when they focus mindfully on their thoughts and emotions. Practiced mindfulness allows your child to more freely enjoy the pleasures of childhood.

When To Practice

On this note, it is important to stress that there is a right time to encourage mindfulness and a wrong time to enforce it. By this I mean that mindfulness practice should never be used as a punishment or a response to your own frustrations. If you have a child that is in the midst of a tantrum or some sort of emotional turmoil, the best response is not to order them to their quiet place and practice mindful thought for ten minutes, like a time out. A better option is to first sympathize with the situation that the child is in, even if they are technically "in the wrong". Once you are feeling compassionate towards your child rather than frustrated, you can help them practice mindfulness, even if that means spending time in a quiet place with them or participating in other mindfulness promoting activities.

Keeping Mindfulness Fun

Y ou want to help your child when they are having trouble, just as any parent does. I feel that it is safe to say that most parenting experts would agree that treating your child and their feelings with respect is incredibly important to their development. The thing is that as adults, we sometimes forget how to engage with the younger mind.

We talk our children through their troubles as if they were a close friend sharing coffee and confiding their troubles. We may attempt to reason with them on a level that is too advanced for them to effectively process. On the flip side of this, we may tend to try to help them by minimizing the issue. When your child is upset because they feel they have been betrayed by a friend, be it a five year old taking a toy without asking or an adolescent sharing what was meant to be a secret, as parents we may tend to brush the incident aside with a hug and a few well meaning words meant to soothe.

These solutions might both let your child know that you care about them, but neither is really the best method of helping your child through the situation.

The first thing that you need to do is practice mindfulness yourself. Before you jump in to offer comfort, advice or a solution, think for a moment about just how important this must be to your child for them to be experiencing this reaction. Put yourself in their place and feel compassion for them. Next, be your child for a moment. Think about how to best approach a toddler, an eight year old or a teenager. Each approach will be different, and needs to be in order to be most effective. When you are able to relate on the same level as your children, teaching and practicing mindfulness is accomplished easier and becomes more enjoyable for them to learn.

I think it is the case that most of us learn best when we are having fun, or at the least not feeling like learning is a chore. This is even more true with children.

The best educators know how to present new information to children in a way that they are most likely to learn, retain and practice. The same mentality should be used for teaching mindfulness. That last thing you want is for mindfulness to feel like work, possibly adding additional stress to your child. You want to keep it fun and light whenever possible. Of course, the ways of doing this will depend upon the child's individual personality and also their age.

Age Based Tips
Here are a few age based, fun ways that you can help your child achieve mindfulness:
Toddler: Try blowing bubbles. This is potentially the most difficult age to teach mindfulness to, however the sooner you start the better it is for your child. Children this age have only a little ability to control their emotions and think of consequences. It is your responsibility to help teach and guide the child through this very sensitive age. When your toddler is upset one of the easiest ways to calm them down is simple distraction. But rather than changing the environment or distracting with a toy, bring the child to an area where you can blow bubbles. As you blow the bubbles, wave and say something like "good bye sad" or "fly away tears". This simple gesture connects the bubble blowing with a sense of letting go. The young child will take some time to grasp this concept, but something like this gives you a foundation, one that is also fun for both of you.

Five to Eight Year Olds: This is a very sensory dependent age where major developments in personality and emotion control take place. The child begins to associate what they feel and experience with themselves and begin to realize that they actually control over themselves. This is a perfect age to practice calming mindfulness activities, such as a calming jar. You may have seen this concept in various places on the internet, but it is most often referred to as a time out jar. Most children associate the term "time out" with punishment, which is why I have renamed it for this activity. It is simply a jar filled with water and glitter. When the child needs to practice mindfulness, they simply sit in a quiet spot, shake the jar and watch as the floating glitter settles to the bottom. This gives the child not only a chance to calm themselves, but the opportunity to spend some time with their own thoughts while enjoying the almost magical quality of the floating glitter.

Nine to Twelve Year Olds: At this age children are still impulsive, but have a certain understanding of how their behavior and reactions affect others, as well as the beginnings of understanding of how they choose to feel can make a difference in perception and general contentment. This is a good age to begin the practice of short, guided meditative sequences. Sit with your child in a quiet, undisturbed setting and have them close their eyes and relax as you recite a guided meditative visualization created specifically for children, or create one that is tailored to your child's specific interest. The guided meditations tend to take your child on some sort of journey where they either metaphorically conquer whatever may be bothering them or in some sense let it go.

For an age appropriate guided meditation for a child, you would first want to make them comfortable and as relaxed as possible. This usually involves a soft place to sit or rest their head and the removal of shoes. A familiar blanket or stuffed animal can add comfort and induce relaxation if the child requires it. Have the child close their eyes as you slowly recite a guided visualization such as this:

" Now that you are relaxed, I want you to take a deep breath and notice how it feels. Now take another, but this time think about how you are feeling in your heart and in your head. As you blow out this breath, I want you to blow out the any color that you see. Pretend that as you breathe out you are creating a bubble of color that has all of your feelings in it. It is a safe place to put your fear and anger, or anything else. Only you know what is inside the bubble, it is your secret. Your bubble can contain what you don't want in your body anymore or it can contain thoughts that you want to send out into the universe.
With each breath, grow it bigger and bigger, until it is so full that you cannot fit anymore in it. Now that your bubble is full, take one more really deep breath, feel the breath all the way down in your tummy. Now breathe it out and blow your bubble far, far away.
Now that your bubble is gone, think of a color that brings you happiness. Picture a beautiful, fluffy cloud of that color that comes down and surrounds you like your favorite blanket, keeping you safe and protected."

Teenagers: For teenagers, who are blossoming adults, it is important to recognize and respect their autonomy. There will be times when your teenager needs you to guide by your actions rather than instruct them. This is a good time to introduce how to sit and reflect with certain music. The style of music that helps each person come to a place of mindfulness is highly individual, so it is important to respect that. Ask your teenager to spend ten minutes in the morning just listening to music and focusing on the direction of their thoughts. You can also appeal to the pleasure sensors while coaching mindfulness in teens by introducing (and using them yourself) and number of apps that are available to guide meditative and reflective thought, many of which are geared towards a younger audience.

So, there were just a few ideas of ways to show how helping children and young adults to become mindful can be fun and enjoyable. This also brings about another important point and a question that many parents ask.

How Early Can I Start?

That is, what is the best age to teach mindfulness to a child and when is it too early or too late to begin? The answer to this is that whatever the age of your child is the perfect age to start. Even babies, who cognitively are not capable of that type of control over their emotions can learn soothing techniques, such as a gentle massage, or swaying to help calm. And a teenager who has never practiced mindfulness can appreciate how the concept can help them deal with the pressures of their daily lives and take those lessons with them into adulthood. The best time to introduce practiced mindfulness to your child is right now.

Introducing Mindfulness to Your Child

A s a parent, you want what is best for your child. If your child is having extra trouble coping with their emotions and gaining a sense of control over themselves and these difficulties are manifesting themselves in negative ways in your child's life, then you may feel more of a sense of urgency to help your child get started on the path to mindfulness. But, let's say your child appears to navigate the stressors of childhood with relative ease. Are mindfulness techniques still beneficial and why? Also, how do you go about introducing mindfulness to a child? The answer to the first question is that mindful practice is beneficial to all of us, regardless of age, temperament or life circumstances. Mindfulness is not a magic cure that is meant to erase all of the troubles from our lives, but rather a tool to make us more aware, more present and more compassionate.

Tailor The Practice

Secondly, there are many different ways to introduce mindfulness to your child, and the technique may be individualized depending upon your child and the stage of life they are at. For instance, a young child may need periods of quiet and rest sitting in your lap, while you gently calm them and illustrate compassion, while an older visually stimulated child may benefit more from the calming jar or something as simple as swirling food coloring into a bowl of milk and focusing on the patterns and color changes as they do so. One child may be able to easily calm their mind by simply sitting in a quiet room and thinking about pleasant things, while another child might actually need some sort of stimulation to induce calmness.

You know your child better than anyone else, and you will be able to notice which techniques are helpful and which are not.

Adjust the techniques as needed, but also remember that adjusting to mindful thinking takes time and repetition. Do not switch techniques without being sure that you have given it ample time for your child to adapt. And, most importantly, do not give up. Practiced mindfulness is one of the most important skills that you can give you child.

With that said, you need to know how to get started. Following are important first steps and techniques for introducing mindful thinking to your child.

First Steps

First of all, practice it yourself. This is potentially the most important thing that you can do the help your child become more mindful and aware. Children are natural observers and when you practice mindfulness, them learning it will seem like second nature. If you're new to mindfulness or want to freshen you practice you can check this link for free guided mindfulness meditations from UCLA Health. They offer online classes for adults as well.

Take advantage of the quiet times. Mindfulness should not be made into a big deal, especially in the beginning when the concepts are new. The best way to introduce mindfulness is by practicing it in the moments when your child is calm and not stressed.

One way to start is by simply talking to your child. Ask them how they are feeling, if anything has upset them recently and show compassion, no matter what their answers.

Unplug from technology and spend time together. Go for a walk and point out things to your child that they may not have noticed before, and have them point out things to you. You might notice the different shades of pink of your neighbor's flowers, but never once noticed the crack in the sidewalk that your child looks at each time they cross it. Chances are your child sees the pebbles and random blades of grass that spring from it. They likely also know that it is a favorite spot for ants to scurry through. Your child notices an incredible amount of detail every day. Help them realize it by stopping to experience it with them.

Use periods of calm and quiet to help your child get in touch with their senses. Play sensory games on a quiet afternoon, like a mystery grab bag where each item has a unique texture and have your child try to guess what it is. At the end, ask your child what their favorite item was and why. Was it the soft feather that gently tickled their fingertips or was the smooth rock that felt cooling against their hands? Learning what sensations your child likes will help you find items to bring into your child's mindfulness practice. The same is true for other senses. You can use a blindfold and explore different smells or experiment with different types of music and how they make you feel.

Tell a story. Use down time to have your child sit back and close their eyes while you tell them a story or guided meditation. Tell them that while their eyes are closed that you want them to imagine that they are actually in the story while you are telling it. When you are done ask them how they felt and what they saw.

Help them to recognize their emotions. This might seem too simple, but it is actually an important first step in teaching your child mindfulness. Of course your child recognizes their emotions when they are at extremes. But, how are they are recognizing the feelings that lead up to the extremes? You can help them become aware of these subtle changes in mood and emotions. A good place to start is when your child is happy or content. Ask them how they are feeling, but take it further. Talk to them about how their body feels. When they are excited about an upcoming trip, ask them if they feel butterflies in their stomach or how their face feels when they can't keep their smile off of it. Later, use this same technique when your child is upset. Ask them how their stomach feels, how the muscles in their body feel. Help them discover where in their bodies that they physically feel emotions. As your child becomes tuned into these subtle body changes, they will be able to recognize them before they reach an unpleasant extreme.

Teach them to breathe. We all breathe, it is vital to life, but how often do we stop and concentrate on our breath? This is a single act that helps a child break themselves away from the stressful situation, even for a moment. When you take a moment to stop and think about something that is so natural and instinctive, it causes a change in how your body is thinking and processing almost instantly. This is also one of the first techniques that you should teach because it can be done anywhere, at any time. This like the other techniques should first be introduced when your child is calm. Show them how to breathe in deeply, hold it for a second and then slowly let it go. If you have a younger child, or one that is influenced by imagery, you can add the visualization of blowing a certain color out when letting go of the breath. For example, if the child is angry they can blow out red (or whatever color they personally associate with anger); if they are feeling peaceful maybe they will blow out pink or purple. Have them place a hand over their chest and stomach and feel their own breath coming in and going out of their bodies. This beginning awareness will be helpful as eventually you teach them how breathing can bring them calmness and awareness.

Talk to your child about mindfulness. You don't want your child to feel as if they are being tricked into this. Keeping open communication is very important. Once you have introduced some of the basic concepts during times when your child is calm and content, you can begin discussing with them how they can use the very same techniques to help calm themselves, make them less sad and afraid while making them more compassionate and connected. Once you have begun this process begin to use the techniques when you see your child beginning to struggle. How you approach the subject will depend greatly on your child's age and emotional development. For example, you can have quiet open conversations about mindfulness with an adolescent on a level that a younger child is just not going to understand. A younger child will relate more on an emotional level, especially when you approach it from their point of view. Here's a post on how to explain mindfulness to children.

How Will I Know It's Working?

Get some feedback. There are two main ways that you will know how mindfulness practice is affecting your child. The first is by your observations. The second is by asking the child how they feel before, during and after practicing mindful awareness and techniques. Do not be discouraged if at first your child seems negative, or just plain unimpressed with the idea. Changes take time, but it is extremely important to understand where they are coming from so that you can help them to move forward.

Mindful Activities and Techniques

O nce you have begun the introduction of mindfulness into yours and your child's life, you can then begin to introduce more concentrated activities meant to specifically bring your child to a more centered place when they are experiencing any type of distress. Here are a few ideas of mindful activities that are suitable for a wide range of ages:

The Quiet Place: We all need a place to go, where we can be alone with our thoughts, especially when we are upset or troubled. Children are no different. Have a designated area in your house that is a quiet place. Do not confuse this with a time out punishment place. The quiet place can be an area created just for mindfulness, or just a place where your child feels the most comfortable. If possible, fill the space with items that promote mindfulness. For example, soft blankets and pillows if you child wants to sit or relax while they calm themselves, or a music player with ear buds loaded with relaxing music or prerecorded meditative scripts. Fill the area with calming colors and textures, and anything that your child has indicated brings them to a more peaceful, centered place. Make sure the quiet place has an open door policy. No matter what is going on, let your child go to the quiet place if they need to, without question.

Take the Quiet Place To-Go: You will not always be at home when your child needs to practice mindfulness, and your child may not be at the point where all they need to do is breathe and center their thoughts. For these cases, it is good to have a mindfulness kit. This can be just a small bag that contains age appropriate mindfulness inducers, such as music, essential oils, sensory items or even a journal to write in or draw through their emotions.

Breathe: If you have already introduced breath awareness to your child, this one is easy to implement. Help coach your child through guided and relaxed breathing, helping them see how their emotional state changes through the process. Do this anywhere and everywhere so that your child will recognize it as a strategy that can be used at any time.

Get Artsy: This is a simple technique that appeals to all ages. Present your child with some art materials and help or encourage them to show how they are feeling through art. This might be erratic scribbles for a young child to simple clay sculptures for an older child. This works for a couple of different reasons. First, it helps the child focus on something other than intense negative feelings and emotions. Secondly, making feelings into something tangible makes them more real and when something is real, we can more effective cope with it. Third, you can keep your child's art and show them the difference between their art when they are upset and their art when they are calm and mindful. Help them to see how they were able to move themselves from one place to the next.

Do Regular Meditative or Guided Readings: This is especially helpful for highly creative and visual children. Short meditative scripts will not only relax them and provide them a much needed break from stress and worry, but it will also imprint a scenario in their minds that they can return to when they feel the need to center and become mindful.

Help Others: Getting your children involved in helping other, even in small ways, helps them to develop an awareness about themselves that extends further than just their immediate needs, wants and feelings. Compassion is a big part of mindfulness, and it is also a concept that must be demonstrated, practiced and learned.

Develop Mindful Routines: Help your child to commit to mindful practices, even when they are not feeling stressed. For example, some quiet mindful awareness at the beginning or end of the school day can make a tremendous difference in an adolescent, especially when done on a regular basis, while taking some time to hold your child's hand and breathe with them each night before bed can be just what a tense or hyper younger child needs to get a relaxing, good night's sleep. When something is routine, it becomes familiar and when we are stressed we turn towards what we know. Turning towards mindfulness will eventually become instinctual.

Practicing What You Preach: Mindful Parenting

H ave you heard of the term "emotional contagion"? Emotional contagion is the ability for two or more individuals to synchronize their thoughts, actions and emotions simply by being in close physical or emotional space with another person. In other words, your children will do what you do, not what you say. Emotional contagion is a very real and very important concept, and children are especially affected. Your child, and how mindful they are, is formed by you and your experiences with them. Here is a great link that explores emotional contagion.

Even the teenager that seemingly wants nothing to do with their parent, is still looking towards you for guidance and direction, even when they are not totally aware of it. This is why your own practice of mindfulness is so important.

Practicing mindful parenting does not involve any complicated techniques, rather it is more about being instinctual in your parenting style. So many times we find ourselves as parents to be rushed, over burdened and over tired. Our fuses are short and what we want is the simplest and quickest solution to the problem. This is why many times when a young child is upset, we may be quick to dismiss by drying a tear and saying it isn't that big of a deal, or don't worry it will get better. Your child may exhibit an improvement in mood, but the issue is still within them, unresolved.

Mindful parenting means that we have to stop being dismissive and take the time to really understand what our child is going through, even when they have done something wrong. It doesn't mean that you will no longer discipline your child. But it does mean that along with disciplining them when appropriate that you are also helping them to realize how they got to this point in the first place and how to prevent it from happening again. This means that you have to become more aware of your own thoughts and emotions as your child is always watching you, keeping mental track of how you react and behave.

Mindful parenting can be achieved though simple techniques such as practicing the same strategies that you expect from your child, practicing being more compassionate and patient, giving your child ample love in the form of words and actions, helping them to see that they are not alone, and being the first to admit when you haven't acted in a mindful manner. It is difficult to be mindful all of the time, let your child see this in you and let them see what you do to make it better and bring about calm and mindfulness in yourself. You and your child are in this together, for life. You can help each other grow, learn and thrive through mindfulness.

May you be happy and healthy!

This guide is a collaboration between Chris Bergstrom and Angel Woodard. Let us know what you think.

UPDATE: Many parents have asked us for more fun exercises to help keep practice fresh and engaging. Here's our answer... we hope you like it!
Book: "102 Playful Mindfulness Activities For Kids, Teens and Grown-ups"
Childhood is meant to be a carefree time, full of fun, whimsy and abandon. Childhood is also a time of amazing growth, physically, but also emotionally. You may have noticed that your child, or even other children, seem to be having a more difficult time navigating the many changes that take place during these formative years. As a parent, it is easy to think of your own childhood and recall the "simplicity" compared to your life now. This might leave you a little out of touch with how to best approach and help your child during their periods of struggle. The truth is that children today do have more to cope with on a daily basis than many generations before. Their world is made larger by virtual communities and social media, there is more academic pressure put upon them, family structure is ever changing and we live in a world where turmoil and danger sometimes seem just a fingertip away. As a parent or caretaker of a child, you want to know how to best help them through these unfamiliar growing pains. This is where "102 Playful Mindfulness Activities" can enable you to help and guide your child.

Mindfulness for children isn't a new, passing scheme or fad. Instead, it is about helping your child to connect to the world around them, helping them learn how to handle their emotions and how to become a more compassionate, aware human being. Practicing mindfulness with your child will help to reduce child anxiety, stress, meltdowns and disconnection. The ultimate goal is to give your child the tools they need to live fulfilling lives as adults. This book will show you that there is no complicated process to achieving this, but rather a series of small adjustments and activities, meant to bring both you and your child to a more mindful, peaceful and content place in your lives. Reading this book and following the advice within, is one of the most important things you can do for your child now and in the future. Sign up below to be notified when the book is available.

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How To Practice Mindfulness With Children - The Essential Guide - Blissful Kids

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When you look at your child and take a glance into childhood, what is it that you see? Do you see unending curiosity, innocence, and whimsy or maybe you see the metaphorical blank canvas that is just waiting to be splashed with the colors of life.

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Sitting Still Like a Frog Excercises by Shambhala Publications

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These are the audio excercises to accompany the book Sitting Still Life a Frog by Eline Snel from Shambhala Publications, available here: https://www.shambhala.com/sitting-still-like-a-frog-2968.html

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Mindful Ozzy Introduces Mindfulness (Pre-k to Grade 2)

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Sitting Still Like a Frog Activity Book by Shambhala Publications

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Stream Sitting Still Like a Frog Activity Book, a playlist by Shambhala Publications from desktop or your mobile device

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This might seem too simple, but it is actually an important first step in teaching your child mindfulness. Of course your child recognizes their emotions when they are at extremes. But, how are they are recognizing the feelings that lead up to the extremes?

You can help them become aware of these subtle changes in mood and emotions. A good place to start is when your child is happy or content. Ask them how they are feeling, but take it further. Talk to them about how their body feels. When they are excited about an upcoming trip, ask them if they feel butterflies in their stomach or how their face feels when they can't keep their smile off of it.

Later, use this same technique when your child is upset. Ask them how their stomach feels, how the muscles in their body feel. Help them discover where in their bodies that they physically feel emotions. As your child becomes tuned into these subtle body changes, they will be able to recognize them before they reach an unpleasant extreme.

Eline Snel, author of the wonderful book "Sitting Still Like A Frog," asks children to think of the weather event that best fits the mood they are in at any particular moment. This is a familiar and very appropriate activity for children, as we learn to observe the weather from a very early age.

The Weather Station is a wonderful way to teach younger children about emotions.
Purpose: Emotional regulation
The exercise is super simple. Simply explain that we can identify good feelings with sunny days and difficult feelings with stormy days.

To do this, sit down and close your eyes, taking a few deep breaths. Now identify the weather event that best matches how you are feeling right now. Do you feel a bit cloudy, or sunny, maybe windy and blustery or stormy and chaotic?

Now think about the weather. We cannot change it. It may not be what we want on that particular day or at that particular moment, but we can get through it, and we know it will pass. Realize that we are not the rain, but we can feel and see the rain, and the rain will come and go throughout our days. We accept the rainy days as we do the sunny days. They are all part of this wonderful life.

Recognising and labeling emotions, this way, can take away the power of the emotion. Describing emotions like weather events can be used as a fun shorthand with your child when talking about emotions feels hard.

See also:
Here's another mindfulness exercise that helps children deal with difficult emotions on-the-spot: RAIN For Emotional Regulation For anxiety, anger management and relaxation: Squish And Let Go
If you are new to mindfulness with children we recommend that you read our guide: How To Practice Mindfulness With Children - The Essential Guide

May you be happy and healthy!

Chris Bergstrom is a dad who is thrilled to practice mindfulness with his son. He is trained by Mindful Schools to teach mindfulness to students in K-12 (but not associated with MS) and a member of the American Mindfulness Research Association. He's also an executive consultant, and has taught meditation for more than 10 years.

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Mindfulness For Children - Weather Station For Emotion Regulation - Blissful Kids

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This might seem too simple, but it is actually an important first step in teaching your child mindfulness. Of course your child recognizes their emotions when they are at extremes. But, how are they are recognizing the feelings that lead up to the extremes?

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Time Out (Peace Out: Guided Meditation for Kids) | Cosmic Kids

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"kids yoga" "yoga for kids" "yoga for children yoga story for kids" "children's yoga" "yoga adventure for kids" "kindergarten yoga" "preschool yoga" "kids me...

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YOGA | MINDFULNESS | RELAXATION FOR KIDS! Screentime that gives kids SUPERPOWERS! ⬇️ D O W N L O A D T H E C O S M I C K I D S A P P ⬇️ 🍏Apple: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/cosmic-kids/ 🛍️Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.cosmickids 🖥️ Desktop (great for teachers!): https://app.cosmickids.com/ 📺 Roku: https://rb.gy/44r8d -------------------------------------------------------------------- Why watch on the App?

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Here's how you can help kids and youth when they feel like mindfulness practice is not working out for them.

"I'm bored."

Tell them that it's normal. It is. We live such hyperactive lives these days that sitting still for 60 seconds can feel like a daunting task. There are so many ways to practice that I'm sure you'll find something that feels less boring. Try walking activities or playful sensory awareness activities instead of sitting meditation to get used to mindfulness. Then add sitting practice. Start small with 60 seconds or less and later build upon it. Also, noticing that they feel bored is being MINDFUL. So congratulate the child for noticing just that. This is a great way to start a discussion about emotions and feelings. And how mindfulness helps us recognize and deal with them.

"I don't like it."

