Teaching Mindfulness to Kids
Story Time
Good books for bigs and littles
Lately, my husband and I have been very focused on our own health and wellbeing, as well as that of our family as a whole. Both my husband and I have been meditating more and doing more yoga. We’ve been making it a priority to come together more often to discuss how things are going in our family and what we can do to sail our family in the direction of happiness. Our children’s behavior and happiness understandably comes into this discussion fairly often, which invariably brings us to a discussion of our own values, beliefs and strategies for dealing with life.
For both my husband and I, the practice of meditation has been life-changing in a very positive way. What I notice most is that it is the habit of meditation that is so helpful—even if an individual meditation, or even a week or month of meditations aren’t all that Zen. They say that when the student is ready, the teacher appears. This month two teachers have appeared in one of our favorite places: the public library. The following two books teach mindfulness practices in ways that are accessible and understandable to kids.
I Am Amazing
No, I’m not bragging. I Am Amazing is a book of Affirmations written for children, though I will confess, I’ve broken out this book at the dinner table and during contentious morning shoe donning…so it may be a little bit for parents too. Author Nicola Riley includes simple pictures and short phrases that speak to children’s inner worlds: fear, sharing feelings, making friends, difference and feeling like you matter.
I recently read the book The Miracle Morning by Hal Elrod and while I found the contrast of mindfulness practices and sales goals in this book pretty dissonant, it did open my eyes to the power of affirmation and visualization. A quote (which I’ll paraphrase here, having returned the book to the library) read something like: Women reported having negative inner talk about 80% of the time. When I read that line I thought, Yep, that sounds about right. Clearly, that’s not a path