Ask them what it is exactly that they don't like about it. It's easy to adjust the setting (go outside) and their position (lie down instead or take a mindful walk). Sometimes, when we notice the content of our thoughts, we can become anxious. This can happen during mindfulness practice as well. We are more aware of our inner life when we practice, and if we're sad or anxious, we will be aware of that, too. Keep your practice light and the sessions short when there's resistance. Don't force anything. Go for something playful and active. Sitting still and listening to your mind is revelatory. It's a little bit like turning on the light and experiencing your life and mind as they are instead of the way you want them to be. If you are in denial, that might pop up. If you are unhappy, you will notice that. If your kid has trauma or PTSD, you should be sure to discuss it with a healthcare practitioner and a mindfulness teacher or a therapist who has experience with this.

"It doesn't work."

If a child has tried mindfulness before and it's been hard for them, they might have started with something that has been too challenging. Sometimes sitting meditation feels hard, and when that happens, I always recommend trying something else like playful sensory awareness exercises. There are so many ways to practice mindfulness that when one approach doesn't work, you can try something else. Explain that, and try something that is more active, such as a mindful walk or eating mindfully (instead of sitting with eyes closed). When they learn that mindfulness does work, they will be more interested in sitting practice, too.

"I don't like being watched."

Some might feel embarrassed or vulnerable sitting still with their eyes closed. This is normal and okay. Find a private place for them, and try letting them practice alone. Tell them that it's okay to keep their eyes open (for example, with a soft gaze if they want to). A lot of people practice exactly like that.

"It's stupid."

Ask them what it feels like doing the activities and why they think it's stupid or difficult. Try to get an active discussion going so that you can help them with whatever it is that is challenging for them.

"It's a weird religion."

Mindfulness is not a religious practice. Similar techniques can be found in most religious and contemplative traditions globally, but, in our context and when it is used in health care, mental health, and education, it is not.

"I can't do it."

Ask them why they think they can't pull it off. Tell them there's no one right way to do it. Some believe they are failing if their minds don't quieten down. Quieting the mind is not the goal of mindfulness practice. Sometimes the mind is quiet, sometimes it isn't-we simply notice what our minds do. Some think they have failed because they can't access positive feelings off the bat. Mindfulness takes practice; we train our brains the same way we train our bodies during sports. We plant seeds of positivity that will grow over time. By trying several different exercises and different approaches, you will likely find something that works for both of you. You can also remind them that they are already mindful at least during some part of their day. That mindfulness is a normal human ability. The next time they are being mindful, help them notice it. Maybe they were paying attention to something closely. Perhaps they were paying full attention during sports or listening to a friend. Maybe they ate something and enjoyed it. Maybe they were enjoying their favorite song or were engaged with their pet. Ask them how it made them feel when they were mindful like that. Mindfulness practice gives us more of those wonderful moments.

"I can't focus because my mind is so full of stuff."

That's okay, minds wander; it's what minds do. Explain to them that mindfulness practice is just about that-noticing what our minds do. Mindfulness practice teaches us to take sensations directly and to let go of the inner commentary. We learn to let go of the chatter, instead of engaging with it. When we practice, we give our minds a much-needed break, and we can feel better. But it takes some practice to teach our brains to take this break. Start with short sessions and engage their senses through sensory awareness activities. Ask them how they feel during and after those exercises. They might just be surprised by how focusing on their senses (smell, taste, touch, sound, sight) can make the inner chatter less noisy for a while.

"It's not worth the time."

Explain the potential benefits, and ask them if there's something that they think could be of use to them. Maybe there's some area in life that they could improve with mindfulness skills (academia, sports, arts, hobbies, friendships). Help them picture a viable end result, how mindfulness skills could assist them to make a positive change in their lives. What could that be? Be careful not to overpromise, but make them curious about the possible benefits. Finally, tell them how mindfulness has benefited you or someone else they look up to. You can add that you think it's worth spending two to five minutes a day in practice so that the rest (1440 minutes) can become much more enjoyable. Would they be willing to invest a few minutes in order to set themselves up for improved focus, less stress, and a more positive outlook on life? To be able to pick themselves up when feeling bad or focus at will to perform better when they want to succeed? Explain how just a few minutes can improve their mood and possibly the whole day.
I hope you enjoyed these ideas.
May you be happy & healthy,
Chris
See also: Empathy and Loving Kindness Practice: Pass the kindness Bedtime Wishes For Loving Kindness Loving-Kindness - Sending Kind Thoughts
If you are new to mindfulness with children, or you want to boost your practice, we recommend our online courses: Get notified here!

Chris Bergstrom is the founder of BlissfulKids.com and a dad who is thrilled to practice mindfulness with his son. He is a certified mindfulness facilitator, and trained to teach mindfulness to students in K-12. He's also an executive consultant, and has taught meditation for more than 10 years.

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Troubleshooting Mindfulness With Kids And Teens - Blissful Kids

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Here's how you can help kids and youth when they feel like mindfulness practice is not working out for them. Tell them that it's normal. It is. We live such hyperactive lives these days that sitting still for 60 seconds can feel like a daunting task.

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Why Mindfulness Is a Superpower: An Animation

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Contemporary culture has a way of making everything seem daunting, even something as simple as meditation. This 2-minute video presents a very straightforward way to start meditating: sit up straight and concentrate on

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Save

Many traditions speak of the opposing forces within us, vying for our attention. Native American stories speak of two wolves, the angry wolf and the loving wolf, who both live inside of us.

Our life experiences grow out of the wolf we feed. Too often it seems the easiest path is to engage in hate and fear, rather than be compassionate, loving, truthful, and generous. We need to bring mindfulness to our daily life, paying attention to the angry wolf and catching our emotions and thoughts as they arise, if we want to live a peaceful, successful, and happy life.

In this video narrated by Sharon Salzberg, discover how mindfulness allows us to see our thoughts and feelings as they really are, freeing us from old ways of thinking.

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Save Many traditions speak of the opposing forces within us, vying for our attention. Native American stories speak of two wolves, the angry wolf and the loving wolf, who both live inside of us. Our life experiences grow out of the wolf we feed.

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Sharon invokes the joyous freedom of "Blowing Bubbles" in this second video of her series. The Buddha said, "life is like bubbles in the stream." Sharon uses this classical Buddhist inspiration to playfully explore life with wonder and curiosity. Turn the ephemeral passage of time into your playground as you move through your day with #StreetLovingkindness and bubbles. Released on Sept 15th in honor of the International Day of Peace.

Bubble Meditation

When we start on the path towards a more mindful existence, we sometimes run the risk of taking ourselves too seriously. Mindfulness exercises are meant to assist you in adopting various mindfulness practices as a part of your daily life, and we offer thousands of free resources to help you do just that.

However, it's easy to become too focused on results, and to lose sight of the forest for the trees. Perhaps we've set goals for ourselves, and we're holding ourselves to particular standards. For example, we might say, "I need to sit in meditation for at least one hour today." Or, we might feel that we've "failed" to be mindful because we neglected to engage in a minimum number of exercises this week.

Life is like bubbles in the stream

Whether you're just getting started with mindfulness meditation, or whether you're someone who's been at it for many years, these kinds of issues can come up. You hold yourself to unreasonable standards, and perhaps you take the process more seriously than you should. It's important to remember that mindfulness can be joyful, even playful. It's not about hitting a certain metric each day or week to week: the goal is presence, awareness, clarity, and joy.

To that end, this simple mindfulness meditation on bubbles can help return you to the most basic foundations of your mindfulness practice. Life can be a playground, if we choose to make it one. In this excerpt from her "Street LovingKindness" video series, Sharon Salzberg explores the idea of how we can use meditation to experience more of the simple joy in life. Rather than approaching meditation with an air of seriousness, this mindfulness exercise treats meditation as something simple, wondrous, and deserving of an almost childlike kind of curiosity. Feel free to share this meditation with anyone that you think might enjoy it.

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Sharon invokes the joyous freedom of "Blowing Bubbles" in this second video of her series. The Buddha said, "life is like bubbles in the stream." Sharon uses this classical Buddhist inspiration to playfully explore life with wonder and curiosity. Turn the ephemeral passage of time into your playground as you move through your day with #StreetLovingkindness and bubbles.

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The Listening Game  | Cosmic Kids Zen Den - Mindfulness for kids

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You wake up to the blare of your alarm, rush through or skip breakfast, and get into your car to head to work. On your commute, you might deal with traffic jams, only hit red lights, and struggle to find a place to park near your office.

Once you finally make it to work, you're met with a hectic meeting schedule, endless unanswered emails, and the constant notifications from your various social media channels. You're exhausted and feeling frantic - and the day has barely begun.

Practicing mindfulness can help you stay grounded through the demands of your workday. It can help you find balance , decrease stress, and even increase satisfaction and happiness in life. Let's take a look at a few ways to incorporate mindfulness into your workday:
Bell of Mindfulness
Using a bell of mindfulness is a great technique for reminding yourself to stay mindful throughout the day. You can use a physical bell, timer, or an alarm on your phone. Set your bell or alarm to ring at regular intervals throughout the day. Every time your bell rings, take a few moments to stop doing and just be . Put down whatever it is that you're working on, close your eyes, and take a few deep, slow breaths.

Each time your bell rings, you have an opportunity to slow down, check in with yourself, and put things in perspective. The bell of mindfulness can be very grounding, especially in an office environment where you can easily get wrapped up in the million things you're trying to do at once and forget to center yourself.
Mindful Eating
Eating mindfully can be really hard to do, especially when you're feeling stressed out or overwhelmed. Eating too quickly, eating junk food, and eating while doing something else are all examples of unmindful eating.

Many people who practice mindful eating find that they can transform stress when they stop trying to do several things at once and instead focus solely on one activity at a time. So when lunchtime rolls around and you're tempted to just eat at your desk and work through your break - think again. You'll likely be more productive and happier if you take 30 minutes to enjoy your food away from your desk and focus on eating mindfully.
Mindful Movement
Movement is perhaps one of the most enjoyable and important ways you can incorporate mindfulness into your workday. If you, like many people, sit at a desk in front of a computer for upwards of eight hours a day, your mental and physical health and well-being are at risk. Sitting for a prolonged period of time impacts vein health , including stress levels, back health, and eye health, just to name a few.

You can check off the movement and mindfulness boxes on your to-do list by going outside for a short walk whenever you can. Even if you stand up and take a lap around your building once every few hours, you'll give your body a chance to stretch and your mind a chance to recenter and breathe.
Grounding Practices
Integrating grounding practices into your daily routines, both when you're at work and when you're at home, can go a long way in making mindfulness a more central part of your day. Spending a portion of each day unplugged from all your devices is a great way to ground yourself and be present.

Another great grounding practice is to work in a garden and get your hands dirty. What could be more grounding than literally working with the ground to create food or beautiful flowers? The value of community gardens is great, showing the benefits of working with others in your grounding and mindful practices.

After all, one of the best parts of mindfulness is getting to share it with others. The world might be a different place if everyone practiced a few of these mindfulness hacks throughout their days. We often don't realize how stressed and overwhelmed we are until we take a minute to stop and slow down.

Mindfulness probably isn't something that is going to just happen to you without any effort. Especially in a world like the one we live in today, mindfulness must be intentionally cultivated and practiced, meaning you have to do it over and over again before you realize you're going through your day in a more mindful way without even thinking about it.

The next time you feel stressed out, overwhelmed, and out of touch, try the bell of mindfulness, mindful eating practices, fresh air and movement, and grounding practices. You'll likely feel better and be on your way to developing habits that will be beneficial in the long run.

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How to Incorporate Mindfulness Into Your Workday - No Sidebar

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You wake up to the blare of your alarm, rush through or skip breakfast, and get into your car to head to work. On your commute, you might deal with traffic jams, only hit red lights, and struggle to find a place to park near your office.

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Knowing when to rest is a deep practice. Sometimes we try too hard in our practice or we work too much without mindfulness; thus we become tired very easily. The practice of mindfulness should not be tiring; rather, it should be energizing. If when we recognize that we are tired, we should find every means possible to rest. Ask for help from your friends, family, coworkers, or sangha. Practicing with a tired body and mind does not help. In fact, it can cause more problems. To take care of yourself is to take care of the whole sangha. Resting may mean to stop what you are doing and take a five-minute walk outside, to go on a fast for a day or two, or to practice Noble Silence for a period. There are many ways for us to rest, so please pay attention to the rhythm of your body and mind for the benefit of all. Deep Relaxation is a practice of resting. Mindful breathing, whether in the sitting or in the lying position, is the practice of resting. Let us learn the art of resting and allow our body and our mind to restore themselves. Not thinking and not doing anything is an art of resting and healing.

Taking care of our body is an important practice. We need our body to be healthy in order for us to practice. Mindful Movements and Deep Relaxation can support our health and happiness in the practice, and keep us in touch with our body.

Each day we can practice the Ten Mindful Movements, which is an opportunity for us to unite our mind and body. We enjoy opening our body, stretching up to the sky, and releasing down to touch the ground. We do every exercise with the awareness of our breathing and of our action. We find a sense of balance and flexibility in our own body and mind. We practice in a relaxed way, not straining to gain anything.

Practicing Deep Relaxation as a community, led by an experienced practitioner, creates a wonderful energy of peace and harmony. It is a practice of totally letting go and returning back to take care of our body and mind. We use the breath as our anchor to help us. Our breath is also like a wave, gently rocking us into a deep peace. In this state of rest, our body and mind can release their burdens. A lot of healing happens just by letting go and sinking into this state of total relaxation. After practicing guided Deep Relaxation, we may use these techniques anytime we need to rest.

Practicing Mindful Movements and Deep Relaxation allows us to listen deeply to our bodies. We learn to be gentle with ourselves and to give ourselves space to understand and to grow. Practicing in this way, our body becomes our friend and not a burden to our practice. Compassion towards ourselves will penetrate into our interactions with others. How we walk, move, sit, stand, and hold our body are reflections of our states of mind. When we move with ease, others around us will also feel light and relaxed in our presence.

Deep Relaxation Exercise
Lie down on your back with your arms at your sides (you may also practice in a sitting position). Make yourself comfortable. Allow your body to relax. Be aware of the floor underneath you and of the contact of your body with the floor. (Pause)

Allow your body to sink into the floor. (Pause)

Become aware of your breathing, in and out. Be aware of your abdomen rising and falling as you breathe in and out...rising...falling...rising...falling. (Pause)

Breathing in, bring your awareness to your eyes. Breathing out, allow your eyes to relax. Allow your eyes to sink back into your head...let go of the tension in all the tiny muscles around your eyes...our eyes allow us to see a paradise of form and color...allow your eyes to rest...send love and gratitude to your eyes. (Pause)

Breathing in, bring your awareness to your mouth. Breathing out, allow your mouth to relax. Release the tension around your mouth...your lips are the petals of a flower...let a gentle smile bloom on your lips...smiling releases the tension in the hundreds of muscles in your face...feel the tension release in your cheeks...your jaw...your throat. (Pause)

Breathing in, bring your awareness to your shoulders. Breathing out, allow your shoulders to relax. Let them sink into the floor...let all the accumulated tension flow into the floor... we carry so much with our shoulders...now let them relax as we care for our shoulders. (Pause)

Breathing in, become aware of your arms. Breathing out, relax your arms. Let your arms sink into the floor...your upper arms...your elbows...your lower arms...your wrists...hands...fingers...all the tiny muscles...move your fingers a little if you need to, to help the muscles relax. (Pause)

Breathing in, bring your awareness to your heart. Breathing out, allow your heart to relax. (Pause) Our heart beats for us night and day...embrace your heat with mindfulness and tenderness...reconciling and taking care of your heart. (Pause)

Breathing in, bring your awareness to your legs. Breathing out, allow your legs to relax. Release all the tension in your legs...your thighs...your calves...your ankles...your feet...your toes...all the tiny muscles in your toes...you may want to move your toes a little to help them relax...send your love and care to your toes. (Pause)

Breathing in, breathing out...my whole body feels lights...like duck weed floating on the water...I have nowhere to go...nothing to do...I am free as the cloud floating in the sky. (Pause)

(Music or silence for a few minutes)

Bring your awareness back to your breathing...to your abdomen rising and falling. (Pause)
Following your breathing, become aware of your arms and legs...you may want to move them a little and stretch. (Pause)

When you feel ready, slowly sit up. (Pause)

When you are ready, slowly stand up.

In the above exercise, you can guide awareness to any part of the body-the hair, scalp, brain, ears, neck, lungs, each of the internal organs, the digestive system, pelvis, and any other part of the body that needs healing and attention, embracing each part and sending love, gratitude, and care as we hold it in our awareness and breathe in and out.

Thich Nhat Hanh, Buddha Mind, Buddha Body (Berkeley, Calif.: Parallax Press, 2008).

Thich Nhat Hanh, The World We Have (Berkeley, Calif.: Parallax Press, 2008)

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Knowing when to rest is a deep practice. Sometimes we try too hard in our practice or we work too much without mindfulness; thus we become tired very easily. The practice of mindfulness should not be tiring; rather, it should be energizing. If when we recognize that we are tired, we should find every means possible to rest.

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Togetherness is a practice. At the practice center we have a unique opportunity to live closely with friends from many different countries and backgrounds. Together we form one sangha body, connected by the practice of mindfulness. With our collective energy of calming and looking deeply, it is possible for us to support each other on the path of transformation. This requires cooperation, skillfulness, and acceptance. To live and work together, we need to cultivate understanding, communication, and a willing heart. Let us take the time to get to know the people in our work. We have neglected our neighbors for too long.

If you have colleagues, friends or family who also wish to practice we can encourage each other with our practice and build diligence and solidity. Living and working together is an opportunity to develop understanding and compassion for ourselves and for others. By being mindful of the people we work with, we can identify and appreciate their positive qualities, creating an atmosphere of harmony. We know that when the other person is happy, we are also happy.

We can show our respect to our colleagues and the space we share by helping to keep it neat and clean. We try to be considerate of others. For example, we might like to ask before we open a window or turn on the light, to make sure it will not bother our colleagues. In this way we can create a supportive environment for practicing loving kindness through our words, thoughts, and actions.

The greatest gift we can offer our fellow practitioners is our practice of mindfulness. Our smile and our conscious breathing communicate that we are trying our best to find peace within ourselves and we hope to contribute to the peace in the work as well. We should remember to keep communication flowing, and our happiness will flow as well.
Bell of Mindfulness
In our practice centers you might hear a bell and notice people pausing in their activities and conversations. It might be the sound of a telephone ringing, the clock chiming, or the monastery's activity bell sounding. These are our bells of mindfulness. When we hear the sound of the bell, we relax our body and become aware of our breathing. We do this naturally, with enjoyment, and without solemnity or physical rigidity.

When we hear one of these bells of mindfulness, we stop our conversations and whatever we are doing and bring awareness to our breathing. The bell has called out to us:
Listen, listen, this wonderful sound brings me back to my true home.
By stopping to breathe and to restore our calm and our peace, we become free, our work becomes more enjoyable, and the people in front of us becomes more real. At home we can use the ringing of our telephone, the local church bells, the cry of a baby, or even the sound of fire engines and ambulances as our bells of mindfulness. With just three conscious breaths we can release the tensions in our body and mind and return to a cool and clear state of being.

To introduce a bell of mindfulness to your work place or class room is a great way to give yourself space and not get lost in the hectic activities around. Inviting the bell throughout the day can restore peace and calm and students love it!
Breathing
Our breathing is a stable solid ground that we can take refuge in. Regardless of our internal weather--our thoughts, emotions, and perceptions--our breathing is always with us like a faithful friend. Whenever we feel carried away, sunken in a deep emotion, or scattered in worries and projects, we return to our breathing to collect and anchor our mind.

We feel the flow of air coming in and going out of our nose. We feel how light and natural, how calm and peaceful our breathing functions. At any time, while we are walking, gardening, or typing, we can return to this peaceful source of life. We may like to recite:
"Breathing in I know that I am breathing in.
Breathing out I know that I am breathing out." Waking Up Waking up this morning I smile
knowing there are 24 brand new hours before me.
I vow to live fully in each moment,
and look at beings with eyes of compassion. Sitting Meditation
We do not need to control our breath. Feel the breath as it actually is. It may be long or short, deep or shallow. With our awareness, it will naturally become slower and deeper. Conscious breathing is the key to uniting body and mind and bringing the energy of mindfulness into each moment of our life.

As we wake up in the morning and open our eyes we may like to recite the above gatha (mindfulness verse). We can start our day with the happiness of a smile and the aspiration to dedicate ourselves to the path of love and understanding. We are aware that today is a fresh, new day, and we have 24 precious hours to live.

Let us try to get up from bed right away after following three deep breaths to bring ourselves into mindfulness. Let us not delay our waking. We may like to sit up and gently massage our head, neck, shoulders, and arms to get our blood circulating. We might like to do a few stretches to loosen our joints and wake up our body. Drinking a cup of warm water is also good for our system first thing in the morning.

As we wash up or otherwise prepare to start the day, we allow ourselves enough time so we do not have to rush. Enjoy the dark morning sky. Many stars are twinkling and greeting us. Take deep breaths and enjoy the cool, fresh air. As we set off for work, let the morning fill our being, awakening our body and mind to the joy of a new day.

Sitting meditation is like returning home to give full attention to and care for our self. We sit upright with dignity, and return to our breathing. We bring our full attention to what is within and around us. We let our mind become spacious and our heart soft and kind.
Eating Together
Sitting meditation is very healing. We realize we can just be with whatever is within us--our pain, anger, and irritation, or our joy, love, and peace. We are with whatever is there without being carried away by it. Let it come, let it stay, then let it go. No need to push, to suppress, or to pretend our thoughts are not there. Observe the thoughts and images of our mind with an accepting and loving eye. We are free to be still and calm despite the storms that might arise in us.

If our legs or feet fall asleep or begin to hurt during the sitting, we are free to adjust our position quietly. We can maintain our concentration by following our breathing as we slowly and attentively change our posture.

After practicing sitting meditation, we sometimes practice indoor walking meditation (Kinh Hanh). We take one step with each in-breath and each out-breath.

We can find suggestions for guided meditations in Thay's book, " The Blooming of a Lotus " or from one of the Dharma teachers.

Eating a meal together can be a mindful practice. We should try to offer our presence for every meal. Serving food to ourselves, we can already begin practicing. We realize that many elements, such as the rain, sunshine, earth, air, and love, have come together to form this wonderful meal. In fact, through this food we see that the entire universe is supporting our existence.

We are aware of our colleagues and friends as we serve ourselves, and we should take an amount of food that is good for us. At lunchtime we can enjoy breathing in and out while practicing the five contemplations:
Resting

1. This food is a gift of the earth, the sky, numerous living beings, and much hard and loving work.

2. May we eat with mindfulness and gratitude so as to be worthy to receive this food.

3. May we recognize and transform unwholesome mental formations, especially our greed and learn to eat with moderation

4. May we keep our compassion alive by eating in such a way that reduces the suffering of living beings, stops contributing to climate change, and heals and preserves our precious planet.

5. We accept this food so that we may nurture our brotherhood and sisterhood, build our sangha, and nourish our ideal of serving all living beings.

The Body of Practice
We should take our time as we eat, chewing each mouthful at least 30 times, until the food becomes liquified. This aids the digestive process. Let us enjoy every morsel of our food and the presence of the dharma brothers and sisters around us. Let us establish ourselves in the present moment, eating in such a way that solidity, joy, and peace be possible during the time of eating.

Eating in silence, the food becomes real with our mindfulness and we are fully aware of its nourishment. In order to deepen our practice of mindful eating and support the peaceful atmosphere, we remain seated during this silent period. After twenty minutes of silent eating, two sounds of the bell will be invited. We may then start a mindful conversation with our friend or get up from the table.

Upon finishing our meal, we take a few moments to notice that we have finished, that our bowl is now empty and our hunger is satisfied. Gratitude fills us as we realize how fortunate we are to have had this nourishing food to eat, supporting us on the path of love and understanding.

Knowing when to rest is a deep practice. Sometimes we try too hard in our practice or we work too much without mindfulness; thus we become tired very easily. The practice of mindfulness should not be tiring; rather, it should be energizing. But when we recognize that we are tired, we should find every means possible to rest. Practicing with a tired body and mind does not help. In fact, it can cause more problems. To take care of yourself is to take care of your whole community. Resting may mean to stop what you are doing and take a five-minute walk outside, to go on a fast for a day or two, or perhaps to practice Noble Silence for a period. There are many ways to rest, so please pay attention to the rhythm of your body and mind for the benefit of all. Total Relaxation is a practice of resting. Mindful breathing, whether in the sitting or in the lying position, is the practice of resting. Let us learn the art of resting and allow our body and our mind to restore themselves. Not thinking and not doing anything is an art of resting and healing.
Dharma Sharing
Taking care of our body is an important practice. We need our body to be healthy in order for us to practice. Mindful Movements and Deep Relaxation can support our health and happiness in the practice, and keep us in touch with our body.

Each day we practice the 10 Mindful Movements, which is an opportunity for us to unite our mind and body. We enjoy opening our body, stretching up to the sky, and releasing down to touch the ground. Throughout each exercise we stay aware of our breathing and our movement. We find a sense of balance and flexibility in our own body and mind. We practice in a relaxed way, not straining to gain anything.

Practicing Deep Relaxation as a community, led by an experienced practitioner, creates a wonderful energy of peace and harmony. It is a practice of totally letting go and returning back to take care of our body and mind. We use the breath as our anchor to help us. Our breath is also like a wave, gently rocking us into a deep peace. In this state of rest, our body and mind can release their burdens. A lot of healing happens just by letting go and sinking into this state of total relaxation. After practicing Deep Relaxation, led by a sister or brother in the practice, we may use these techniques anytime we need to rest.
Working Meditation
Practicing Mindful Movements and Deep Relaxation allows us to listen deeply to our bodies. We learn to be gentle with ourselves and to give ourselves space to understand and to grow. Practicing in this way, our body becomes our friend and not a burden in our practice. Compassion towards ourselves will penetrate into our interactions with others. How we walk, move, sit, stand, and hold our body are reflections of our states of mind. When we move with ease, others around us will also feel light and relaxed in our presence.
The Kitchen
Dharma sharing is an opportunity to benefit from each other's insight and experience in the practice. It is a special time for us to share our experiences, our joys, our difficulties, and our questions relating to the practice of mindfulness. By practicing deep listening while others are speaking, we help create a calm and receptive environment. By learning to speak out about our happiness and our difficulties in the practice, we contribute to the collective insight and understanding of the community or workplace.

Please base our sharing on our own experience of the practice rather than about abstract ideas or theoretical topics. We may realize that many of us share similar difficulties and aspirations. Sitting, listening, and sharing together, we recognize our true connections to one another.
Solitude
Please remember that whatever is shared during the Dharma discussion time is confidential. If a friend shares about a difficulty he or she is facing, respect that he or she may or may not wish to talk about this individually outside of the Dharma discussion time.

To participate in working meditation can be a great happiness. As we are working at our computer, preparing dinner for our family, or teaching a class, we can practice stopping, calming, and refreshing ourselves with our conscious breathing. We can relax and smile at our co-workers and pace ourselves to maintain a light and serene state of being.

The kitchen is also a mindful practice space. Let us be mindful when we are cooking or cleaning in this space. Let us do our task in a relaxed and serene way, following our breathing and keeping our concentration on the work. Only a few words may be needed about the work at hand.
Touching the Earth
While cooking, we allow enough time so we will not feel rushed. This awareness will guide us to cook healthy food infused with our love and mindfulness.

Although in our daily lives we are constantly with people, we are also in solitude. Solitude is not about being alone high up in the mountains, or in a hut deep in the forest. It is not about hiding ourselves away from civilization. Real solitude comes from a stable heart that does not get carried away by the crowd nor by our sorrows about the past, our worries about the future, and our excitement about the present. We do not lose ourselves; we do not lose our mindfulness. Taking refuge in our mindful breathing, coming back to the present moment is to take refuge in the beautiful, serene island within each of us.

We participate with the sangha for sitting meditation, walking, meals, and working; but we are always within our own island as well. We can enjoy being together with our brothers and sisters, but we are not caught and lost within emotions and perceptions. Instead we see that or friends and colleagues are our support. When we see a colleague move in mindfulness, speak with love, and enjoy her work, she is our reminder to return to our own source of mindfulness. Returning to mindfulness is to return to solitude.
Gatha-Poems
When we enjoy our time with the people and friends around us and we don't feel lost in our interactions with others, then even in the midst of society, we can smile and breathe in peace, dwelling in the island of ourselves.

The practice of Touching the Earth is to return to the earth, to our roots, to our ancestors, and to recognize that we are not alone but connected to a whole stream of spiritual and blood ancestors. We are their continuation and, with them, will continue into the future generations. We touch the earth to let go of the idea that we are separate and to remind us that we are the earth and part of life.
Before starting the car
I know where I am going.
Beginning Anew The car and I are one.
If the car goes fast, I go fast.
When we touch the earth, we become small, with the humility and simplicity of a young child. When we touch the earth, we become great, like an ancient tree sending her roots deep into the earth, drinking from the source of all waters. When we touch the earth, we breathe in all the strength and stability of the earth, and breathe out our suffering--our feelings of anger, hatred, fear, inadequacy, and grief.

Our hands join to form a lotus bud and we gently lower ourselves to the ground so that all four limbs and our forehead are resting comfortably on the floor. While we are Touching the Earth we turn our palms face up, showing our openness to the three jewels--the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha. After one or two times practicing Touching the Earth (Three Touchings or Five Touchings), we can already release a lot of our suffering and feelings of alienation, and we can reconcile with our ancestors, parents, children, or friends.

Gathas are short verses that help us practice mindfulness in our daily activities. A gatha can open and deepen our experience of simple acts which we often take for granted. When we focus our mind on a gatha, we return to ourselves and become more aware of each action. When the gatha ends, we continue our activity with heightened awareness.

As we turn on the water faucet we can look deeply and see how precious the water is. We remember not to waste a single drop because there are so many people in the world who don't even have enough to drink. While brushing our teeth we can make a vow to use loving speech. Before turning on the engine of our car, we can prepare for a safe journey by reciting the gatha for starting the car:

The gatha brings our mind and body together. With a calm and clear mind, fully aware of the activities of our body, we are less likely to get into a car accident. Gathas are nourishment for our mind, giving us peace, calmness, and joy which we can share with others. They help us to bring the uninterrupted practice of meditation into every part of our day. There are many gathas available in our " Chanting from the Heart " book.

To begin anew is to look deeply and honestly at ourselves--our past actions, speech, and thoughts--and to create a fresh beginning within ourselves and in our relationships with others. At the practice center, we practice Beginning Anew as a community every two weeks and individually as often as we like.

We practice Beginning Anew to clear our mind and keep our practice fresh. When a difficulty arises in our relationships with fellow practitioners and one of us feels resentment or hurt, we know it is time to begin anew. The following is a description of the four-part process of Beginning Anew as used in a formal setting. One person speaks at a time and is not interrupted during his or her turn. The other practitioners practice deep listening and following their breath.

Flower watering: This is a chance to share our appreciation for the other person. We may mention specific instances that the other person said or did something that we admired. This is an opportunity to shine light on the other's strengths and contributions to the sangha and to encourage the growth of his or her positive qualities.
Hugging Meditation
Sharing regrets: We may mention any unskillfulness in our actions, speech, or thoughts for which we have not yet had an opportunity to apologize.

Expressing a hurt: We may share how we felt hurt by an interaction with another practitioner due to his or her actions, speech, or thoughts. (To express a hurt we should first water the other person's flower by sharing two positive qualities that we have truly observed in him or her. Expressing a hurt is often performed one on one with another practitioner rather than in the group setting. You may ask for a third party that you both trust and respect to be present, if desired.)

Sharing a long-term difficulty & asking for support: At times we each have difficulties and pain arise from our past that surface in the present. When we share an issue that we are dealing with we can let the people around us understand us better and offer the support that we really need.
Lazy Day
The practice of Beginning Anew helps us develop our kind speech and compassionate listening. Beginning Anew is a practice of recognition and appreciation of the positive elements within our sangha. For instance, we may notice that our friend is generous in sharing her insights, and another friend is caring towards plants.

Recognizing others' positive traits allows us to see our own good qualities as well.

Along with these good traits, we each have areas of weakness, such as talking out of our anger or being caught in our misperceptions. When we practice "flower watering" we support the development of good qualities in each other and, at the same time, we help to weaken the difficulties in the other person. As in a garden, when we "water the flowers" of loving kindness and compassion in each other, we also take energy away from the weeds of anger, jealousy, and misperception.
Tea Meditation
We can practice Beginning Anew every day by expressing our appreciation for our fellow practitioners and apologizing right away when we do or say something that hurts them. We can politely let others know when we have been hurt as well. The health and happiness of the whole community depends on the harmony, peace, and joy that exist between every person in the sangha.

When we hug, our hearts connect and we know that we are not separate beings. Hugging with mindfulness and concentration can bring reconciliation, healing, understanding, and much happiness. The practice of mindful hugging has helped so many to reconcile with each other--fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, friends and friends, and so many others.

We may practice hugging meditation with a friend, our daughter, our father, our partner, or even with a tree. To practice, we first bow and recognize the presence of each other and enjoy three deep, conscious breaths to bring ourselves fully there. We may then open our arms and begin hugging, holding each other for three in-and-out breaths. With the first breath, we are aware that we are present in this very moment and we are happy. With the second breath, we are aware that the other is present in this moment and we are happy as well. With the third breath, we are aware that we are here together, right now on this earth, and we feel deep gratitude and happiness for our togetherness. We then release the other person and bow to each other to show our thanks.
Sangha Body
When we hug in such a way, the other person becomes real and alive. We do not need to wait until one of us is ready to depart for a trip; we may hug right now and receive the warmth and stability of our friend in the present moment. Hugging can be a deep practice of reconciliation. During the silent hugging, the message be very clear: "Darling, you are precious to me. I am sorry I have not been mindful and considerate. I have made mistakes. Allow me to begin anew. I promise."

A Lazy Day is a day for us to be truly with the day without any schedule activities. We just let the day unfold naturally, timelessly. It is a day in which we can practice as we like. We may do walking meditation on our own or with a friend or do sitting meditation. We might like to read lightly or write to our family or to a friend.

It can be a day for us to look more deeply at our practice and at our relations with others. We may learn a lot about how we have been practicing. We may recognize what to do or what not to do in order to bring more harmony into our practice. Sometimes we may force ourselves too much in the practice, creating disharmony within and around us. On this day, we have a chance to balance ourselves. We may recognize that we may simply need to rest or that we should practice more diligently. A Lazy Day is a gift for us and the sangha to enjoy in our own time and space. It is a very quiet day for everyone.
Taking Care of Anger
A lazy day is a wonderful way to get enough rest and nourishment which can give you enough strength to all the challenges you will face throughout the week.

Tea meditation is a time to be with the others in a joyful and serene atmosphere. Just to enjoy our tea together is enough. It is like a "good news" occasion, when we share our joy and happiness in being together.

At times, when we are drinking tea with a friend, we are not aware of the tea or even of our friend sitting there. Practicing tea meditation is to be truly present with our tea and our friends. We recognize that we can dwell happily in the present moment despite all of our sorrows and worries. We sit there relaxed without having to say anything. If we like, we may also share a song, a story, or a dance.

You may like to bring a musical instrument or prepare something ahead of time. It is an opportunity for us to water the seeds of happiness and joy, of understanding and love in each one of us.

Everyone who comes to practice is a member of the sangha. Even if we come to a practice center for only one week, our presence and our practice can contribute to the vitality and harmony of the sangha.

In society, much of our suffering comes from feeling disconnected from one another. We often don't feel a real connection even with people we live close to, such as our neighbors, our co-workers and even our family members. Each person lives separately, cut off from the support of the community. Being with the sangha can heal these feelings of isolation and separation. We practice together, share a room together, eat side by side, and clean pots together. Just by participating with other practitioners in the daily activities, we can experience a tangible feeling of love and acceptance.

Thay often says that the sangha is a garden, full of many varieties of trees and flowers. When we can look at ourselves and at others as beautiful, unique flowers and trees, we can truly grow to understand and love one another. One flower may bloom early in the spring and another flower may bloom in late summer. One tree may bear many fruits and another tree may offer cool shade. No one plant is greater, lesser, or the same as any other plant in the garden. Each member of the sangha also has unique gifts to offer to the community. We each have areas that need attention as well. When we can appreciate each member's contribution and see our weaknesses as potential for growth, we can learn to live together harmoniously. Our practice is to see that we are a flower or a tree, and we are the whole garden as well, all interconnected.

Thay often compares our anger to a small child, crying out to his mother. When the child cries, the mother takes him gently in her arms and listens and observes carefully to find out what is wrong. The loving action of holding her child with tenderness already soothes the baby's suffering. Likewise, we can take our anger in our loving arms, and right away we will feel some relief. We don't need to reject our anger. It is a part of us that needs our love and deep listening just as a baby does.

After the baby has calmed down, the mother can feel if the baby has a fever or needs a change of diaper. When we feel calm and cool, we, too, can look deeply at our anger and see clearly the conditions allowing our anger to rise.

When we feel angry it is best to refrain from saying or doing anything. We may like to withdraw our attention from the person or situation which is watering the seed of anger in us. We should take this time to come back to ourselves. We can practice conscious breathing and outdoor walking meditation to calm and refresh our mind and body. After we feel calmer and more relaxed we can begin to look deeply at ourselves and at the person and situation causing anger to arise in us. Often, when we have a difficulty with a particular person, he or she may have a characteristic that reflects a weakness of our own which is difficult to accept. As we grow to love and accept ourselves this will naturally spread to those around us.

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Togetherness is a practice. At the practice center we have a unique opportunity to live closely with friends from many different countries and backgrounds. Together we form one sangha body, connected by the practice of mindfulness. With our collective energy of calming and looking deeply, it is possible for us to support each other on the path of transformation.

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The Tree illustrates some of the contemplative practices currently in use in secular organizational and academic settings. This is not intended to be a comprehensive list. Below the tree you will find links to descriptions of many of these practices as well as a more in-depth description of the tree and image files for downloading.

Some of the practices on the tree link to further information-either on our website, or on Wikipedia.
© CMind, the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society
Concept & design byMaia Duerr; illustration by Carrie Bergman
Suggested citation for this version:
CMind. (2014). The Tree of Contemplative Practices [Illustration]. The Center for Contemplative Mind in Society. http://www.contemplativemind.org/practices/tree

Understanding the Tree

On the Tree of Contemplative Practices, the roots symbolize the two intentions that are the foundation of all contemplative practices. The roots of the tree encompass and transcend differences in the religious traditions from which many of the practices originated, and allow room for the inclusion of new practices that are being created in secular contexts.

The branches represent different groupings of practices. For example, Stillness Practices focus on quieting the mind and body in order to develop calmness and focus. Generative Practices may come in many different forms but share the common intent of generating thoughts and feelings, such as thoughts of devotion and compassion, rather than calming and quieting the mind. (Please note that such classifications are not definitive, and many practices could be included in more than one category.)

Because this illustration cannot possibly include all contemplative practices, we offer a free download of a blank tree that you can customize to include your own practices. Activities not included on the tree (including those which may seem mundane, such as gardening or eating) may be understood to be contemplative practices when done with the intent of cultivating awareness and wisdom.

Where Did This Image Come From?

The original version of the tree was created to illustrate a 2004 report, " A Powerful Silence: The Role of Meditation and Other Contemplative Practices in American Life and Work" (Duerr, 2004), for a project that explored the ways contemplative practices were being used within organizations. The practices listed on the initial tree illustration were those reported by project participants. Over the years, as CMind's focus shifted to academia, we heard from educators about how particular practices were being used in their work, and so the current tree is representative of practices used in academic contexts. No version of the tree is intended to be definitive or fully representative of the varieties of contemplative practice.

Downloading and Reprinting the Tree

Yes, you may use the tree for personal, educational, and non-commercial purposes without permission. For example, please do feel free to use it to illustrate the academic paper you are writing, hand it out to your class or workshop, post it on your blog, or print it out to display it at your organization or institution. The Tree of Contemplative Practices is a copyrighted image. Only commercial use of the image (i.e., selling it), including derivative work, is not allowed without our permission.

You can contact Carrie Bergman at carrie@contemplativemind.org if you have questions regarding the use of the tree, if you require a signature for your publisher's permissions form, or just to share how you have used the tree in your work. We love hearing about how it has been useful to you! Thank you!

For low-resolution use: Download a 185 KB, 600 x 608 pixel .jpg image of the Tree of Contemplative Practices

A Blank Tree for Your Own Practices

Here's a version of the Tree with the practice and branch names removed, so you can fill it in however you wish.

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The Tree illustrates some of the contemplative practices currently in use in secular organizational and academic settings. This is not intended to be a comprehensive list. Below the tree you will find links to descriptions of many of these practices as well as a more in-depth description of the tree and image files for downloading.

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Mindfulness Lessons For Children* Lesson #1: What is the Present Moment? By Annaka Harris *All of my "mindfulness lessons" are explanations of concepts from my Inner Kids classes and are designed for children ages 6-10. AnnakaHarris.com

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We're Going on a Bear Hunt | A Cosmic Kids Yoga Adventure!

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Students will be able to differentiate the outside present and the inside present. Students will be able to describe mindfulness in their own words.

Introduce or review mindfulness as a word that means paying attention to what is happening right now or in the present.

Tell students that they will practice noticing the present moment in a few different ways today.

Ask students to share ways to pay attention to the present. Some prompts could be: "How do you notice the world around you? What tools do you have to observe what is happening right now?"

Encourage students to focus on the five senses, if prompting is needed. (For example, "We look around. We use our eyes. We listen. We use our ears.")

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Mindfulness: The Outside and Inside Present | Lesson Plan | Education.com | Lesson plan | Education.com

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Students will be able to differentiate the outside present and the inside present. Students will be able to describe mindfulness in their own words. Introduce or review mindfulness as a word that means paying attention to what is happening right now or in the present.

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mindfulness exercises and guided meditation for kids AND ADULTS

I'm delighted to collaborate with the creators of the award winning meditation app Stop, Breathe & Think to bring Mindful Games to the app world.
Stop, Breathe, Think Kids

When we're faced with a disappointment we acknowledge our feelings, and then we think of three good things in our lives too.

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Guided Meditations for Children - Susan Kaiser Greenland

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Mindfulness exercises and guided meditation for children and adults

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Taste Test | Cosmic Kids Zen Den - Mindfulness for kids

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Workbook for your practice

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Free relaxation downloads: Relaxation for Children

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ORIGINAL ILLUSTRATIONS BY AMY JANE LARKIN

A nOTE FROM ANNAKA

Welcome to my guided meditations for children. All my recordings are designed for children ages six to ten, but the instructions are the same I would give to older children, teens, and beginner-level adults, so these recordings can be used by them as well.

Before you share these guided meditations with children, please review the "Instructions & Recommendations" tab above.

I hope you and your children enjoy them!

-AH

ENDORSEMENTS

"As one of the very first to bring secular mindfulness into public schools, Annaka Harris is uniquely qualified to teach meditation to children in a simple, direct, and authentic way. I highly recommend Annaka's guided meditations and lessons for children."
-Susan Kaiser Greenland, author of Mindful Games and The Mindful Child

"These are my favorite guided meditations for kids!"
-Rivers Cuomo, musician and lead singer / songwriter of the band Weezer

"Annaka Harris brings decades of expertise to guide children in beautiful, playful, and engaging meditations to access kindness and awareness. She is one of the pioneers in the field of children's mindfulness, and her accessible meditations are sure to delight children and parents alike."
-Diana Winston, Director of Mindfulness Education at UCLA's Mindful Awareness Research Center and author of The Little Book of Being

Also available on the Waking Up App

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Annaka Harris | MINDFULNESS FOR CHILDREN

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guided meditation FOR CHILDREN Instructions & Recommendations Mindful Hearing Mindful Breathing Mindful Seeing See, Feel, Move, Breathe Nighttime Meditation Friendly Wishes Mindfulness Lessons Soothing Uncomfortable Feelings Connection Meditation Walking Meditation ORIGINAL ILLUSTRATIONS BY AMY JANE LARKIN A nOTE FROM ANNAKA Welcome to my guided meditations for children.

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Mindfulness is gathering speed. Your child's school may have offered some sessions; maybe you have bought one of the many mindful colouring books that encourage your child to focus and enjoy the moment of creativity.

If mindfulness has or has not entered your life, how can you support your child to understand what it is and what it can offer them? Here are some ideas and tips to support you and your child to develop a deeper understanding of mindfulness meditation.
How to explain Mindfulness to younger children
Mindfulness is simply... noticing what is happening right now, in this moment and paying attention to it. Mindfulness is becoming aware of your senses and of how your body feels, moves; what you see, hear, touch, smell and taste. Maybe you even feel emotions in your body, perhaps through a tightness somewhere, or a good sensation.

Mindfulness is also noticing what your mind is doing, your thoughts as they arrive and developing your awareness that you are thinking and that its ok.
So what happens when you start noticing these things?
When you begin to notice what is happening around you, you focus more deeply, and you begin to strengthen your concentration. It simply is developing your ability to pay attention. Often we think we are soing this and we ask children to 'pay attention!' but do they really grasp what this means?

Using our senses is an immediate way to allow childlren to understand what paying attention is. 'notice the colours, notice a scent, notice how something feels...' Tell them to really pay attention to their place in the world by paying attention to their senses.

Ask them to describe the sensations in their fingertips, the solidness of the ground beneath their feet, the taste, feel and sensation of every single bite of food they take. Improved focus can help you do well in all areas of life too. To achieve higher levels in sports, school or music.

It can help you to calm down when you're sad, angry or frustrated. it can help you to find more clarity when you deal with tough emotions, and mindfulness can help make connections to support you to feel happy and feel good.
How to explain Mindfulness to Teens
When talking with older children, you could simply expand on the previous explanation and say that mindfulness is a basic life skill that can benefit us in many ways.

A popular way to put it is to say: mindfulness is about paying attention in a particular way - on purpose, in the present moment and without judgment.

The non-judgment part means that we simply have an experience without contemplating if the experience is good or bad. By doing this, we develop more self-awareness, emotional balance, and impulse control. It's about recognising our inner and outer experiences and understanding how they affect our well being.
How does mindfulness work?
We tend to react rather than respond. For example, when someone says something we don't like to hear, we react. Sometimes we say something that we would like to take back the moment after we blurt it out.

Mindfulness helps us create space between a strong emotion and our actions and develop time to form a response. Thus we can learn to deal with positive and negative experiences more calmly and by making better decisions.

When we pay attention to our thoughts and feelings, we can respond in a more clever way, without hurting our own feelings or the feelings of others.
"Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space lies our freedom and power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and freedom" - Victor Frankl
As we create more emotional balance, we are less easily knocked down by our emotions, but in moments when we are knocked down, we bounce back faster.

This video helps to explain mindfulness and how the brain works. Children find the science behind learning mindfulness fascinating and it helps to put it into a real life context.
What is the goal of Mindfulness?
Mindfulness helps us sustain our awareness more often and for longer periods. We can begin to practice mindfulness by adding many brief moments of awareness into our lives on a daily basis.

This awareness comes with lots of benefits.

Here are some of the good things mindfulness can bring to your life:

Mindfulness helps us create space between the emotions we have and the actions we use to respond to them.

Mindfulness helps us focus.

Mindfulness can make us feel better emotionally and physically.

What are the benefits of mindfulness?

decreased stress and anxiety,

improved health,

better sleep,

improved focus and awareness,

better problem solving,

improved impulse control,

increased compassion and kindness,

stronger relationships,

and even higher life satisfaction.

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How to Explain Mindfulness to Children - Nurture in Mind

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Mindfulness is gathering speed. Your child's school may have offered some sessions; maybe you have bought one of the many mindful colouring books that encourage your child to focus and enjoy the moment of creativity. If mindfulness has or has not entered your life, how can you support your child to understand what it is ...

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When we teach kids mindfulness, whether it's at school or at home, it helps to turn the lesson into a fun activity - through play, movement, visualization, and games.

One of our favorite toys for teaching basic breath awareness is the Hoberman sphere, a geodesic dome that can be folded and unfolded. We call this tool the breath ball because we can mimic the movements of breathing through the dome's movements: as the dome folds inward, we imagine the out-breath contracting; as the dome expands, we imagine the lungs expanding on the in-breath.

The Hoberman sphere might be more remarkable than the fidget spinner. Some are pocket-sized, glow-in-the-dark - others are hundreds of pounds, hanging from museum ceilings. For our purposes, consider what's most practical or interesting for you and your kids.

Introducing the breath ball to your child or group

Your script can go something like this:

First, place your hand on your belly. Ask your children if they can guess what you are doing as you make a somewhat exaggerated and loud breath, perhaps in through your nose, and out through your mouth.

Once they guess that you are breathing, congratulate them and let them know that you are going to teach them how to open up their breath so that their bodies and minds can open up and work their best.

Then reveal the breath ball, giving it any name that feels right to you. You might settle on the breath ball, magic mindfulness sphere, or even the Breathing Orb, which has a nice sci-fi ring to it that might appeal to some kids.

Explore these five breathing ball activities with your children:

1. Basic Breath Ball Practice

Using both hands, gently hold the breathing ball in front of your belly.

Hold one square on opposite sides of the sphere's surface.

Take a deep breath in. As your belly expands, let the ball expand with it. (As an added option, make your breath audible so the kids catch on to the in-breath/out-breath pattern.)

Breathe in fairly slowly, maybe holding momentarily at the top of the breath as you fully expand the ball.

As you breath out, allow the sphere to contract to its smallest size.

Repeat a few times and ask if the children are ready to take their turn. You might even count along in a rhythm (in for three, hold for four, out for five, or another ratio that's easy to remember.)

Mindful Tip: This is a great small group activity. Invite the participants to sit in a circle and pass the breath ball slowly around the circle.

We recommend each student has the opportunity to breathe with the sphere three times and lead the rest of the group in synchronizing their breaths before passing it their neighbor. You can even have a conversation about how everyone's breath is a little different - faster or slower, deeper or more shallow, more smooth or rough, just like a fingerprint.

You can even have a conversation about how everyone's breath is a little different - faster or slower, deeper or more shallow, more smooth or rough, just like a fingerprint.

2. Breathing Buddies

Once your child or group has gotten the hang of breathing with the sphere, we can level up to breathing with a buddy.

Divide the children into pairs. Each pair will share one breath ball.

Invite each pair to grasp one of the squares on opposites sides of the breath ball. Each pair should be standing (or sitting) with the sphere between them.

See if they can try to breathe in and breathe out together as they move the sphere together. They might even see if they can find that pause between the in-breath and the out-breath.

Synchronizing the breath bonds the kids and it's a great way to promote connection, kindness, and community. They can certainly count together, out loud or, for an added challenge, in absolute silence.

3. Group Breathing

Invite the children to form a circle.

Select a volunteer to stand in the center - maybe a kid who loves mindfulness, but sometimes kids who get a bit silly can rise to the occasion when we give them a job of leading, although no guarantees.

The volunteer begins breathing with the breath ball.

One by one, choose another focused child to join the one in the middle, until the group has all grasped a corner of the breath ball and joins breathing in and out together.

See how many students can breathe together at once! This is another great opportunity to get a group or class to synchronize their minds and bodies all together.

4. A name game

If the group is needs to learn each other's name (or you do) in a fast and fun way:

Invite the children to sit in a circle.

Find a student whose name you know and ask them, "Chris, can I roll the breathing ball to you?"

Their response is, "Yes, Andrew, please role the ball to me."

You then roll them the ball over to them. They then have the opportunity to breathe three times, perhaps even imitating your unique breath before choosing another participant who they know.

5. No breath ball? No problem

If you don't have one of these "magic" spheres, or left it at home, or your students are getting restless waiting for their turn, no worries! Simply touch all ten fingers and palms together and on the in-breath, expand your hands out while keeping your fingers touching, to create your very own expanding breathing ball. Then can even do this in pairs facing each other. But it can get even bigger than that! Kids can also stretch their arms way out wide like they are giving the whole world a hug on the inhale, then wrap their arms around their own shoulders giving themselves a hug on the out-breath for even bigger movements. These will help kids follow along even if your budget doesn't include a line item of breath balls for every kid! You can also follow along with the animation below.

These are just a few ways we like to use the breath ball to give kids a lesson in mindful breathing. The breath ball works as a mindfulness tool, but also a toy that kids can play with when they need to de-stress. But where it gets really fun, like all things with kids, is when we let their creativity soar and they make up their own games and activities. Making big shadows of the ball with a flashlight or a classroom projector, using the ball as a talking stick in group discussions, or whatever ideas you brainstorm together.

Mindful Kids Practice: Coming Back to the Positive

How to Create a Glitter Jar for Kids

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A Mindful Kids Practice: The Breath Ball - Mindful

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When we teach kids mindfulness, whether it's at school or at home, it helps to turn the lesson into a fun activity - through play, movement, visualization, and games. One of our favorite toys for teaching basic breath awareness is the Hoberman sphere, a geodesic dome that can be folded and unfolded.

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published on

This is the set of guided meditations to accompany 'The Little Mindfulness Workbook' written by Gary Hennessey, Co-founder, Breathworks. The meditations are led by Gary Hennessey as well as three Breathworks associate senior trainers: Dr Colette Power, Andrea Cygler and MJ Stephens. The book includes everyday techniques to help you combat stress and enhance your life by helping you put mindfulness strategies in place from an expert teacher with over 35 years experience. With these meditations and practices, it will help you to: Combat Stress, anxiety, and depression Learn the Value of acceptance Choose how to respond to unwanted experiences Improve your happiness and wellbeing You can purchase the book from the Breathworks Mindfulness website at: http://www.breathworks-mindfulness.org.uk/the-little-mindfulness-workbook

Genre

Mindfulness and Meditation

Contains tracks

License: all-rights-reserved

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The Little Mindfulness Workbook by Breathworks-Mindfulness

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This is the set of guided meditations to accompany 'The Little Mindfulness Workbook' written by Gary Hennessey, Co-founder, Breathworks. The meditations are led by Gary Hennessey as well as three Breathworks associate senior trainers: Dr Colette Power, Andrea Cygler and MJ Stephens.

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How do you think things might change if you responded to yourself in the same way you typically respond to a close friend when he or she is suffering? This exercise walks you through it.

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by Catharine Hannay, founder of MindfulTeachers.org

Here are a variety of useful activities and resources for practicing and teaching:

mindfulness and meditation,

kindness and compassion,

generosity and gratitude,

social responsibility, and

social-emotional skills.

I've gotten a lot of requests to use the activities in various contexts, and I've found some of this content copied onto other sites without permission. Please link to these resources; please do not copy them to your own site.

If you're looking for different types of mindfulness activities and complementary practices:

If you're looking for particular types of teaching resources for mindfulness and values-based teaching:

If you're interested in best practices in teaching mindfulness:

If you're looking for a variety of different perspectives on mindfulness:

If you found these resources useful, you might also be interested in theSelf-Care Resources for educators and other helping professionals.

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Resources for Practicing and Teaching Mindfulness - Mindful Teachers

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by Catharine Hannay, founder of MindfulTeachers.org Here are a variety of useful activities and resources for practicing and teaching: mindfulness and meditation, kindness and compassion, generosity and gratitude, social responsibility, and social-emotional skills. I've gotten a lot of requests to use the activities in various contexts, and I've found some of this content copied onto other sites without permission.

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One of my most helpful mindfulness strategies is to use mantras - phrases that I can repeat silently as I take a deep breath. Mantras are especially helpful for the times when we need to calm ourselves, in order to make space for a skillful response instead of an unthinking reaction.

{Want some mantras just for YOU? Check out my favorite mantras for mindful parenting, and my list of mantras for various situations, organized by category.}

These mindful mantras for kids, with the accompanying lessons and coloring sheets, provide short, calming phrases our children can use when they need to skillfully deal with their anger, nervousness, or frustration.

I am Thankful.

An easy one to start with is practicing gratitude. As a family, we share one thing we are thankful for each night at dinner. You can download the printable sheet to the right, and have your children either write down or draw some of the things they are thankful for, with a picture of themselves in the center.

This download is a great visual reminder that they are surrounded by abundance - people who love them, people they love, and things that bring them joy. My daughter drew our family, our house, the food she likes, and even a special cloud just for her brother.

We realized her drawing was also a reminder of another great mantra, "I am safe." She is supported by a web that sustains her basic needs, for love and for life.

Be the Pond.

This mantra comes from a story on the 100 Hours Foundation website {which has fantastic resources for teaching mindfulness to young people!} A preschool teacher tells her students the story of a pond, with lots of fish swimming in it. There's an angry fish, a happy fish, a sad fish, an excited fish, and so on. She has the children close their eyes, as she describes the fish swimming past them. The children's job is to be the pond. There's no need to do anything with the fish beyond observing them as they swim by.

When I first read this story {which you can find on slides 13 and 14 of this PowerPoint from the 100 Hours Foundation - click on the PowerPoint icon on the site to download}, I was struck by what a perfect metaphor this is for teaching children to mindfully observe their thoughts and emotions without engaging or judging them! When they get angry or sad, which they will because they're human, they can notice the emotion, and realize that it will eventually swim away and a different one will soon swim along. They can feel the emotion without letting it take them over.

The teacher who developed this story described it to her students this way: sometimes "we forget that we're The Pond, and think that we are the 'Angry Fish.'" It's a way to teach children that they are not their emotions. They are not their anger. This non-identification with emotions is one of the most powerful ways mindfulness can change our lives.
Here's how you can use this story and activity with your children:

1. Have them close their eyes and tell them the story of being in the pond, with all the different fish swimming by. "Your job is to be the pond, and simply watch all the fish swim around you."

2. Once they open their eyes, ask them what it was like to see all those fish go by. Was it hard to let some of them go?

3. Use the coloring sheet I created and have them look at the fish and ask what they think each fish is feeling {some suggested emotions are at the top of the page, but there are no "right" answers.} Some questions to talk about while doing this:

What makes you think the fish feels that way? {This can lead to a great conversation about how our feelings manifest themselves in our bodies and in our faces.}

How do you feel when YOU are ____ (angry, sad, excited, energetic)?

What color comes to mind when you think of that feeling? {This is a helpful way for younger kids to think about feelings.}

4. Kids can color in the pond as they talk about the different emotions of the fish. When they're done, you can come back to the story and talk about what it means to be the pond. If they've colored in the water, perhaps talk about the water as holding all these different fish, just as their minds hold all sorts of different emotions and thoughts throughout the day.

Let It Go.

You don't need to sing the song, because I know we've already let that go, but my children LOVED this one! I think Let It Go is such a powerful mantra, because it is about recognizing the things we cannot control {such as the actions of others} and letting go of our frustration. It's the Serenity Prayer. This is one I try to reinforce with my daughter, who seems to have inherited my quickness to feel irritated when things don't go as planned! She lashes out when her brother's behavior bothers her, or gets angry when plans are cancelled.

Use the coloring sheet on the left for children to draw or write down the things they can let go of. As I explained this to my daughter, I realized some of the ways she misunderstands what I mean when I tell her {sometimes many times in a day!} to "let it go." She thought I meant ignoring her feelings!

Mindfulness is not about suppressing any emotion - it's about acknowledging, feeling, and holding an emotion in our awareness, without judging ourselves or letting it take control of us. It's about putting our minds {especially the developing prefrontal cortex in our children} in control of the emotion centers in the brain.

Encourage your children to think of the things that sometimes frustrate them, but that they have no control over. {It's not about letting their brother go, but letting his ability to drive them crazy go!} Draw the pictures in the balloons, and then envision sending them into the sky, and letting go. {And, just to warn you, my children did sing!}

Mindful Mantras, Mindful Conversations

These activities led to some great conversations with my children about their feelings, about their thoughts, about gratitude, and about themselves.

I hope you and your children enjoy them!

Teach your children mindful mantras!

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Mindful Mantras for Kids - Left Brain Buddha

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One of my most helpful mindfulness strategies is to use mantras - phrases that I can repeat silently as I take a deep breath. Mantras are especially helpful for the times when we need to calm ourselves, in order to make space for a skillful response instead of an unthinking reaction.

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Mindfulness has an extraordinary capacity to build a strong body, mind and spirit in ourselves as adults, as well as in our children. Science has told us that it can help to protect against stress, anxiety, depression, illness and pain, ease the symptoms of autism and ADHD, improve academic performance and social relationships, as well as expand the capacity to experience positive emotions.

Mindfulness is about stepping back and seeing thoughts and feelings come and go, without judgement, but with a relaxed mind, fully focussed on the present moment.

Children are wonderfully present in what they do, but as life picks up speed, the capacity to experience that calm, strengthening stillness can become more difficult to access. The sooner we can encourage the little people in our lives towards mindfulness, the greater their capacity for mindful presence will be. A regular mindful practice will ensure that existing neural connections are strengthened and new ones established.

Mindfulness for children generally works best it's kept to about five minutes or less. Of course, if they're able to go for longer, brilliant - go with that. Ready to play?

1. Mindful Breathing.

Get your kiddos into a comfy position and ask them to close their eyes. Next, ask how their breath feels as they draw it into themselves, and then as it leaves. If they put a hand on their belly, they'll be able to feel the rise and the fall of their breath. Do this about five times - five inhales, five exhales. After five breaths, guide them to any thoughts and feelings they might be aware of, then invite them to let go of those thoughts and feelings. Ask them to imagine that the thoughts and feelings are bubbles, floating away, as they return to their breathing. Repeat the five breaths - five in, five out - and do this as many times as feels right.

2. Thought Clouds.

This is a slightly different take on the above exercise. When your mindful ones are into the rhythm of breathing in through the nose for three, and out through the mouth for three, ask them to try this: 'As you breathe in, imagine that your thoughts are forming as little clouds above your head. Imagine the cloud floating away as you breathe out. Keep breathing slow, strong breaths and let your thoughts come, and then go.'

3. The Mind(ful)-Body Connection.

The way we hold our bodies has a powerful effect on the way we feel and the way other people see us. Different poses can actually change body chemistry. Nurture the awareness of the mind-body connection in your children by asking them to explore how they feel when they strike a pose. Here are some good ones to try, particularly if they're about to do something that could make them a little anxious. In a quiet space where they feel safe and private, encourage them to strike one of these power poses and explore with them what they feel - hopefully more confident!

* Superman: Stand with feet just wider than hip width apart. Clench fists, stretch both arms out, and fully lengthen the body. Expanding physical presence by stretching and opening up can increase feelings of power and pride (think of athletes who crosses the finish line first and throw their arms into the air).

* Wonder woman: Stand up tall and strong with legs apart and hands on hips.

4. And while we're on superheroes ...

Ask them to switch on their super 'Spidey-senses' to find out what they can taste, smell, hear, see and feel in the moment.

5. The Mindful Jar.

A mindful jar works in a couple of ways. First, it will to help them to understand what happens when strong emotion starts to take hold of them. Second, it can help them find calm when they are feeling stressed, upset, or overwhelmed. Here's how:

Start with a jar and fill it almost to the top with water. Into the water, add a few big dollops of glitter glue (or school glue and dry glitter). Pop on the lid and give the jar a shake. Here are some words:

'Imagine that the glitter is like your thoughts when you're stressed, mad or upset. See how they whirl around and make it really hard to see clearly? That's why it's so easy to make silly decisions when you're upset - because you're not thinking clearly. Don't worry this is normal and it happens in all of us (yep, grownups too). [ Now put the jar down in front of them.] Now watch what happens when you're still for a couple of moments. Keep watching. See how the glitter starts to settle and the water clears? Your mind works the same way. When you're calm for a little while, your thoughts start to settle and you start to see things much clearer.'

The beautiful part of this exercise is that while they are learning about their emotional selves, they are also engaging in an act of mindfulness as they watch the glitter fall to the bottom of the jar.

6. Safari.

Oh but not just any safari! The idea here is to guide them towards switching on their senses, turning down their thoughts, and being fully engaged in the present moment. Take them outside and explain to them that they are on safari, looking for any animal that crawls, flies or walks. Let them know that they have to be quiet and alert, with their hearing, feeling and seeing super-senses switched on so they can discover tiny wild beasts that the world may or may not have seen before.

7. Mindful Smelling.

Take a bunch of delicious smelling things from around home - candles, fresh herbs, flowers, fruit, vanilla, cinnamon, grass - anything - and invite them to breathe in the smell and to feel what happens in their body as they do that. ('The cinnamon reminds me of Christmas,' or maybe 'The lavender makes me feel sleepy.')

8. A Breathing Buddy.

Have them lie down with a soft toy on their tummy. As they breathe, guide them towards noticing the toy moving up and down. This can help them to understand what it feels like to have strong breaths, which is a powerful way to calm themselves when high emotion overwhelms them.

9. A Mindful Walk.

Take a short walk together to help them to learn to be mindful while they're moving. First, ask them to focus on their breath. Then turn their attention to anything else their senses tune in to in the moment - the breeze against their skin, the sound of the trees, the smell of fresh air, the way their body feels as they move. The idea is for them to experience the sensations, rather than to become too 'heady' by thinking too hard about them.

10. The Mindful Snack.

Next time you have a bite to eat together, try mindful eating for a few minutes. 'Let's try something called mindful eating. It's where you slow things down when you eat so you can notice things you don't usually notice. What does your food feel like to touch? What about the smell? What if you squish it a little - what does that feel like? Now take a bite but chew very slowly. Really notice your mouth moving up and down. Can you feel the food against your tongue and between your teeth. What does it taste like? What does it feel like? Keep chewing for a little while (20 to 30 seconds). When you're ready, notice what the food feels like as it moves down your throat and towards your belly.'

11. Guided Meditation.

The Smiling Minds app has guided meditations for ages 7 to adult. It's free, easy to use, and brilliant.

Being 'still' can be hard sometimes (for all of us). If your kiddos are squirmy at first, just keep practicing in short bursts until they become more used to it. Afterwards, do something fun with them - give them your full attention with a little chat about what they did, read a story, have a cuddle - whatever works for them, so they associate it with special, fun time.

Anything you do to introduce them to a mindfulness practice will be worth it. In no time at all they'll be doing it on their own and gearing themselves with an incredible skill that will give them a solid, sturdy foundation from which to explore and experience the world.

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Filed under: A Beautiful Mind, Anxiety, Children, Mindfulness, With Kids
Tags: anxiety, mindfulness, mindfulness for children

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Mindfulness for Children: Fun, Effective Ways to Strengthen Mind, Body, Spirit -

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Mindfulness has an extraordinary capacity to build a strong body, mind and spirit in ourselves as adults, as well as in our children. Science has told us that it can help to protect against stress, anxiety, depression, illness and pain, ease the symptoms of autism and ADHD, improve academic performance and social relationships, as well as expand the capacity to experience positive emotions.

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The following list of needs is neither exhaustive nor definitive. It is meant as a starting place to support anyone who wishes to engage in a process of deepening self-discovery and to facilitate greater understanding and connection between people. We have another list that might also be of interest to you: a list of feelings.

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Feelings Inventory | Center for Nonviolent Communication

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About the Center for Nonviolent Communication

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Still Quiet Place

I guide the children in discovering the Still Quiet Place by following the breath.

Flashlight of Attention

I guide students in focusing the flashlights of attention on their breath, their bodies, their sound and their feelings.

Balance

A student and I demonstrate some simple gentle peaceful stretching movements for children to follow.

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Still Quiet Place I guide the children in discovering the Still Quiet Place by following the breath. Flashlight of Attention I guide students in focusing the flashlights of attention on their breath, their bodies, their sound and their feelings. Balance A student and I demonstrate some simple gentle peaceful stretching movements for children to follow.

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Mindfulness - Prof Mark Williams Lecture

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Science Oxford Live March 2012. Professor Mark Williams from Oxford University delivers a lecture to the public about the science of mindfulness. Find Science Oxford here: www.scienceoxford.com www.twitter.com/scienceoxford

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LECTURE @THE SCHOOL OF LIFE: Ruby Wax argues that by better understanding better how our brains work, we can learn to rewire our thinking and find calm in a frenetic world. Wax seeks to help us start becoming more the master, and less the slave, of our own minds.

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Since my daughter, Opal, was just over a year old (she's now six), I've tried to make a point of carving out what we call "special time" with her. This is time that I'm with her with zero interruptions. No email. No break for tea (unless it is her idea). No extra-long bathroom sessions where I sneak a look at my phone. Sometimes it's only 10, 15, 30 minutes, but I try to do it every day or every couple of days. I do this because I want her to feel how much I genuinely value our time together. She chooses what we do during special time, and I maintain a straight face as I comply, regardless of how I feel about the clean up time required for when we play 'baker' with bowls and wooden spoons and copious amounts of flour. I want her to feel like her ideas matter.

But lately I've noticed a major gap in my recall of the last many months of special times. I know that we played Uno in there somewhere, but I couldn't begin to tell you what we talked about, or even evoke one clever thing she said. On one occasion, I do remember mapping out a mental list of errands that needed done once we were finished coloring in the mermaid coloring book. My body was all there and the phone was dutifully put away, but I was mentally elsewhere. Somewhere along the way, I had gotten lazy in my attentiveness. I was so "good" at doing special times that they had become automatic and lacked the fresh attention of a new experience.

And I would have likely continued in this vein had sickness not recently intervened.

Opal was home sick from school and we pieced together an entire day in the house, little by little. I had surrendered all things productive to stay home and nurse her back to health; I had no other objective. And it was between the mid-morning movie and lunch- two hours, tops- that she got carried away in playtime and I allowed myself to join her. Completely.

First, we played 'Shopkins Store' and I observed just how thoughtfully Opal arranged the tiny figurines by style and color. She then lined up Dominos to watch them topple over, something I had never seen her do. We squealed with glee when we successfully pulled off a Y-shaped topple. We did scratch paper art next and Opal pointed out that the shiny pages were harder to scratch off than the matte pages. She was so observant of the situations she created, so comprehensive in her own perceptions.

We then pretended to camp with her dolls and shared stories about our own camping trips, namely the time when it was really windy and neighboring campers gave us a rainbow kite that we still have in the garage. The doll tent turned into a 'Humane Society' where a pile of haphazardly selected stuffed animals ate the Shopkins as pet-snacks and Opal talked about how she still wants to be a vet, but mostly for dogs. We concluded the play session by going wild to the Pharrell song, Happy. We left cut-marks in the ragged living room rug.

In our post-play lassitude, we flopped down on the couch and Opal leaned in for a hug.

"This is the best time I have ever had with you," she said.

Life doesn't typically allow us a few hours of formless, unplanned time to do as we wish, uninterrupted by schedules, responsibilities and to-dos. Such is the beauty of a sick day. But the fact is, each of the pieces that comprised this lengthy play session could have been done individually, in smaller servings.

Presumably, what made this sick day so special for Opal was that she and her playtime orchestrations dazzled me. I was all there, noticing like crazy.

Wonderful, big-ticket outings like vacations, parties and goats with fat bellies to feed have a good chance at creating lasting memories. But, as I so clearly noticed with Opal on her sick day, having my full attention trumps all else, be it the excitement, or the money spent on or the story-worthiness of an activity.

It is these countless tiny moments of hearing, listening, acknowledging and being astonished by our kiddos that accumulate to create the fabric of their self-worth.

By really noticing her-really seeing her-I am infusing meaning into the mundane moments and the grand moments equally. This means I can make five-minutes really count, and sometimes five minutes is all I have!

It's the age-old story of quality-versus-quantity. But in this case, quality doesn't refer to what we spend our time doing nearly as much as how we spend that time. Surely we can't be this mindful with our children all the time, but working a few meaningful exchanges into each day is workable for even the busiest parent. It is these countless tiny moments of hearing, listening, acknowledging and being astonished by our kiddos that accumulate to create the fabric of their self-worth.

So there we were on the couch together. I was present with all my senses. Opal was resting her little congested head on my chest, talking about the poetry reading in the big gym at school the previous day and the little boy who was sent home because he threw up. Her voice was doing the thing it does when she feels knowledgeable and commendable, where she over-enunciates her words and over-punctuates her sentences. Her hair smelled like vanilla-orange shampoo and was just on the verge of ticking a sneeze out of my nose.

...

4 Mindful Moment Tips

Recently I spoke with mindful parenting expert and clinical psychologist Stefanie Goldstein about how to make the most out of any moment. Here are her 4 tips for making a mindful moment count:

1) Slow Down - "We are often so rushed to get out the door, dinner on the table and everyone to bed that we miss the small precious moments that are actually there. See if the next time you catch yourself rushing around, if you can take a deep breath, check in and see what or who you might be missing."

2) Make Contact - "Families are often together but are not actually spending quality time connecting - everyone is doing their own thing, like sitting next to each other while everyone is on their own devices. Where can you make contact today - a simple hug, smile or loving touch can go a long way."

3) Make it Count - "When was the last time you told your child or partner that you loved them, really looked them in the eyes and expressed your gratitude for something they said or did? See if you can find at least one thing to be grateful for with your family and tell them!"

4) Be Kind - "When we get caught up the stress and demands of keeping up with every day like, we can forget to be nice to each other. See where you can be kind to your loved ones today - perhaps doing something like leaving a sweet note in a lunch box or sending an unexpected text saying, "Just thinking of you." Be kind whenever possible, knowing that it is always possible."

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Noticing: Connecting with Our Kids in the Midst of Busy Lives

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Since my daughter, Opal, was just over a year old (she's now six), I've tried to make a point of carving out what we call "special time" with her. This is time that I'm with her with zero interruptions. No email. No break for tea (unless it is her idea).

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How To Talk So Children Will Listen and How to Listen so Children Will Speak

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This is a video recording of Dr Garfield's presentation for parents at the Big Family Weekend organised by Potential Plus UK in Feb 2013. This video will help you relate to your children in the way that fosters an environment of trust, intimacy, love and respect in your family.

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A range of downloads

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CMRP Audio downloads | Centre for Mindfulness Research and Practice | Bangor University

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Bangor University is a Registered Charity: No. 1141565

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The UC San Diego Center for Mindfulness has prepared a number of practices that are now available on SoundCloud.

These videos produced by Dr. Lynn Rossy are in the style and intention of the original MBSR yoga postures. There are several different views and modifications for floor, standing, and chair postures.

Video 1 with camera emphasis on chair poses (36:33)

Video 1 with camera emphasis on floor positions (37:14)

Video 2 with camera emphasis on chair poses (36:33)

Video 2 with camera emphasis on floor positions (36:32)

These videos produced by Dr. Lynn Rossy are in the style and intention of the original MBSR yoga postures. There are several different views and modifications for floor, standing, and chair postures.

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The UC San Diego Center for Mindfulness has prepared a number of practices that are now available on SoundCloud. These videos produced by Dr. Lynn Rossy are in the style and intention of the original MBSR yoga postures. There are several different views and modifications for floor, standing, and chair postures.

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Feel free to download the following meditations for your personal use. They are intended to guide you through the first phase of mindful self-compassion training. The meditations are primarily instructional in nature and briefer than most meditation sessions. Please use the downloads until you understand the practices and can practice on your own.

Please visit the CMSC website for additional meditations and resources.

MSC Core Meditations

Other MSC Meditations

Informal MSC Practices

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When posting these handout materials online or when distributing printed materials, please be sure to cite the source in the following way: © Christopher Germer & Kristin Neff. Mindful Self-Compassion. June 2017. All rights reserved. If you would like permission to reproduce, distribute, publish, display, or modify these materials, please contact www.CenterForMSC.org.

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Feel free to download the following meditations for your personal use. They are intended to guide you through the first phase of mindful self-compassion training. The meditations are primarily instructional in nature and briefer than most meditation sessions. Please use the downloads until you understand the practices and can practice on your own.

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This entertaining book offers expert advice on how to limit self-criticism and offset its negative effects, enabling you to achieve your highest potential and a more fulfilled life. Order now.

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Frequently, when we implore our children to "Calm down!" {yes, the exclamation point is ironic} or "Breathe!", those are the responses we get. A fun way to teach kids how to calm down when they're upset or overwhelmed is to make a MIND JAR. (You can learn more about this "Mind in a Jar" exercise in both Thich Nhat Hanh's Planting Seeds and Kerry Lee MacLean's Moody Cow Meditates.)

How to Make a Mind Jar

"Mind in a Jar"

Purpose:
To teach children that they can calm their bodies and minds with deep breathing

Supplies needed:

Jars (I used Ball canning jars)

Water

Glitter
(Hint: Glitter is with the bracelet-making kits at Target. I searched forever to find it!)

My children (ages 3 and 6) were very excited about the project. To make the project more fun, this control-freak mama let them do all of the work {including pouring the water and dumping in the glitter. Allowing glitter in my house has been a huge step forward for me in my parenting... but that's another post!}.

Procedure

Using the Mind Jars

"Think about a time when you were really really mad or upset, " I told them. It took about 3 nanoseconds for them to come up with examples.

"What did you feel like?" I asked.

"I feel like I want to hit someone," my daughter said.

"I want to say 'stupid stupid stupid' to someone," was my son's response.

"Okay, let's shake up our jars really fast!" They loved shaking the jars and watching the glitter swirl around. "That's what your mind is like when you're really mad. Those thoughts about being mean or saying mean words are all over!"

"But we can calm down those angry thoughts and calm our bodies, instead of acting or talking in a way that would hurt people's feelings," I told them. I instructed them to breathe deeply {which we've done together before}. As we breathed, we watched what happened to the swirling glitter.

I reinforced the message to my children that it's okay to get mad ~ that's just part of life, and there will always be things and people that upset us. What is important, I tell them, is how we respond. We can take some deep breaths, and then instead of hitting someone, or calling them stupid, we can calmly talk to them about what has frustrated us.

Making it a Practice

When we did this project, the kids were naturally more interested in just shaking the jars and watching the glitter swirl around than listening to mom's lecture on mindfulness. But this exercise was really helpful in a number of ways. Here's how we continue to use the Mind Jars:

We practice our deep, calming breathing at times when the kids are already calm ~ we shake the jars, and then breathe calmly while we watch the glitter settle.

We keep the jars in the kitchen, or at our Quiet Place {in the Study} where the kids can reach them, and they can get them if they need to use them to calm down.

When they get upset, we encourage them to remember this exercise {or go get their jar} ~ and this part only works if we continually use the jars at times when they are NOT mad. {I smiled when, as my son threw a tantrum yesterday morning, his big sister grabbed his mind jar to help him calm down.}

I found this activity to be a great art project, a fun way to spend mindful time with my children, and a great age-appropriate way to teach them about mindfulness!

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"Mind in a Jar": Teach Mindfulness to Your Kids - Left Brain Buddha

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Frequently, when we implore our children to "Calm down!" {yes, the exclamation point is ironic} or "Breathe!", those are the responses we get. A fun way to teach kids how to calm down when they're upset or overwhelmed is to make a MIND JAR.

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Here's a Spider-Man Script for you to try out with your children or students to practice mindfulness and increase focus.

Materials Needed: Bell, Flower, Small Food Item (such as a berry, piece of cereal, or raisin)

One of Spider-‐Man's super powers was the ability to tune into his senses. Like a spider, he could hear very tiny noises. He was able to pay very close attention to the noises. When you pay very close attention, you are able to calm your mind and let go of all the noisy thoughts in your head that can be distracting. With practice, you can improve our focus and relax right now, right where you are.

Right now we are going to learn to activate your super powers to tune into your senses, just like Spider-‐Man. These are your Spider-‐Man Super Senses. What it takes is a little practice. Let's start with your sense of hearing. First let's sit down. Close your eyes and place your hands on your knees. I am going to ring a bell. When you hear the bell, pay attention to the ring until you can no longer hear the ringing sound, clasp your hands together in your lap. (Repeat 3 times). Like Spiderman, we have activated your super power of ultra hearing! Excellent work!

Next we are going to activate your super powers of ultra seeing, touching and smelling. I'm going to give each of you a flower. Hold your flower gently in your hand. When I ring the bell, I want you to gently touch the petals. Feel what each petal is like beneath your fingers. Pay attention to if the petal is soft, rough, wet, furry, smooth, or prickly. See what you can feel. Imagine, like Spiderman, your hands have the power to sense very carefully what the flower feels like. As I ring the bell next, I want you to smell the flower. Breathe in deeply with the flower under your nose. See what the flower's scent is. Is it sweet? Maybe it has very little smell at all? What do you smell? Now, finally, as I ring the bell, I want you to look very closely at the flower. Pay attention to the lines on the petals. What does the center of the flower look like? Is it bumpy? Smooth? Soft looking? Wet looking? Is there powdery pollen in the center? See what details you can notice in the flower, what little shapes, what lines, what circles, if any. (Ring the bell a final time to signal the end of the activity).

The final activation of your Spiderman super power of ultra senses, is to practice your sense of taste. We are going to practice by tasting, paying very close attention to what a berry tastes like. (Please feel free to use whatever small food you like such as a piece of cereal, a sunflower seed, a raisin, etc. . . ). Start by looking at the berry and noticing, using your super power sight, what the berry looks like. Turn the berry gently between your fingers, feeling what the berry feels like. Next, place the berry in your mouth. Allow the berry to be slowly in your mouth, paying attention to how if feels on your tongue, how the juices in your mouth start to flow. Now slowly begin to chew the berry. See how slowly you can chew it. How does it taste? Sweet? Tart? Sour? Gently swallow the berry, paying attention to the taste that remains in your mouth after you swallow it.

Now you have activated all of your Spider-Man Super Senses! Remember that when you get very quiet and focus, your body and mind are able to relax and take a break from the day's busy activities. You have the power to activate your Spider-‐Man Super Senses whenever you want to calm down and focus for a moment.

Filed under All Relaxation Activities, Educator Resources, Family Relaxation, Mindfulness Practice, Uncategorized

Tags: attention, focus, mindfulness activity, mindfulness for kids, mindfulness practice, spider-man relaxation

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Spider-Man: Practicing Mindfulness and Increasing Focus

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Here's a Spider-Man Script for you to try out with your children or students to practice mindfulness and increase focus. Materials Needed: Bell, Flower, Small Food Item (such as a berry, piece of cereal, or raisin) One of Spider-­‐Man's super powers was the ability to tune into his senses.

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We know mindfulness is good for us. Mindfulness allows us to be present in our parenting, choosing the skillful response instead of succumbing to our visceral reactions.

Mindfulness is also good for our kids. There is an emerging body of research that indicates that mindfulness can help our children improve their abilities to pay attention, to calm down when they are upset, and to make better decisions. In short, it helps with emotional regulation and cognitive focus. Do I even need to ask if you want that for your kids? 🙂

So where do we start? How can we teach mindfulness to kids?

Establish your own practice. You would have trouble teaching your children ballet if you had never danced. To authentically teach mindfulness to your children, you need to practice it yourself. You can read my guide to establishing a meditation practice here, or my popular post 40 Ways to Bring Mindfulness to Your Days here for some ideas to get started. Don't let this step intimidate you - you're probably practicing a lot of mindful habits already!

Check your expectations. A core principle of mindfulness is letting go of expectations, and this certainly applies to teaching mindfulness to kids. Are you expecting mindfulness to eliminate tantrums? to make your active child calm? to make your house quiet? If so, you are likely to be disappointed. While feeling calm or being quiet are nice side-effects of mindfulness, they are not the ultimate purpose.

The purpose of teaching mindfulness to our children is to give them skills to develop their awareness of their inner and outer experiences, to recognize their thoughts as "just thoughts," to understand how emotions manifest in their bodies, to recognize when their attention has wandered, and to provide tools for impulse control. It is not a panacea, and it will not completely get rid of what is, frankly, normal kid behavior, like tantrums and loudness and whining and exuberance and arguing...

Don't force it. If your kids aren't interested in your lesson or activity, drop it. This is a good time for you to practice non-attachment to outcomes!

Don't make mindfulness a punishment. This shouldn't be, "You hit your sister! Go sit in the mindful corner!" 'nuff said.

Now that we've got the preliminaries out of the way, here are my suggestions for how you can begin to introduce mindfulness to your children.

10 Ways to Teach Mindfulness to Kids

1. Keep it simple. With older kids, you can share the widely-used definition from Jon Kabat-Zinn in the image above. But those are a lot of big words for little kids. I prefer to use the words awareness or noticing with my children {ages 5 and 7, for reference}. Mindfulness is noticing our thoughts, what our body feels like, what our ears are hearing, and anything else that is around us and happening right now.

2. Listen to the bell. An easy way for children to practice mindfulness is to focus on paying attention to what they can hear. I've used a singing bowl, like the one on the right, for this exercise, but you could use a bell, a set of chimes, or a phone app that has sounds on it. Tell your children that you will make the sound, and they should listen carefully until they can no longer hear the sound (which is usually 30 seconds to a minute). I find that this exercise does have a calming effect on my children, and it's a fun way to teach them to pay attention to their surroundings.

3. Create a mindful bedtime ritual. Bedtime is a great time to introduce mindfulness to kids. My daughter loves to do a short body-scan meditation before bed - she closes her eyes, and I tell her to bring her attention to her toes, to her feet, to her legs, etc. It is a calming way to return to the body at the end of the day. You can find several downloadable meditation scripts (including body scans) here, and you can read about the bedtime ritual my daughter and I created here.

4. Practice with a breathing buddy. For young children, an instruction to simply "pay attention to the breath" can be hard to follow. In this Edutopia video, Daniel Goleman describes a 2nd-grade classroom that does a "breathing buddy" exercise: each student grabs a stuffed animal, and then lies down on their back with their buddy on their belly. They focus their attention on the rise and fall of the stuffed animal as they breathe in and out. {You should definitely check out the video - it's less than 2 minutes and explains the exercise and all the good stuff that it teaches kids!}

5. Make your walks mindful. One of my children's favorite things to do in the summer is a "noticing walk." We stroll through our neighborhood and notice things we haven't seen before. We'll designate one minute of the walk where we are completely silent and simply pay attention to all the sounds we can hear - frogs, woodpeckers, a lawnmower. We don't even call it "mindfulness," but that's what it is.

6. Establish a gratitude practice. I believe gratitude is a fundamental component of mindfulness, teaching our children to appreciate the abundance in their lives, as opposed to focusing on all the toys and goodies that they crave. This post describes my family's nightly gratitude practice - each night at dinner we each share one thing we are thankful for. It is one of my favorite parts of the day.

7. Try the SpiderMan meditation! My five-year-old son is in to all things superheroes, and this SpiderMan meditation is right up his alley. This meditation from Kids Relaxation teaches children to activate their "spidey-senses" and their ability to focus on all they can smell, taste, and hear in the present moment. Such a clever idea!

8. Meditate with your children. I cannot even tell you how many times my meditation sessions have been interrupted by my children. They know by now what mommy is doing when she meditates, so I will try to continue with my meditation even as they play around me. Sometimes, my daughter will sit down and join me for a few minutes. It's beautiful.

9. Check your personal weather report. In Sitting Still Like a Frog, Eline Snel encourages children to "summon the weather report that best describes [their] feelings at the moment." Sunny, rainy, stormy, calm, windy, tsunami? This activity allows children to observe their present state without overly identifying with their emotions. They can't change the weather outside, and we can't change our emotions or feelings either. All we can change is how we relate to them. As Snel describes it, children can recognize, "I am not the downpour, but I notice that it is raining; I am not a scaredy-cat, but I realize that sometimes I have this big scared feeling somewhere near my throat."

10. Practice mindful eating. The exercise of mindfully eating a raisin or a piece of chocolate is a staple of mindfulness education, and is a great activity for kids. You can find a script for a 7-minute mindful eating exercise for children here. This is a fun way to teach children to pay attention to and savor their food, and by extension, the present moment.

*****

Above all, remember to have fun and keep it simple. You can provide your children with many opportunities to add helpful practices to their toolkit - some of them will work for them and some won't. But it's fun to experiment!

Teach mindfulness to your kids - it can help them develop emotional regulation and cognitive focus. Tweet

Want more resources? You may find the following posts helpful:

Mindful Mantras for Kids {with coloring sheet downloads}

Learn to make a Mind Jar {this is the all-time most-read post on my blog!}
Teaching Mindfulness to Teens: 5 Ways to Get Buy-In 5 Strategies for Teaching Mindfulness t The Totally Obvious Thing a Mindful Mama Overlooked

o Children

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10 Ways to Teach Mindfulness to Kids - Left Brain Buddha

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We know mindfulness is good for us. Mindfulness allows us to be present in our parenting, choosing the skillful response instead of succumbing to our visceral reactions. Mindfulness is also good for our kids.

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Abstract

This paper introduces a model of "mindful parenting" as a framework whereby parents intentionally bring moment-to-moment awareness to the parent-child relationship. This is done by developing the qualities of listening with full attention when interacting with their children, cultivating emotional awareness and self-regulation in parenting, and bringing compassion and nonjudgmental acceptance to their parenting interactions. First, we briefly outline the theoretical and empirical literature on mindfulness and mindfulness-based interventions. Next, we present an operational definition of mindful parenting as an extension of mindfulness to the social context of parent-child relationships. We discuss the implications of mindful parenting for the quality of parent-child relationships, particularly across the transition to adolescence, and we review the literature on the application of mindfulness in parenting interventions. We close with a synopsis of our own efforts to integrate mindfulness-based intervention techniques and mindful parenting into a well-established, evidence-based family prevention program and our recommendations for future research on mindful parenting interventions.

Keywords: Parenting, Mindfulness, Family, Prevention

Introduction

Mindful parenting has been described as a fundamental parenting skill or practice (Steinberg 2004; Kabat-Zinn and Kabat-Zinn 1997), and it has been proposed that fostering everyday mindfulness in the context of parenting and parent training is one avenue for improving the effectiveness of parenting interventions (Dumas 2005). However, empirical evidence on the role of mindfulness in parenting is sparse and a comprehensive model of mindful parenting has not yet been developed. The model of mindful parenting we offer extends the concepts and practices of mindfulness, defined here as "the awareness that emerges through paying attention, on purpose, in the present moment, and nonjudgmentally to the unfolding of experience moment by moment" (Kabat-Zinn 2003, p. 145), to the social context of parent-child relationships. We draw from the theoretical and empirical literature on mindfulness and mindfulness-based interventions to propose a model of mindful parenting that has novel implications for understanding healthy parent-child relationships and for improving family-focused preventive interventions. We illustrate our model with examples of how mindful parenting and mindful parenting interventions may be beneficial for parent-child relationships during the child's transition to adolescence.

Theoretical Foundations of Mindfulness Applied to Parenting

Mindfulness meditation, the disciplined practice of bringing mindful awareness to moment-to-moment experience, has been at the core of all of the major streams of Buddhist practice and scholarship for centuries (Goldstein 2002). However, mindfulness is also considered to be a capacity inherent to humans independent of any affiliation with Buddhism (Kabat-Zinn 2003) and has recently been the focus of psychological practice, theoretical discourse, and research in Western psychology. According to long-standing Buddhist teachings, mindfulness has the potential to provide freedom from the egoistic, hedonic treadmill of continually avoiding discomfort and seeking pleasure from outside sources that are ultimately unsatisfying and short-lived (Kornfield 1977; Rahula 1959). The cultivation of mindfulness is thought to provide an antidote to states of being unaware (e.g., not noticing or not paying attention to thoughts, feelings, and sensations) and aversive (e.g., avoiding the experience of what is happening in the present moment) (Goldstein 2002). From this perspective, mindfulness can promote a deeper and more enduring sense of well-being found through simply being with whatever is happening in the present moment, with a recognition that it will pass and be replaced by a new experience in the next moment (Kabat-Zinn 2003; Wallace and Shapiro 2006). Mindfulness thus allows for greater flexibility and an accuracy in perception of what is happening in the moment (found through no longer being unaware), as well as greater acceptance and less reactivity to whatever is taking place on a somatic, cognitive, affective, or behavioral level (and therefore no longer avoidant).

According to recent Western psychological theory, mindfulness is "a receptive attention to and awareness of present events and experience" that allows for full awareness of what is happening in the moment (Brown and Ryan 2003). In this view, compatible with Eastern tradition, mindfulness is a quality of consciousness posited to encompass both a clarity of awareness and the ability to flexibly shift between broad awareness and focused attention during moment by moment experience (Brown et al. 2007a). While states of mindfulness of attention and awareness may appear easy to attain for brief periods of time, it is often quite challenging to develop a sustained practice of continually reorienting one's mind to being in the present moment and being open to experience (a more dispositional tendency toward mindfulness). Our natural attention processes typically hold an object or experience in focused attention only for a short period before other affective and cognitive processes "respond" to it. Moreover, our history of life experiences frequently condition these responses such that we automatically appraise and judge almost everything we encounter with little or no conscious awareness (Bargh and Chartrand 1999). Usually these primary appraisals are basic judgments of an object or experience as "good" or "bad" and these automatic judgments, along with cognitive biases created by our beliefs, opinions, and expectations, may lead us to distort the reality of what is currently taking place. Mindful attention and awareness are intended to overcome these distortions and provide a clearer awareness of one's immediate experience. From this perspective, maintaining a mindful awareness allows for exercising choice in responding to experience and provides an alternative to engaging in habitual, or "automatic," cognitive and behavioral reactions to internal and external experience. Concordantly, halting automaticity through mindful processing of experience is thought to allow for self-regulation in goal pursuit (Brown et al. 2007a). This theory is in clear juxtaposition to operant models of human behavior that identify learning history and reinforcement as determined precursors of behavior (Skinner 1974).

Incorporating mindful awareness into parenting interactions can allow parents to stop and fundamentally shift their awareness in order to view their present-moment parenting experience within the context of the long-term relationship that they have with their child, as well as attend to their child's needs, while exercising self-regulation and wise choice in their actions. As in most domains, it is believed that acting primarily from automatic, self-focused, or hedonic motivations in parenting interactions will likely lead to less than optimal quality in parent-child relationships. When these principles have been applied to theories of parenting, essential distinctions have been made between parenting goals and motivations that are egoistic (self/parent-oriented) versus those that are child- and relationship-oriented (Dix and Branca 2003). When parents desire primarily to feel in control of their child (a parent-oriented goal) without carefully taking their child's needs, wants, and feelings into perspective (i.e., they are not child-oriented), they are not taking a relationship-oriented perspective. An example would be when, through ego concerns, habituated reactions, or hedonic motivations, parents impose forced behavioral compliance from their child through power assertion when it may not be necessary. Power-assertion, however, usually is at odds with the promotion of a warm and trusting relationship. When parents habitually seek control or seek the short-lived satisfaction of power-assertive control in their parenting, it may stem from either an inaccuracy in their affective forecasting about what will bring them the most long-term happiness or an inability to break the cycle of automaticity.

Our model of mindful parenting suggests that parents who can remain aware and accepting of their child's needs through using mindfulness practices can create a family context that allows for more enduring satisfaction and enjoyment in the parent-child relationship. This view of mindful parenting suggests that parents who either have a natural capacity for, or learn practices of mindfulness will be more likely to develop higher quality relationships with their children and more often avoid cycles of maladaptive parenting behavior that stem from automatic behaviors and hedonic motivations. This view is a substantial shift from operant behavioral models, and we believe that it is one that can allow for the cultivation of more open and trusting family relationships and parenting styles that will promote the healthy psychosocial development of the child (Baumrind 1989).

Empirical Evidence on the Benefits of Mindfulness

The scientific literatures on correlates of mindfulness and on the effects of mindfulness-based interventions have expanded considerably over the past several years (see Brown et al. 2007a, b). Western psychological theory and empirical evidence suggest mindfulness as both a psychological state and a construct that represents a dispositional tendency to exhibit mindfulness in everyday life (Baer et al. 2004; Bishop et al. 2004; Brown and Ryan 2003; Hayes and Feldman 2004). The practices of formal mindfulness meditation and bringing informal mindful awareness to activities of daily life are used to achieve the state of mindfulness, and the premise of many mindfulness-based interventions is that a dispositional tendency to be mindful arises from or is increased by mindfulness practice. A growing body of evidence shows that when mindfulness is operationally defined as a dispositional tendency, it is related to psychological functioning in a variety of populations (Baer et al. 2006; Brown and Ryan 2003; Brown et al. 2007b; Chadwick et al. 2005), and is responsive to intervention (e.g., Carmody and Baer 2008).

As mentioned above, mindfulness has been defined as "a receptive attention to and awareness of present events and experience" (Brown and Ryan 2003) or "paying attention in a particular way: on purpose, in the present moment, nonjudgmentally" (Kabat-Zinn 1994, p. 4). These definitions reflect three core qualities of mindfulness: (a) present-centered attention and awareness; (b) intention or purposefulness, which highlights a motivational component to one's attention and behavior; and (c) attitude, which reflects how we attend, or the qualities that one brings to the act of paying attention, such as interest, curiosity, nonjudgment, acceptance, compassion, and receptiveness (Shapiro et al. 2006). These qualities are hypothesized to occur simultaneously in moment-to-moment experiences of mindfulness.

Mindfulness also has been characterized as comprising five mindfulness skills: "acting with awareness," "observing," "describing," "nonreactivity to inner experience," and "nonjudging of inner experience" (Baer et al. 2006; Carmody and Baer 2008) that represent a higher order mindfulness factor. The definition of mindfulness and how best to measure it is the subject of considerable debate in the field of psychology (Leary and Tate 2007), with some arguing that mindfulness represents a single quality of consciousness (i.e., present-centered awareness and attention) (Brown and Ryan 2003, 2004; Brown et al. 2007a, b) and others holding to a model that includes the five mindfulness skills (Baer 2007; Baer et al. 2006). Regardless of the number of dimensions used to operationally define mindfulness, studies evidence considerable consistency regarding significant correlates of the psychological construct of mindfulness. Mindfulness is associated with self-reported positive affect (Brown and Ryan 2003), less anxiety and depression (Baer et al. 2006, 2008; Brown and Ryan 2003), greater relationship satisfaction and less relationship stress (Barnes et al. 2007), and specific profiles of brain activity associated with greater emotion regulation during affect labeling (Creswell et al. 2007).

The individual mindfulness skills are also strongly related to other psychological processes. The "acting with awareness" dimension of the skills-based operational definition of mindfulness has a strong inverse relation with dissociation and absent-mindedness (Baer et al. 2006). "Observing" and "describing" are two mindfulness skills used to take account of your cognitions, affects, and somatic sensations as events in your present experience; observing is the intentional focusing of attention on stimuli and describing is putting those experiences into words. Observing may partially mediate the effects of mindfulness-based interventions on mindful attention and awareness (Baer et al. 2008). Describing is highly related to emotional intelligence and inversely related to alexithymia (Baer et al. 2006), suggesting an emotional awareness quality of this skill. The nonjudging aspect of mindfulness involves decentering from mental events and allowing thoughts to be "just thoughts" or affects to be "just feelings" instead of overidentifying with them. Thus, instead of being immediately reactive to sensed emotions or affects (e.g., anger, jealousy), emotional reactions are noticed with as little judgment as possible. Nonjudging includes acceptance of experience and thus can facilitate the ability to maintain direct contact with uncomfortable thoughts and feelings (Brown et al. 2007b) and it is inversely related to experiential avoidance and thought suppression (Baer et al. 2006). Nonreactivity is the self-regulation aspect of mindfulness. This skill is applied to self-regulation of reactivity to mental events, including social information processing. When individuals who report a greater tendency to bring mindfulness to experiences of daily life are faced with potentially threatening, yet ambiguous, behavior in others they are less likely to interpret the behavior as reflecting hostile intent, they exhibit a lower intensity of anger, and report less desire to retaliate (Heppner and Kernis 2007).

Mindfulness-Based Interventions

Mindfulness training is increasingly employed in innovative therapies and interventions (Baer and Krietemeyer 2006) such as Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR; Kabat-Zinn 1982, 1990), Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT; Segal et al. 2002), Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT; Linehan 1993), and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT; Hayes 2004; Hayes et al. 1999). These and other secular mindfulness-based interventions have been shown in some studies to effectively reduce psychological and physiological reactivity to a variety of stressful life situations and chronic illnesses (Brantley 2005; Carlson et al. 2003; Kabat-Zinn 2003), treat anxiety (Roemer and Orsillo 2007), and decrease recurrence of depressive episodes (Ma and Teasdale 2004; Segal et al. 2002) and substance abuse relapse in adults (Bowen et al. 2006; Bowen et al. 2007), although more rigorous study designs and replication are needed to reach firm conclusions regarding their benefit. Overall, the empirical evidence regarding the outcomes of these interventions demonstrates the potential benefit of using them to break cycles of automatic behavior and cognitions in order to treat people suffering from a variety of disorders with a high likelihood of relapse (e.g., anxiety disorder, and substance abuse).

A small number of studies have begun to elucidate the biological and psychological mechanisms whereby the effects of mindfulness interventions are achieved (Bishop 2002; Davidson et al. 2003; Lazar 2005) and a meta-analysis of 21 studies of MBSR and MBSR-related interventions (Baer 2003) estimated a mean post-intervention weighted effect size of d = 0.59. Mindful attention and awareness also appear to be modifiable through mindfulness-based intervention (Anderson et al. 2007; Jha et al. 2007), the effects of which may manifest through modification of attention subsystems (Jha et al. 2007) or, in some cases may be more evident in participants' awareness of the present moment than in basic attentional abilities (Anderson et al. 2007). Although the concept of mindfulness is intended to reflect processes directed toward one's internal and external experiences, the majority of interventions have used techniques within an individual treatment mode that emphasized attention to intrapersonal experiences (e.g., one's thoughts and feelings).

A key advancement in mindfulness interventions is an extension of mindfulness to interpersonal relationships including preventive interventions with nondistressed married and cohabiting couples ( Mindfulness-Based Relationship Enhancement; MBRE; Carson et al. 2004). According to the developers of MBRE (Carson et al. 2006), the impetus for extending MBSR for use as a couples intervention was based: (a) on results of a meta-analytic review of 115 longitudinal studies of marriages that demonstrated that relationship functioning is improved by couples having good stress coping abilities (Karney and Bradbury 1995); and (b) on suggestions by relationship and marital therapy experts who endorse the importance of couples interventions that enhance acceptance and empathy and promote development of psychophysiologically soothing and self-expanding activities (e.g., Christensen and Jacobson 2000; Gottman 1993; Wenzel and Harvey 2001). Results from a randomized trial of MBRE provide evidence of its efficacy for improving psychological functioning, increasing stress coping efficacy, and increasing positive relationship characteristics (Carson et al. 2004). Mediational analyses indicated that improvements in relationship satisfaction due to MBRE were mediated by self-expansion (Carson et al. 2007). These results suggest that applying mindfulness-based interventions to influence interpersonal functioning within the context of a close relationship holds potential for shifting participant perceptions of themselves in relation to their close other in ways that promote an expanded awareness and close and loving relationship qualities. Applying similar techniques in other close relationships such as close parent-child relationships might provide similar benefit for the quality of the relationship.

Mindfulness in Parenting

A mindful approach to parenting has been suggested as one avenue for promoting secure attachment relationships (Siegel and Hartzell 2003) and we believe that the parent-child relationship is an ideal context in which to extend the concepts and practices of mindfulness. Our broad conceptualization of mindful parenting draws from Eastern and Western literatures on mindfulness mentioned above and builds upon a foundational account of how the daily practices of mindfulness are readily applicable to parenting (Kabat-Zinn and Kabat-Zinn 1997). The model of mindful parenting described here draws from the concepts and practices of psychological mindfulness (Baer et al. 2006; Brown and Ryan 2003), mindfulness-based interventions (Kabat-Zinn 1994, 2003), and contemporary theoretical and empirical writings about parenting. It encompasses five dimensions of mindful parenting relevant to the parent-child relationship: (a) listening with full attention; (b) nonjudgmental acceptance of self and child; (c) emotional awareness of self and child; (d) self-regulation in the parenting relationship; and (e) compassion for self and child. Table contains a list of these five dimensions and relates each mindful parenting dimension to parenting behaviors that are promoted by these attributes, skills, and practices.

Table 1

Mindful parenting dimensions

Effective parenting behaviors promoted through this practice

Parenting behaviors decreased through this practice

Listening with full attention

* Correctly discern child's behavioral cues
* Accurately perceive child's verbal communication

* Reduced use and influence of cognitive constructions and expectations

Nonjudgmental acceptance of self and child

* Healthy balance between child-oriented, parent-oriented, and relationship-oriented goals
* Sense of parenting self-efficacy
* Appreciation for child's traits

* Reduction in self-directed concerns
* Fewer unrealistic expectations of child's attributes

Emotional awareness of self and child

* Responsiveness to child's needs and emotions
* Greater accuracy in responsibility attributions

* Less dismissing of child's emotions
* Less discipline that results from parent's strong negative emotion (e.g., anger, disappointment, shame)

Self-regulation in the parenting relationship

* Emotion regulation in the parenting context
* Parenting in accordance with goals and values

* Less overreactive/"automatic" discipline
* Less dependence on child's emotions

Compassion for self and child

* Positive affection in the parent-child relationship
* More forgiving view of own parenting efforts

* Less negative affect displayed in the parent-child relationship
* Less self-blame when parenting goals are not achieved

Dimensions of Mindful Parenting

Listening with Full Attention

Clear attention and receptive awareness to the experiences of the present moment are central aspects of mindfulness (Baer et al. 2006; Brown and Ryan 2003) and also to effective parenting. Our model of mindful parenting pairs full attention with listening because it is by directing their full attention to their child that parents convey that they are truly listening to their child. This dimension of mindful parenting combines listening with a quality of focused attention and awareness that goes beyond simply hearing words that are said. In early childhood, parental sensitive attention is often directed to cries or behaviors that signal physical or emotional discomfort. Being fully attentive and developing an internal representation of the child's perspective are important when parents and children are involved in direct interactions (Ainsworth et al. 1978; Maccoby and Martin 1983) and serve a protective function for young children who require the watchful eyes of an attachment figure to keep them from danger (Fonagy and Target 1997; Siegel 2001).

Later, parents who are mindful are sensitive both to the content of conversations as well as their child's tone of voice, facial expressions, and body language, effectively using these cues to successfully detect their child's needs or intended meaning. When children reach adolescence, listening with full attention may be particularly important because parents cannot physically monitor most of their youth's behavior and the information that parents gather is likely to be through verbal report rather than direct observation (Smetana et al. 2006). By bringing their full attention to these interactions parents may perceive their adolescents' thoughts and feelings more accurately, which in turn, may reduce conflict and disagreement (Hastings and Grusec 1998) and promote more self-disclosure by the adolescent (Smetana et al. 2006).

Nonjudgmental Acceptance of Self and Child

Mindful parenting involves being consciously attentive to the attributions and expectations one is making that may skew perceptions of parenting interactions. The human mind is intricately adept at making subconscious judgments (Bargh and Chartrand 1999) and parental perceptions of their youth's attributes and competence influence their expectations, values, and ultimately their child's behavior (Jacobs and Eccles 1992; Jacobs et al. 2005). Through their own behaviors and verbal messages, parents communicate their beliefs about their child's attributes and competencies and these communications may be biased by parents' own desires for the attributes they want their child to possess, even if those are not realistic for that child (Goodnow 1985).

Mindful parenting involves a nonjudgmental acceptance of the traits, attributes, and behaviors of self and child. Acceptance in this regard, however, does not mean a resigned acceptance that relinquishes responsibility for enacting discipline and guidance when necessary, rather it means an acceptance of what is happening in the present moment that is based on clear awareness and attention and gives rise to fuller understanding. It also means acceptance of the notions that there will be struggles in parent-child relationships, that parenting can be very challenging at times, and that growing up in today's world can be difficult for children. Acceptance means recognizing that these challenges we confront and the mistakes we make are all a healthy part of life. However, acceptance does not mean approving of child behavior if it does not meet parental expectations. Instead, mindful parents convey their fundamental acceptance of their child and also provide clear standards and expectations for their child's behavior that are appropriate for both the cultural context and the child's developmental level.

Emotional Awareness of Self and Child

Mindfulness theories emphasize individuals' capacities for focusing attention on their internal states of being such as cognitions and emotions. In our model of mindful parenting, we emphasize parents' capacity for awareness of emotions within themselves and their child. Strong emotions can trigger automatic evaluative processes (Bargh and Williams 2007) that in turn, lead individuals to enact specific behaviors. To truly be able to listen with full attention and to do so nonjudgmentally requires parents to also have the capacity for correctly identifying emotions within themselves and their child. Parents experience intense negative and positive affect during parenting and virtually all aspects of parenting are influenced by parents' affective activation, engagement, and regulation (Dix 1991). Emotional awareness is a foundation of mindful parenting because strong emotions have a powerful influence on igniting automatic cognitive processes and behaviors that are likely to undermine parenting practices. If parents are able to identify both their own and their child's emotions by bringing a mindful awareness to the interaction, they will be able to make conscious choices about how to respond, rather than reacting automatically to these experiences. Mindful parenting also reflects parents' greater willingness and ability to endure strong emotions through decentering (noting that feelings are just feelings) thus allowing them to be more fully present with their child.

Self-Regulation in the Parenting Relationship

Beyond the elements of full attention and emotional awareness, mindful parenting implies a certain degree of self-regulation. Mindfulness theorists have cautioned against confounding mindfulness with self-control and self-regulation (Brown et al. 2007a). Our view, however, is that mindful parenting necessarily requires self-regulation in the relationship context. Mindful parenting involves low reactivity to normative child behavior achieved through autonomous self-control in the service of exercising parenting behavior that is in accordance with parenting values and goals. Mindful parenting does not imply that the impulse to display negative affect, anger, or hostility is not felt, but mindful parenting involves pausing before reacting in parenting interactions in order to exercise greater self-regulation and choice in the selection of parenting practices. The ways in which parents respond to their child's emotions and express their own emotions have an important socializing effect (Eisenberg et al. 1998). Parents who are tolerant and supportive of their child's emotional displays and do not dismiss or meet their child's displays of negative affect with their own negative affect promote more emotionally and socially competent youth (Eisenberg et al. 1998; Katz et al. 1999). Mindful parenting may also promote parenting practices such as teaching children how to label, express, and talk about their feelings, which can promote youth's own self-regulation abilities (Gottman et al. 1997).

Compassion for Self and Child

In addition to an open and accepting stance, mindful parenting includes an active projection of empathic concern for one's child and for oneself as a parent. Compassion is defined as an emotion representing the "desire to alleviate suffering" (Lazarus and Lazarus 1994). Through compassion for one's child, a mindful parent will feel a desire to meet appropriate child needs and comfort distress that the child might be feeling. Children of mindful parents may feel a greater sense of positive affection and support from their parents. Self-compassion is partially comprised of a sense of common humanity (Neff 2003), which applied in parenting may allow parents to take a less harsh, more forgiving view of their own parenting efforts. Self-compassion in parenting entails avoiding self-blame when parenting goals are not achieved, which may allow reengagement in pursuit of parenting goals. It also may reduce the social evaluative threat that may be felt by parents who feel judged by others with regards to their own parenting behavior or their child's behavior in public social contexts. Parental self-evaluations can have considerable influence on parenting (Teti and Gelfand 1991) and on parent-child interactions. Parents who believe they are competent and efficacious interact with their children in a way that promotes effective developmental outcomes (Coleman and Karraker 2003). Parents, however, are often their own harshest critics. A mindful approach may lead to greater acceptance of one's efforts in the process rather than a focus on specific outcomes of parenting.

Mindful Parenting and Parent-Child Relationships

Our model of mindful parenting comprises the five interrelated elements described above, but we should also note that mindful parenting is an approach to parenting that is reflected in qualitatively different intrapsychic and interpersonal processes within the dynamic parent-child relationship. When parents bring the practices of mindful parenting to parent-child interactions, they can cultivate an enhanced capacity for parenting calmly, with greater consistency, and in greater accordance with their goals and values, while engendering a warm and nurturing affective tenor in the parent-child relationship. Mindful parenting will also contribute to a more generally positive parent-child relationship (e.g., more positive and less negative affect, greater trust and emotional sharing), to greater flexibility and responsiveness within the dynamic exchanges of parent-child relations, to a decreased level of parenting stress, to a wiser use of parenting strategies, and to greater youth well-being. We also believe that a mindful approach to parenting can disrupt the destructive cycle of negativity and disengagement that can become entrenched and almost "automatic" for some parent-child dyads (Dishion et al. 2003). Finally, we view mindfulness and mindful parenting as potential psychological resources in the stress and coping process (Lazarus and Folkman 1984; Folkman 1997), allowing parents to exercise more adaptive coping and therefore avoid the potentially disruptive influence of contextual-, family-, and parenting-related stress appraisals on their own psychological well-being and their parenting. Although we view these qualities as important for parenting across the lifespan, the focus of our recent work has been on the particular implications of mindful parenting for parent and child successful adaptation across the developmental transition to adolescence. Figure depicts our model of the hypothesized influence of mindful parenting on key aspects of the parent-child relationship (i.e., parenting, parental well-being, child management practices, and parent-child affection) that in turn have been shown to affect both positive and problem youth outcomes.

The Dynamic Context of Parent-Adolescent Relationships

Although there is considerable stability in the quality of parent-child relationships across the transition to adolescence, there are also several notable changes (Collins and Laursen 2004). During adolescence, parents and youth spend less time together (Larson et al. 1996), report a decline in feelings of closeness (Laursen and Williams 1997), and an increase in the intensity of affect associated with their conflicts (Laursen et al. 1998). Adolescents' ability to think in the abstract increases and they may argue more with their parents (Smetana and Asquith 1994). Declines in expressions of positive affect and increases in negative affect show linear trajectories from early to mid-adolescence with a slight reversal in late adolescence; yet, levels do not return to those seen in early adolescence (Kim et al. 2001). Moreover, it appears that these interactions are reciprocated (Conger and Ge 1999) and become mutually reinforcing; levels of escalating negativity from one person predict subsequent escalation in negativity from the other (Conger and Ge 1999; Kim et al. 2001). All of these changes in adolescents' expression of their affect and cognitions, along with an increased quest for autonomy from their parents, pose a challenge that parents may appraise as stressful (Small et al. 1988).

Dynamic models of parenting propose bilateral, transactional processes of adaptation in which parents act to influence youth, youth act in response, which in turn influences parents' behavior and how they interact with their youth in the future (Maccoby 2003). Additionally, contemporary models of parenting attend to developmental changes in parents' life roles and experiences (Collins et al. 2000). For example, midlife, a period of the lifespan when adults are often parenting adolescents, is also often a time of increased family financial strain, work-related stress, and identity issues for parents, which are strongly related to adult's positive and negative affect (Mroczek 2004). Parent's self-image and their levels of satisfaction with work and marriage are related to levels of negativity in parent-adolescent interactions (Collins 1995). Mindful parenting may enhance parents' abilities to successfully navigate their children's affective, cognitive, and behavioral changes during adolescence, as well as adapt to their own developmental changes.

Navigating the Changes in Parent-Adolescent Relationships Through Mindful Parenting

Our model of mindful parenting acknowledges that during the period of developmental change in parent-adolescent relationships both parent and youth are agentic partners (Kuczynski and Parkin 2007). However, it also emphasizes behaviors and characteristics of the parent, rather than the youth, that are central to effectively and flexibly renegotiating aspects of the relationship in a way that maintains two of its critical functions: closeness and socialization (Dix and Branca 2003; Maccoby 2007). Parent-adolescent relationships are partly cognitive constructions that are created over years of interactions, and partners often experience their relationship through these cognitive filters (Lollis and Kuczynski 1997; Main et al. 1985) rather than through present experience. For example, parental expectations for and attributions about their youth's behavior derive not only from a pattern of interactions at an earlier stage of development, but also from anticipated future-oriented socialization goals (Dawber and Kuczynski 1999) and from global expectations for development, such as what adolescence will be like (Buchanan 2003). Parents may also interpret youth behavior through a bias of self-interest and ego-involvement (e.g., youth behavior reflects strongly on parent as a person), or with judgments and attributions about the child's intentions for behaving that way (Dix et al. 1986).

Parent's automatic cognitive processes may be triggered by something their youth says or does, which in turn elicits strong emotional and behavioral reactions from the parent (Kerr and Stattin 2003) which may include overreactive, harsh discipline strategies (Dix et al. 1986; Leung and Slep 2006). Consequently, adolescents who developmentally face more challenges in regulating negative emotions and managing emotional lability (Larson et al. 1996) may react strongly and escalate the cycle of negativity. Such transactional emotion dynamics are central theoretical elements of models of the role of parenting and family functioning in the development of problem behaviors (e.g., Patterson et al. 1992). Parents who bring a mindful parenting approach to such a situation may listen intently with nonjudgmental acceptance, not focus on memories and/or future expectations to interpret what is happening in the moment, show low emotional reactivity and thereby maintain parent-youth closeness, support parental monitoring and use the situation to help socialize appropriate behavior. This kind of interaction is likely to yield strong adolescent-parent connections that contribute to a mutually responsive orientation (Maccoby 2007).

Applications of Mindfulness in Parenting Interventions

The first significant discussion of the application of mindfulness to parenting was published by Myla and Jon Kabat-Zinn (Kabat-Zinn and Kabat-Zinn 1997). This pioneering work described their recommendations for extending and integrating into family life the practices of mindfulness taught in the Stress Reduction Clinic at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center. The Kabat-Zinns suggested a daily practice of mindful parenting that should take into account the changing developmental needs of the child from birth through young adulthood. A next step was taken by Dumas ( 2005) in a ground-breaking paper that described mindfulness training as one avenue for parents to break the "automaticity" of maladaptive parenting interactions. Dumas developed mindfulness-based parent training as a psychotherapeutic model for a therapist to work individually with parents to help them examine their "automatized transactional procedures" (ATPs) that are described as "... transactional, relationship-specific ways of coping that are performed with little conscious awareness, stable and highly resistant to change" (Dumas 2005). In this intervention model, ineffective ATPs exacerbate conflict in families and are reinforced by negative affect. Dumas ( 2005) suggests mindfulness training as a mechanism whereby parents might "consider their own and their child's behavior nonjudgmentally, to distance themselves from negative emotions, and to develop parenting goals that are accompanied by motivated action plans" for adaptive coping that will become automatic with practice (p. 780). Our model of mindful parenting includes some similar components, including distancing from negative affect and a focus on reducing automatic reactions through mindfulness practice.

Although mindful parenting is growing in appeal as a focus for clinical practice with families, there have been very few published studies that evaluated the effects of mindful parenting programs and, to our knowledge, all have been done in treatment settings. In the first, an intensive measurement burst, multiple-baseline study was conducted with three mothers of children with autism who participated in an individually delivered, 12-week mindful parenting course (Singh et al. 2006). A pre- to post-intervention increase in mothers' mindful parenting was associated with decreases in child aggression, noncompliance, and self-injury. Notably, mothers' satisfaction with their parenting skills and with their parenting interactions increased markedly when they began using mindfulness on a daily basis and remained high (Singh et al. 2006).

The second, a small randomized controlled trial of the parents under pressure (PUP) intervention, was conducted with 64 Australian families with a parent on methadone maintenance and children age 2-8 years (Dawe and Harnett 2007). The PUP program is an intensive 10-session, home-based intervention that incorporates mindfulness skills-training designed to improve parent affect regulation during parent-child play and includes elements of mindfulness-based relapse prevention (Witkiewitz et al. 2005) to reduce the likelihood of substance abuse relapse. PUP participants showed significant improvements in family functioning compared to controls, including a reduction in child abuse potential, that were maintained at three-month and six-month follow-up assessments (Dawe and Harnett 2007). This study provides a model for combining individual mindfulness-based treatment with mindful parenting practices for a selected population. The only study of a group-based (vs. individually-delivered) mindful parenting intervention reported in the literature involved delivery of a previously unevaluated 12-week mindful parenting program (Placone-Willey 2002) to a convenience sample of 12 recently divorced parents of preschool age children with no comparison group (Altmaier and Maloney 2007). Results indicated a significant pre- to post-intervention increase in state mindfulness, but no changes were found on observational ratings of parent-child relationships.

The results of these three studies suggest that mindful parenting interventions may have potential for improving parenting satisfaction, family functioning, and mindfulness. However, it is not certain that the effects obtained in these studies are due to the mindfulness component or are merely the effects of quality parenting treatment based more on an operant model. It is clear that there is a need for considerable additional research and examination of the mechanisms of action of mindful parenting interventions.

Mindful Parenting as a Model for Preventive Intervention

In spite of the substantial interest in applying mindfulness models to family and parenting research, it is noteworthy that there had been no applications to evidence-based, family-focused preventive interventions. As we considered the most effective way to support the qualities of mindful parenting, our research group decided that rather than develop an entirely new intervention, we would supplement a high-quality existing model. After review of effective programs, we chose to adapt the Strengthening Families Program: For Parents and Youth 10-14 (SFP; Molgaard et al. 2001), an existing, empirically validated, seven-session, universal family preventive intervention. We elected this strategy because of the strong empirical evidence that SFP improves parenting practices (Redmond et al. 1999; Spoth et al. 1998) and delays the onset and escalation of alcohol and other drug use in adolescence (Spoth et al. 1999, 2001, 2004, 2006) and because the content of SFP already implicitly contained many of the underlying principles we have outlined here in our model of mindful parenting. Our task was to make these implicit messages more explicit by adding mindfulness practice activities and by more clearly reinforcing principles of mindfulness by altering some of the language used throughout the sessions. With assistance from the program developer, Virgina Molgaard, we created a revised curriculum (MSFP: Mindfulness-enhanced SFP) by infusing concepts and practices related to mindfulness and mindful parenting throughout the standard program's seven parent sessions.

Our program of research has taken several steps to evaluate and refine the mindful parenting intervention activities. Our first step was to explore the feasibility of incorporating mindfulness and mindful parenting activities into SFP and to gauge the acceptability of the new content to parent participants. Overall, results from an initial pilot project with a single intervention group (Duncan et al. 2009) suggested that it was feasible to implement the new mindfulness and mindful parenting activities and that parents found the additional mindfulness components to be both acceptable and useful. Observation of sessions and feedback from parents also suggested that the curriculum could be improved by condensing didactic activities that took too long to deliver, shortening several mindfulness activities, and conducting experiential mindfulness activities with periods of silence rather than with verbal guidance throughout. Second, we further revised the curriculum to enhance acceptability and to include an additional explicit emphasis on mindfulness and mindful parenting throughout each curriculum activity before conducting a second pilot study.

Next, we tested the revised curriculum in a pilot randomized controlled trial conducted in three Pennsylvania school districts (Coatsworth et al. 2009). In this trial, a sample of families of 5th-7th grade students from three school districts were randomly assigned to MSFP, the original SFP program, or a wait-list control group and completed pre- and post-intervention self-report assessments. Effect size estimates for intervention outcomes on an array of parenting and family functioning variables are reported elsewhere (Coatsworth et al. 2009). Notable results demonstrated significantly stronger intervention effects of the MSFP program compared to standard SFP program or the waitlist control conditions on mindful parenting (assessed with the Interpersonal Mindfulness in Parenting Scale; Duncan 2007), parent-youth relationship quality, and reports of parental mental health and well-being. Results of the pilot efficacy trial show promise for the value of a mindful parenting approach for enhancing the efficacy of universal prevention with rural families of young teens.

The format of all MSFP intervention sessions is similar to the original SFP sessions. The content of the youth and family sessions is identical; only the content in the parenting sessions has been altered. On average we added two new activities to each session. New activities were designed to teach parents the skills of mindful parenting that would enhance their abilities to: (a) pay close attention and listen carefully to their children during moment-to-moment parenting interactions; (b) become more aware of their own emotional states and the emotional states of their youth; (c) become more likely to adopt an accepting, nonjudgmental attitude when interacting with their youth; (d) regulate their own affective reactions during their interactions with their youth; and (e) adopt a stance of empathy and compassion toward their children and themselves; and to do all of these things in the context of a fundamental shift in their perspective of what it means to truly be present with their children with a focus on their desire to have an authentic and caring relationship.

Listening with Full Attention

During each MSFP intervention session, parents are taught how to focus their attention through brief mindfulness practices. In order to assure the secular nature of our mindfulness practice activities, we have defined "reflections" as short activities in which parents are asked to sit comfortably, close their eyes if they wish, and focus their attention on some aspect of their present experience, for example their breathing or thoughts they are having about themselves or their child. These reflections draw from meditation practices and they are designed to increase mindful attention and awareness; they are reinforced throughout the MSFP sessions, particularly during activities in which the importance of truly listening to adolescents is discussed. Within the sessions that focus on listening, parents are taught behaviors that characterize good versus poor communication (e.g., attention and following versus ignoring, advice giving, or judging), how youth might feel when parents are not listening to them, how parents can listen for youths' underlying affect in what they are saying, how parents can monitor their own feelings when youth are not talking, and how parents can avoid forcing communication when they feel frustrated by youth lack of disclosure. Parents are taught that clear attention and awareness is an essential aspect of good listening and effective communication with their adolescents. Because it is not possible for parents to listen with full attention to their youth at all times, parents discuss when it is difficult for them to do this and how they can let their youth know that they want to hear what she has to say later, when they have the opportunity to pay attention fully.

Nonjudgmental Acceptance of Self and Child

During MSFP, parents experience a variety of activities in which they reflect on the commonalities and differences between themselves and their youth. They are asked to focus on their child's unique needs and characteristics. They reflect on the kinds of attributions they make about themselves and their child and the source of those attributions. For example, parents learn to self-monitor whether and when their sense of public self-consciousness creates expectations against which they judge their own and their youths' behaviors. Parents are also asked to reflect on the extent to which some of their parenting goals are child-centered or parent-centered (Dix and Branca 2003). Parents are asked to practice bringing an open, nonjudgmental, and accepting stance to their parenting interactions.

Emotional Awareness of Self and Child

The MSFP intervention helps build awareness of the emotions of parenting by teaching parents how to recognize and label their moment-to-moment affective experiences. Parents are asked to practice noticing the "comfortable" and "uncomfortable" emotions of parenting. They reflect on the positive and negative affect that they and their child experience and express during parenting interactions and how their moods influence one another. These activities also help parents identify situations with their teens in which they are more likely to experience uncomfortable emotions that can escalate into interactions filled with angry and hurtful words and actions. Teaching parents how to increase their attention and awareness of their own emotional experiences and of their youths' emotions, even those that are less overtly expressed, is seen as an initial step to altering escalating cycles of negative affect and behavior that may be triggered "automatically."

Self-Regulation in the Parenting Relationship

In MSFP, parents are taught mindfulness practices that target their automatic cognitive-affective reactions to escalating emotions and their physiological stress reactivity. Parents are taught brief breath awareness activities and they learn that paying attention to the breath can have a calming effect. They are given the simple phrase "Stop, Be Calm, Be Present" to use when they become aware of the need to self-regulate and focus on their broader parenting goals instead of reacting automatically out of immediate desires. MSFP activities are designed to allow parents to practice bringing their consciousness to those parent-child interactions that elicit strong emotions that can trigger automatic behavioral reactions and learn to work with those reactions with mindfulness.

Compassion for Self and Child

Throughout MSFP, we incorporate themes of caring and compassion. The original SFP curriculum contains a central theme of balancing "Love and Limits," or warmth and discipline (Molgaard et al. 2001). We expanded upon this theme by infusing the curriculum with brief reflections designed to bring about greater compassion for the difficulties of being an adolescent and greater self-compassion for the difficulties of being the parent of an adolescent. We adapted these reflections from loving-kindness meditation practices (Salzberg 1995) that have been found to promote daily positive emotions including love, joy, and contentment (Fredrickson et al. 2008). Parents are also encouraged to identify aspects of their parenting that they feel good about and to avoid judging themselves harshly when they do not meet their own goals.

Future Directions

Mindful Parenting Intervention Research

Prevention research can provide experimental studies of whether improving mindful parenting through intervention can achieve the goal of substantially improving parent-child relationships. Empirical tests of mindful parenting interventions are in an early stage and there is also considerable work yet to be done in the areas of theory, research, and application of mindfulness in parenting. On the one hand, models of mindfulness in parenting, such as the one presented here, are needed to move the field forward. Our model drew from Eastern and Western teachings on mindfulness and compassion to identify five dimensions that could be applied to parent-child interactions. Mindfulness theories describe other dimensions that might plausibly fit into an alternative model of mindful parenting. More, not fewer, theoretical models will ultimately help to stimulate empirical and applied science. These theoretical models will not only have to describe the specific dimensions of mindful parenting they are proposing, but also indicate what kinds of positive and negative developmental outcomes might result from such an approach. Further, such models should convey the interpersonal and/or intrapersonal mechanisms (mediators) by which mindful parenting relates to human development. A second step in this research process is establishing sound measurement of the proposed models. Finally, translating the models into interventions with a clearly defined set of intervention activities and guidelines and testing their efficacy in rigorous clinical trials will be necessary to confirm or disconfirm empirical claims. Central to these trials will be carefully planned evaluations that can provide insights into how a mindful parenting intervention produces its effects. Given that intervention science currently has a broad number of empirically validated interventions to alter parenting and family processes (see Cowan et al. 1998; Kumpfer and Alvarado 2003; Taylor and Biglan 1998), it may require well-designed comparative studies with carefully chosen comparison interventions that can control for some processes while yielding information about the value added of a mindful parenting intervention. Added value may be found in enhanced effects in certain areas (e.g., stronger effects for parenting practices or parent-child relationship quality), or in a wider range of effects on proximal and distal outcomes (e.g., parental stress reduction and well-being, youth intrapersonal processes). Early tests of intervention effects should test a broad array of plausible mechanisms and outcomes in order to expand our knowledge base and help refine our theoretical models.

We have adopted some of these guidelines within our own research program and the next phase of our study of MSFP will involve a large-scale randomized trial to test program efficacy and to examine the additive benefits for parenting, parent-youth relations, youth outcomes, and parental psychological well-being. We have proposed to test our intervention using a three-arm research design that includes MSFP, standard SFP, and a limited intervention control condition. This design allows us to test specific hypotheses (represented in our model in Fig. ) about whether enhancing family-focused prevention with mindful parenting training provides added value beyond more traditional models of parenting. We have hypothesized that MSFP will produce enhanced effects on parenting practices and especially on parent-youth affective relations. We expect these enhanced effects on parenting practices will mediate effects on youth outcomes such as conduct problems and substance use. Moreover, we expect the practice of mindfulness applied to parenting by our adult participants to produce some salutogenic effects on parent psychological well-being and physiological stress reactivity in the parenting context.

Extending Mindful Parenting to Other Developmental Stages

In addition to our work on MSFP, we are collaborating with practitioners to develop and assess mindful parenting programs for other stages of parenting. MBSR (Kabat-Zinn 1982, 1990) has been combined with traditional childbirth education in a theory- and evidence-based program model that teaches expectant parents how to cope more adaptively with stress during pregnancy, childbirth, and early parenting, while cultivating mindfulness and mindful parenting ( Mindfulness-Based Childbirth and Parenting e ducation; MBCP; Bardacke 1998-2009). For early childhood, The Circle of Security intervention (Marvin et al. 2000) provides a program model for working with parents of toddlers on themes of attachment that are relevant for mindful and compassionate parenting during this developmental stage. The MSFP program covers the transition to adolescence (ages 10-14) and our mindful parenting activities could be extended to middle childhood, creating comprehensive coverage of developmentally appropriate mindful parenting intervention across childhood.

Conclusion

This paper has described our efforts to-date to extend the conceptualization and application of mindfulness to the interpersonal domain of parent-child relationships and integrate mindfulness activities into a universal family preventive intervention. Our model of mindful parenting suggests that the quality of parent-child relationships will be improved by promoting parents' ability to bring a present-moment awareness to their parenting that includes listening with full attention, bringing emotional awareness and nonjudgmental acceptance to their parenting interactions, and practicing self-regulation and compassion in their parenting relationships. Mindful parenting is not simply a new skill-set; it is a new epistemological orientation. We believe that parents who adopt a mindfulness orientation for their parenting and regularly engage in mindful parenting practices will undergo a fundamental shift in their ability and willingness to truly be present with the constantly growing and changing nature of their child and their relationship with their child. In this way, parents can be freed from the egoistic, habitual, and hedonic motivations that may lead them astray in their parenting practices and cultivate a parenting perspective that incorporates a long view of the enduring nature of the relationship with the use of wisdom in selecting appropriate parenting responses in the moment.

Acknowledgments

Preparation of this paper was supported by the National Institute on Drug Abuse through a predoctoral training fellowship (T32 DA 017629) and by the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine through a postdoctoral fellowship (T32 AT003997) to the first author. The insightful contributions of Virginia Molgaard, Elaine Berrena, Christa Turksma, and Robert Nix during the development of the Mindfulness-enhanced Strengthening Families Program curriculum are gratefully acknowledged and we wish to thank the Pennsylvania families who gave us valuable feedback on how to teach the practices of mindful parenting. Support for the MSFP pilot studies was provided by the Penn State Children, Youth, and Families Consortium. Our deepest appreciation is extended to Myla and Jon Kabat-Zinn for their teachings on mindful parenting and for providing the inspiration for this work.

Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial License which permits any noncommercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and source are credited.

References

Bardacke, N. (1998-2009). Mindfulness-based childbirth and parenting education curriculum manual. Oakland, CA: Mindful Birthing and Parenting Foundation.

Chadwick, P., Hember, M., Mead, S., Lilley, B., & Dagnan, D. (2005). Responding to unpleasant thoughts and images: Reliability and validity of the Mindfulness Questionnaire. Manuscript under review (as cited in Baer et al., 2006).

Coatsworth, J. D., Duncan, L. G., Greenberg, M. T., & Nix, R. L. (2009). Changing parents' mindfulness, child management skills, and relationship quality with their youth: Results from a randomized pilot intervention trial. Manuscript under review. [PMC free article]

Duncan, L. G. (2007). Assessment of mindful parenting among parents of early adolescents: Development and validation of the Interpersonal Mindfulness in Parenting scale. Unpublished dissertation.

Duncan, L. G., Coatsworth, J. D., & Greenberg, M. T. (2009). Pilot study to guage acceptability of a mindfulness-based, family-focused preventive intervention. [The Journal of Primary Prevention, 30(5), in press. PMC free article]

Main, M., Cassidy, J., & Kaplan, N. (1985). Security in infancy, childhood and adulthood: A move to the level of representation. In I. Bretherton & E. Waters (Eds.), Growing points in attachment theory and research. Monographs of the society for research in child development (Vol 50, 1-2, Serial no. 209, pp. 66-104). Chicago: Chicago University Press.

Placone-Willey, P. M. (2002). A curriculum for mindful parenting: A model development dissertation. Unpublished dissertation.

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A Model of Mindful Parenting: Implications for Parent-Child Relationships and Prevention Research

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This paper introduces a model of "mindful parenting" as a framework whereby parents intentionally bring moment-to-moment awareness to the parent-child relationship. This is done by developing the qualities of listening with full attention when interacting with their children, cultivating emotional awareness and self-regulation in parenting, and bringing compassion and nonjudgmental acceptance to their parenting interactions.

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Listen to Mindful Schools | SoundCloud is an audio platform that lets you listen to what you love and share the sounds you create.. 12 Tracks. 91 Followers. Stream Tracks and Playlists from Mindful Schools on your desktop or mobile device.

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Mindfulness can boost the quality of our lives in numerous ways.

In today's rush, we all think too much-seek too much-want too much-and forget about the joy of just being.

- Eckhart Tolle

What does mindfulness do to spark "the joy of just being" that Tolle references? And, how can we teach kids to start benefiting from its practice?

This article delves into both of these questions and includes plenty of activities for you to start using today.

Research confirms that for children, mindfulness can:

Mitigate the effects of bullying (Zhou, Liu, Niu, Sun, & Fan, 2016);

Enhance focus in children with ADHD (Zhang et al., 2016);

Reduce attention problems (Crescentini, Capurso, Furlan, & Fabbro, 2016);

Improve mental health and wellbeing;

Improve social skills when well taught and practiced with children and adolescents.

It's also important for caregivers and educators to provide age-appropriate mindfulness practices to children.

For example, fostering mindfulness in preschoolers with tools like pictures, objects, food, simple movements, and music, can help them develop an ability to better focus their attention and stay present.

In a study by Flook et al., (2015), kids were asked to engage in an activity called "Belly Buddies", in which they listened to music while also noticing the sensation of a small tone on their stomachs rising and falling with each breath.

The kids became more attune to their bodies, breath and to the music.

Ultimately, simple activities like these can have long-lasting developmental benefits when practiced regularly.

Want more? We have 25 mindfulness activities designed specifically for children. Plus, they are fun to do.

But, before you read on, we thought you might like to download our three Mindfulness Exercises for free. These science-based, comprehensive exercises will not only help you cultivate a sense of inner peace throughout your daily life but will also give you the tools to enhance the mindfulness of your children, students or young clients.

4 Fun Mindfulness Activities and Exercises for Children

Let's start with these simple ways to attune children with their bodies. At a young age, humans naturally curious about the strength and flexibility of their bodies. It's a great age to introduce body-mind awareness as a valuable way to take care of themselves.

Mindful Posing

One easy way for children to dip their toes into mindfulness is through body poses. To get your kids excited, tell them that doing fun poses can help them feel strong, brave, and happy.

Have the kids go somewhere quiet and familiar, a place they feel safe. Next, tell them to try one of the following poses:

1. The Superman: this pose is practiced by standing with the feet just wider than the hips, fists clenched, and arms reached out to the sky, stretching the body as tall as possible.

2. The Wonder Woman: this pose is struck by standing tall with legs wider than hip-width apart and hands or fists placed on the hips (Karen Young, 2017).

Ask the kids how they feel after a few rounds of trying either of these poses. You may be surprised.

Spidey-Senses

While on the subject of superheroes, this can be a related "next step" to teach kids how to stay present.

Instruct your kids to turn-on their "Spidey senses," or the super-focused senses of smell, sight, hearing, taste, and touch that Spiderman uses to keep tabs on the world around him. This will encourage them to pause and focus their attention on the present, opening their awareness to the information their senses bring in (Karen Young, 2017).

This is a classic mindfulness exercise and encourages observation and curiosity-great skills for any human to practice.

The Mindful Jar

This activity can teach children how strong emotions can take hold, and how to find peace when these strong emotions feel overwhelming.

First, get a clear jar (like a Mason jar) and fill it almost all the way with water. Next, add a big spoonful of glitter glue or glue and dry glitter to the jar. Put the lid back on the jar and shake it to make the glitter swirl.

Finally, use the following script or take inspiration from it to form your own mini-lesson:

"Imagine that the glitter is like your thoughts when you're stressed, mad or upset. See how they whirl around and make it really hard to see clearly? That's why it's so easy to make silly decisions when you're upset - because you're not thinking clearly. Don't worry this is normal and it happens in all of us (yep, grownups too).

[Now put the jar down in front of them.]

Now watch what happens when you're still for a couple of moments. Keep watching. See how the glitter starts to settle and the water clears? Your mind works the same way. When you're calm for a little while, your thoughts start to settle and you start to see things much clearer. Deep breaths during this calming process can help us settle when we feel a lot of emotions" (Karen Young, 2017).

This exercise not only helps children learn about how their emotions can cloud their thoughts, but it also facilitates the practice of mindfulness while focusing on the swirling glitter in the jar.

Try having the kids focus on one emotion at a time, such as anger, and discuss how the shaken verse settling glitter is like that emotion.

Safari

The Safari exercise is a great way to help kids learn mindfulness. This activity turns an average, everyday walk into an exciting new adventure.

Tell your kids that you will be going on a safari: their goal is to notice as many birds, bugs, creepy-crawlies, and any other animals as they can. Anything that walks, crawls, swims, or flies is of interest, and they'll need to focus all of their senses to find them, especially the little ones (Karen Young, 2017).

A similar exercise for adults is the mindfulness walk. This exercise provokes the same response in children that a mindful walk elicits in adults: a state of awareness and grounding in the present.

If you're interested in more information on how to encourage the practice of mindfulness in children and teens, you can check out the other exercises from this website. Otherwise, head on to the next section where we lay out key tips for teaching these concepts.

15 Tips for Teaching Mindfulness to Kids and Teenagers

When you are trying to teach your kids or young clients about mindfulness and its benefit, we recommend you begin with a few guidelines:

1. Make sure they are ready to give mindfulness a try; if they are full of energy and itching to run and play, it may not be the best time for practicing mindfulness for the first time.

2. Explain what mindfulness is and what it is not; give examples of what seems similar to mindfulness but is not (i.e., introspection or chasing thoughts down the "rabbit hole" versus listening to our bodies).

3. Say it in an age-appropriate way, with words they will understand.

4. Offer to practice mindfulness with them; sometimes having a model makes all the difference.

5. Assure them that it's okay to get off track, and how to gently guide themselves back to mindfulness when they realize they lost focus.

6. Finish the practice by doing something they enjoy with them to ensure they have a positive experience.

Megan Cowan, co-founder, and co-director at the Mindful Schools program in Oakland, also has some tips on how to teach mindfulness to kids (2010):

1. Keep the purpose of mindfulness practice in mind. Be sure to engage in mindful practice with children in positive situations, and never use it as a disciplinary tool.

2. Make sure you practice mindfulness yourself!

3. Set a daily routine for practicing mindfulness to make sure you incorporate it.

4. Prepare the environment for successful practice; move the furniture around or have everyone switch positions.

5. Involve students in the process; perhaps designate a different child each day to alert the class when it's time to practice mindfulness or help set up any tools or props.

6. Share your own experiences with the kids; this will help them understand how mindfulness is applied and practiced in everyday life. Feel free to share how you redirect yourself when you feel distracted during a mindfulness session.

7. Encourage the children to share their experiences as well, whether they were good experiences with mindfulness or experiences in which they got distracted. Maybe each session can end with a few students sharing how it went for them.

8. Practice every day. The more you embed mindfulness into the daily routine, the easier it is to engage.

Cowan (2010) also includes a short script if you'd like to use her mini-lesson.

Relay the following instructions to your kids:

"Please get into your mindful bodies-still and quiet, sitting upright, eyes closed."

"Now place all your attention on the sound you are about to hear. Listen until the sound is completely gone."

Ring a "mindfulness bell," or have a student ring the bell. Use a bell with a sustained sound or a rain stick to encourage mindful listening.

"Please raise your hand when you can no longer hear the sound."

When most or all have raised their hands, you can say, "Now slowly, mindfully, move your hand to your stomach or chest, and just feel your breathing."

You can help students stay focused during the breathing with reminders like, "Just breathing in ... just breathing out ..."

Ring the bell to end.

For more in-depth tips and ideas on teaching mindfulness to children, check out the book Planting Seeds: Practicing Mindfulness with Children by Thich Nhat Hanh and the Plum Village Community.

The website from editor and children's book author Annaka Harris also provides some great ideas for exercises that teach mindfulness to children.

8 Mindfulness Games, YouTube Videos, and Apps to Support Your Teachings

Technology offers learning and development for these practices. To ensure that you are using technology to your advantage when it comes to teaching children mindfulness, give some of these resources a try.

Smiling Minds App

Another application that is popular for children as young as seven is the Smiling Mind app. This app is available through the Apple app store as well as the Google Play store. It is free to download and use.

This app offers similar features to the Mindfulness for Children app, including a body scan activity. There are dozens of modules with hundreds of sessions available, each customized for wellbeing, education, and the workplace (for adults).

If you'd like to check out the reviews for this app or learn more about it, visit the website.

Still Quiet Place

If you'd like to use a video to help your kids learn how to practice mindfulness, the "Mindfulness Exercises for Kids: Still Quiet Place Video" is a great resource. This animated video can help students learn how to go to a "still quiet place."

Check out the video here, and scroll down to the link below the video to see more activities from GoZen.com.

Mindfulness Games for Kids

Several interactive games are available on the Kids Activities Blog. Here are just a few:

1. Blowing bubbles. Have your kids focus on taking in a deep, slow breath, and exhaling steadily to fill the bubble. Encourage them to pay close attention to the bubbles as they form, detach, and pop or float away.

2. Pinwheels. Use the same tactics from blowing bubbles to encourage mindful attention on the pinwheels.

3. Playing with balloons. Tell your kids that the aim of this game is to keep the balloon off the ground, but have them move slowly and gently. You can tell them to pretend the balloon is very fragile if that helps.

4. Texture bag. Place several small, interestingly shaped or textured objects in a bag. Have each child reach in and touch an object, one at a time, and describe what they are touching. Make sure they don't take the object out of the bag, forcing them to use only their sense of touch to explore the object.

5. Blindfolded taste tests. Use a blindfold for each child and have them experience eating a small food, like a raisin or a cranberry, as if it was their first time eating it.

If you want to know about more games you can play with children to teach them about mindfulness, check out the book Mindful Games: Sharing Mindfulness and Meditation with Children, Teens, and Families by Susan Kaiser Greenland.

2 Mindfulness Training Classes For Children with Anxiety

Mindfulness practice can be an especially important component of a child's life if they suffer from anxiety. Learning about mindfulness and how to engage in mindfulness can help a child realize that worrying is normal, and there are useful coping methods when we are worrying too much.

Aside from the Mindful Schools program mentioned earlier, there are classes and programs designed especially for children, and even a few that are structured for children with anxiety.

Child Mind Institute focus on education, care and science, and offers various programs. Programs are customised to your needs, so contact them via their website to book for a workshop.

There is also a popular course called "MonkeyMind and Me: A Mindfulness Course for Children." Children learn how to meditate and practice mindfulness over eight one hour sessions held over eight weeks.

The lessons are delivered through stories about MonkeyMind, a friendly puppet who has trouble with self-regulation ("MonkeyMind and Me", 2017). The course includes lessons, opportunities to practice, design of a homemade project, and a graduation ceremony.

The structure of these lessons and exercises transforms teaching mindfulness into an experience everyone might enjoy-and benefit from.

The Basics: Teaching Essential Mindfulness Practices and Skills

Before you delve into the classroom, review these basic skills and you may have better success with students and clients learning mindfulness.

Mindful Breathing

Mindful breathing is a staple of practicing mindfulness. It is the foundation of many other exercises. To help kids learn how to engage in mindful breathing, you can use a video like the one below:

This video guides children through a breathing meditation by instructing them to imagine a sailboat that rises and falls as they breathe; with each inhale and exhale, the boat moves gently on top of the water.

They also get an opportunity to visualize their breath with a color and focus on the experience of their breath moving through their nostrils. Lastly, the video ends with the exercise of the children imagining (with their eyes closed) that they used to be a fish and paying attention to how it would feel to breathe through their lungs for the first time.

Body Scan

The body scan is a key practice in mindfulness, and an easy one to teach to children.

Have your kids lie down on their back on a comfortable surface and close their eyes;

Then tell them to squeeze every muscle in their body as tight as they can.

Tell them to squish their toes and feet, squeeze their hands into fists, and make their legs and arms as hard as stone;

After a few seconds, have them release all their muscles and relax for a few minutes;

Encourage them to think about how their body is feeling throughout the activity (Roman, 2015).

This simple exercise gets kids to be more aware of their bodies and helps them find a way to be present in the moment.

Heartbeat Exercise

Paying attention to one's heartbeat has a role in many mindfulness exercises and activities. To begin, tell your kids to jump up and down in place or do jumping jacks for one minute.

When they have finished, have them sit down and put a hand over their heart. Instruct them to close their eyes and pay attention only to their heartbeat and, perhaps, their breath as well (Roman, 2015).

This exercise teaches children to notice their heartbeat, and use it as a tool to help their focus. These skills will come in handy as they start engaging in more advanced mindfulness activities.

Mindfulness Meditation for Very Young Children

You might be thinking that these tips and exercises are great for elementary or middle school students, but less realistic for young children. This section focuses on children who are toddlers through kindergarten graduates.

One mother explained laid out her five strategies for teaching young children mindfulness-starting with her three-year-old child learning mindfulness.

Her strategies are:

Teach kids to recognize and identify their own emotions. Children need to associate the word or term for an emotion with the actual experience of feeling that emotion. Encourage them to think about how each emotion feels in their body. Does anger feel like they've got steam coming out of their ears? Does love make them feel like their heart is going to burst open?

Validate their emotions. Children often respond with frustration or sadness when told that their pain, however trivial it seems to us, is "not a big deal." When teaching mindfulness, let kids feel their feelings without fear of judgment. Focus instead on teaching them tools to listen to their emotions.

Teach kids mindful breathing strategies. As we noted above, mindful breathing is a building block in all mindfulness practices. Children benefit from focusing on their breathing when confronted with emotions that are hard to manage.

The author of the blog laid out three techniques she has put to use with her children:

1. Noticing the breath: this involves simply paying attention to what breathing actually feels like.
2. Five-finger starfish meditation: this breathing technique has kids holding up one hand in a starfish position (fingers spread wide) while they gently trace up and down each finger with the other hand, focusing on regular breathing at the same time.
3. Counting the breath: this technique is what it sounds like: have your children pause and count their breaths. One breath in is "1", the next breath out is "2," etc. You can have them count to 10 if they're very young, or slightly higher depending on their abilities.

Lead them in a guided meditation. Use a script or an exercise or app like the ones described above for this meditation.

Practice what you preach. As we mentioned earlier, it is so important to actually "do as you say." Kids are intuitive and human nature encourages mimicry, two advantages we can harness when trying to teach (Beach, "Baby Buddhas.")

Guide your kids every step of the way, but make sure you are taking those steps yourself as well. It will make everyone's practice richer.

The Benefits Of Mindfulness In Schools (K12) + Videos

Childhood and adolescence are important developmental stages that will construct the groundwork for mental health in the adult developmental stage.

In recent literature, mindfulness-based school programs have demonstrated a range of social, cognitive, and emotional benefits for elementary and middle-school students.

Cognitive Benefits

Executive function is a set of mental skills that constitutes attention, switching focus, planning, organizing, and remembering details.

Research in education suggests that mindfulness practice can lead to improvements in executive function in children.

For instance, in the study of Flook et al., (2010) conducted on 3 rd graders, students who went through an 8-week mindfulness program showed improvements in behavioral regulation, metacognition, and focus compared to the control group who did not have the mindfulness program.

In another study, students who had a 24-week mindfulness training scored higher in attentional measures in their elementary school (Napoli et al., 2004). Additionally, a study on preschoolers emphasized that children who went through a mindfulness curriculum for 12 weeks earned higher marks on academic performance measures. They also showed greater improvements in areas that predict future success (Flook et al., 2015).

Social Benefits

A social skill is any skill that we use to interact and communicate with others.

Deficits and excesses in social behavior can affect learning, understanding, and classroom climate. Recent research on lower-income and ethnic minority elementary school children highlighted how a 5-week mindfulness curriculum can lead to better participation in activities, as well as nurture a classroom culture of mutual respect and care in 9th-grade students (Black et al., 2013).

Emotional Benefits

Emotional health, which is a positive sense of wellbeing, is an important component of child and adolescent development. Emotional problems such as anxiety, stress, and depression can affect self-esteem, performance, and social interactions.

Mindfulness practice may facilitate the ability to manage stress, and also lead to deeper wellbeing in students.

According to one study by Schonert-Reichl and his colleagues (2010), mindfulness practice leads to higher scores on self-report measures of optimism and positive emotions in elementary school students.

Moreover, in a study conducted by Wall (2005), self-reported findings showed preteens feeling calmer, with an enhanced experience of well-being-and improved sleep-after a 5-week modified mindfulness-based stress reduction program.

Videos on Mindfulness in Schools

These four videos can help students open their minds to the benefits of mindfulness. We recommend pairing any of these segments with a discussion.

Questions for after the selected clip can include, "Has anyone practiced mindfulness, and how has it gone for you?" or "What do you think is the reason most people do not practice mindfulness, and how can we start changing this?"

A Take-Home Message

Research confirms that mindfulness can improve mental health by aiding wellbeing, attention, self-regulation, and social competency. It just needs to be practiced-and encouraged.

Mindfulness-based programs in schools can have a life-long impact on the psychological, social, and cognitive wellbeing of children and teens. Even at home or with clients, how can you incorporate mindfulness into your teachings and own schedule?

Do you have kids or work with kids on a regular basis? Try these tips and activities out, and let us know how they worked in the comments section below.

Good luck, and remember this old saying:

Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.

We hope you enjoyed reading this article. Don't forget to download our three Mindfulness Exercises for free.

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25 Fun Mindfulness Activities for Children & Teens (+Tips!)

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Here's a list of fun mindfulness activities and exercises for kids that will teach them about mindfulness in a playful way. Enjoy!

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You might imagine silence being the predominant feature of a mindfulness workshop. Wrong! Last week - teaching at the Camden Society where Breathworks is delivering a mini Mindfulness for Health intervention as part of a longer back-to-work course being run in conjunction with the DWP - we were treated to a ukulele rendition by participant Dan which touched us all.

We're frequently sold an idea that happiness is something outside of ourselves - a far-away (and usually unreachable) tropical island or a winning lottery ticket the likelihood of winning is virtually zero. Here, as advertising exec Don Draper reminds us in the hit TV series Mad Men: 'Happiness is the moment before you need more happiness'. One important aspect of Breathworks courses is discovering pleasure in the small, everyday things things around us. In a sort of 'show and tell' we invite participants to bring in a small selection of personal objects which are pleasant to touch, smell, taste, feel or listen to. Whenever I do this exercise people are always amazed at the sense of wellbeing they derive from simply finding pleasure in the 'everyday' - the fragrance of essential oils, the sensual touch of a particular material, or in this case, the sound of a ukulele. As Dan said afterwards: 'When the world ends, and all the lights have gone out, I'll still be able to play myself a tune on the ukulele'.

- Ben Hoff

Ben Hoff will be teaching the Breathworks Mindfulness for Health Course in London this March. For more details about the course take a look at the Mindfulness for Health page, and find dates and times, and book your place here.

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You might imagine silence being the predominant feature of a mindfulness workshop. Wrong! Last week ­- teaching at the Camden Society where Breathworks is delivering a mini Mindfulness for Health intervention as part of a longer back-to-work course being run in conjunction with the DWP - we were treated to a ukulele rendition by participant Dan which touched us all.

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Listen to Mindful health | SoundCloud is an audio platform that lets you listen to what you love and share the sounds you create.. 37 Tracks. 349 Followers. Stream Tracks and Playlists from Mindful health on your desktop or mobile device.

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quility: mindfulness meditation for mothers

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Quility: Mindfulness meditation for mothers on the App Store

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Read reviews, compare customer ratings, see screenshots and learn more about Quility: Mindfulness meditation for mothers. Download Quility: Mindfulness meditation for mothers and enjoy it on your iPhone, iPad and iPod touch.

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There's no shortage of mindfulness and meditation apps these days, promising to help you combat anxiety, sleep better, hone your focus, and more. In fact, the Wall Street Journal reports that more than 2,000 new meditation apps launched between 2015 and 2018, and offerings have only increased as a result of higher demand during the pandemic-according to the New York Times, mindfulness apps surged in 2020. We took the overwhelm out of finding the most valuable and easy-to-use meditation apps that are available free and narrowed it down to these four apps.

4 Free Meditation Apps We're Happy We Downloaded

Available for iOS, Android, and web

Entry price: Free

Insight Timer has a huge library of content: over 80,000 free guided meditations from over 10,000 teachers on topics like stress, relationships, healing, sleep, creativity, and more.

Right from the beginning, the app feels like a global community-the world map on the home screen shows a collective of 18 million meditators, and announces, "741k today, 7k now." After you finish a meditation, you'll learn exactly how many people were meditating "with you" during that time-and by setting your location, you can even see meditators nearby and what tracks they're listening to.

Once you find a teacher you enjoy-like Jack Kornfield, Tara Brach, Sharon Salzberg, or Rhonda Magee -you can follow them to make sure you don't miss any new content. You can also tune in to free talks for life advice and inspiration. For those craving real-time interactions, Insight Timer offers live events every hour of the day to join on a whim or plan into your schedule.

You can even sign up to Circle for Teams, one of their newer offerings, which allows you to create circles (read: groups) to meditate in real-time with friends or colleagues.

If you prefer a quieter meditation, however, you can simply set a timer and meditate to intermittent bells, calming ambient noise, or soothing music.

Depending on your preferences, Insight Timer's extensive collection can be either a blessing or a curse-an endless list of choices that leave you overwhelmed or a buffet of tempting options to sink your teeth into.

Paid option: For $60 per year (with a 30-day free trial), you get access to courses with well-known teachers, the ability to download meditations and listen offline, and advanced player functions like repeat mode and fast forward and rewind.

Available for iOS, Android, and web

Entry price: Free

Smiling Mind hits the sweet spot for a free mindfulness app in so many ways.

The not-for-profit app features hundreds of meditations, enough to keep you engaged without overwhelming you with choice. They are organized into structured programs like Mindful Foundations (35 sessions), Sleep (6 sessions), Digital Detox (8 sessions), and Stress Management (10 sessions), but you have the flexibility to choose where to start and to easily jump between programs. Most meditations are in the five- to fifteen-minute range, with a few practices up to 45 minutes for advanced meditators. Smiling Mind also offers bite-sized meditations between 2 to 5 minutes for moments when you're in need of a quick, mindful pause in the day.

Downloaded by over 5.5 million people, the app also has a variety of specialized programs for families, children and teens of various ages, healthcare workers, and educators (including curricula they can use in the classroom); all developed with the help of psychologists and health professionals.

While you could use a meditation app as a temporary break from your hectic life, Smiling Mind wants you to take your mindfulness practice off the cushion and into the rest of your day. Interspersed with some of the meditation programs are instructions for "activities" like Journaling Exercise, Go Offline, Where Did My Food Come From, and Count Your Senses. In the Count Your Senses activity, for example, the audio prompts you to bring your attention to your senses by counting things that can be seen, felt, heard, smelled and tasted.

Smiling Mind was originally created for kids, so they offer a robust selection of kid- and youth-appropriate mindfulness sessions.

Created by a nonprofit by the same name, Smiling Mind is entirely free-so you don't have the distraction of paid content that's inaccessible to you as a free user. The app wants to put a "smile on your mind"-and it might just succeed.

Paid option: None

Available for iOS and Android

Entry price: Free

If all the research on mindfulness has persuaded you that you need to meditate, the UCLA Mindful app could be a good place to start.

Developed by the Mindful Awareness Research Center at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), the app features about a dozen meditations of different types in English and Spanish. You can learn to focus on your breath, your body, or sounds; work with difficult emotions; and cultivate loving-kindness in sessions ranging from 3 to 19 minutes long.

If you're new to mindfulness, you might choose to take advantage of their Getting Started section, which offers information on what mindfulness is, how to choose a meditation, which posture is best for your practice, and what research-backed benefits you might expect from it.

As a bonus, the app also offers longer meditations that it calls "podcasts." These are half-hour audio recordings of meditations that include talks, typically by UCLA Director of Mindfulness Education Diana Winston, before and after the meditation, as well as plenty of silent practice time.

If you're looking for an app that is heavily grounded in the science of mindfulness, you can put your trust in UCLA Mindful.

Paid option: None

Available for iOS and Android

Entry price: Free

The Healthy Minds Program app wants to help you develop the skills for a healthy mind-by strengthening mental focus, decreasing stress, and growing resilience, compassion, and better immune health.

Founded by neuroscientist Dr. Richard Davidson (who also founded the research institute Center for Healthy Minds at the University of Wisconsin-Madison), the app integrates neuroscience and research-based techniques with meditation training to increase overall well-being.

The framework of the app's mindfulness and well-being training is organized into four pillars: Awareness, Connection, Insight, and Purpose. Each pillar consists of three to five parts, and each part contains three series and multiple sessions within. For the Connection pillar, for example, the Innate Self-Worth series includes five sessions packaged to foster self-worth (think sessions like Practice Seeing the Good In Ourselves, and Learn Negativity Bias). You have a choice of either a Sitting or Active type of practice-"active" practices include guidance for being mindful while you exercise, or during your commute-and you can customize the length of time (five minutes to 30 minutes).

The app offers a collection of 27 meditations outside their four-pillar wellness framework, including one-minute Micro Practices for when you're in need of a brief respite.

At times the podcast-style app may encourage more thinking compared to typical guided meditations, but for the listener who is seeking guided meditations with the greater goal to increase awareness, cognition, and well-being, Healthy Minds Program app may be just the ticket.

Paid option: None

When we meditate, we inject far-reaching and long-lasting benefits into our lives: We lower our stress levels, we get to know our pain, we connect better, we improve our focus, and we're kinder to ourselves. Let us walk you through the basics in our new mindful guide on how to meditate. Read More

Practicing gratitude has incredible effects, from improving our mental health to boosting our relationships with others. Explore ways you can be more appreciative in our mindful guide to gratitude. Read More

Mindful writing can lead you on the path of inner discovery. It can be the place where your experience meets your mindfulness practice, a place to encounter the twists and turns of your emotional life-and a bit of solid ground to stand on. Read More

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Free Meditation Apps Worthy of Your Attention

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We scoured the app stores to find the most popular, educational, and easy-to-use free meditation apps available.

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Dedicated individuals, and The Phil and Reedy Hickey Fund for the Community Foundation of Greater Atlanta, The Iowa Foundation for Education, the Environment and the Arts, Cole-Belin Education Foundation, and The Columbus Foundation

We've got a big idea for AP Month this year, but it depends on a collaboration with you - and all AP families! Let's build a photographic image-base demonstrating our strength for Word Power - and share it with the world! The AP Month theme this year is "Word Power: Communicating for Connection" because we're working toward changing the tone and content of our conversation with words that build up and nurture each other and our children.

In this issue of Attached Family, we examine shame versus guilt and how shame contributes to emotional trauma. We look at the intersect of parenting and shame, keeping in mind that shame is a normal emotional response to certain social situations, but like anger or disappointment, when unresolved, shame can lead to lifelong difficulties.

Inside this issue, you'll find mind-bending, inspiring, and empowering features to stretch your parenting wings:

"What is Shame?" by API Executive Editor Rita Brhel -- defines shame, how it differs from guilt, when it crosses the line to become toxic shame, and what parents need to know

"Core Beliefs Color Your Parenting," also by Rita Brhel -- explains how shame-based core beliefs affect our everyday decisions, including our parenting behaviors

"What Makes Emotional Trauma? Fear, Disconnect and Shame," an interview with Daniela Sieff, PhD -- explores the ingredients to developing a shame-based view of oneself and what is all involved in healing, which certainly underlines the importance of prevention through parenting

"Parenting as a Protest Against Hate" by Lauren Gottschalk-Scher, fashion designer -- looks at how parenting can be activism

"What is Normal, Healthy Infant Sleep?" by API KnowledgeBase Coordinator Art Yuen -- discusses what biologically

normal sleep in infants, and adults, looks like and the effects that artificial light and work productivity expectations have

"6 Tips to Lessen Separation Anxiety," also by Art Yuen -- looks at goodbye routines and other ideas for children and their parents when separation is necessary, such as for working parents

"Self-Validation Before Self-Control" by Denise Durkin, MA, parenting consultant -- explains how development of a

Messages from the AP community in acknowledgment and appreciation for all you do for families.

Thank you to all the API volunteers, from 1994 to today!

"Big family is there and it's so important for the little ones to be around grandma, grandpa, cousins.... and easier on the mother :) During the time we spent in our village, Melek was always on someone's lap, shoulder... I thought she would forget to walk!!!

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Attachment Parenting International | Nurturing Children for a Compassionate World

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Dedicated individuals, and The Phil and Reedy Hickey Fund for the Community Foundation of Greater Atlanta, The Iowa Foundation for Education, the Environment and the Arts, Cole-Belin Education Foundation, and The Columbus Foundation We've got a big idea for AP Month this year, but it depends on a collaboration with you - and all AP families!

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A book that embraces the emotional, intuitive, and deeply personal experience of being a parent

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A book that embraces the emotional, intuitive, and deeply personal experience of being a parent

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Everyday Blessings has 1,357 ratings and 146 reviews. Meg said: I'm sure this makes me all un-spiritual and un-evolved and whatever, but parts of this bo...

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The body scan is a quick and effective mindfulness practice to help with stress and overwhelming emotions such as anger. With children you might want to start with "Mindful Feet," a shorter body scan exercise that can be done in a few minutes anywhere you can sit or stand.

Mindful Feet is great way to get familiar with scanning the body and can be a lot of fun to do.
Children can use the exercise...
To calm down when overwhelmed,

Before a test in school to reduce anxiety,

To take their mind off waiting,

Or while lying in bed trying to fall asleep.

Try and see how it makes you feel, then try it out with your child.

Purpose: Body Awareness, Calm, Relaxation

You can start by asking your child to remove her shoes to make the activity even more relaxing. Then ask your child to sit or stand relaxed with both feet firmly on the ground.

Ask her to breathe normally and take a moment to notice how she is feeling right now. This exercise is easier to do if you close your eyes, so ask your child to close her eyes if she feels comfortable doing so.

Then ask her to bring her attention to the soles of her feet by pushing them softly against the ground for a short moment. Ask her to pay attention to her feet, how they make contact with the ground and possibly her shoes. How does it feel? Soft or hard? Can she feel her socks? Give her time to focus and investigate.

Continue to ask her questions: How do her heels feel? Her toes? Can she feel the space between her toes? Ask her to move her toes a little bit and try again. You can even ask her to locate each toe individually by having her pay attention to them one by one.

Be curious. Ask if her feet are warm or cold. If you happen to be outside, is there a slight breeze to be felt on the skin? A tingling sensation somewhere?

Whatever is happening, simply ask her to rest her attention there. See if she can have her mind think about her feet and nothing else.

If your child is sitting down, you can expand the exercise to include the contact points between her and the chair. Can she feel the chair under her? How about her back resting against the chair?

Keep the exercise short, but give your child enough time to focus and get immersed.

End by asking her how she feels and if she can think of any situations when this exercise could be useful. Is she more focused and more calm after the exercise?

The body scan is an essential mindfulness exercise and helps us get to know our body and our feelings. It helps us become more receptive to the messages our body sends us - the building stress on our shoulders or a feeling of hunger in our stomach. The body scan also helps us direct our attention away from inner dialogue, stress and worry. You can use it in a stressful moment to help you avoid the reactive mode that we often get into. Use it when you need to focus and calm down.

I hope that your family will enjoy this exercise. May you be happy and healthy!

PS Here's a full guided body scan for kids from magazine, by Mark Bertin, author of "Mindful Parenting for ADHD."

And a guided body scan for you to try out:

See also:
The Body Scan For Children
If you are new to mindfulness with children we recommend that you read our guide: How To Practice Mindfulness With Children - The Essential Guide

Chris Bergstrom is the co-founder of BlissfulKids.com and a dad who is thrilled to practice mindfulness with his son. He is a certified mindfulness facilitator, and trained to teach mindfulness to students in K-12. He's also an executive consultant, and has taught meditation for more than 10 years.

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Mindful Feet - A Body Scan For Children - Blissful Kids

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The body scan is a quick and effective mindfulness practice to help with stress and overwhelming emotions such as anger. With children you might want to start with "Mindful Feet," a shorter body scan exercise that can be done in a few minutes anywhere you can sit or stand.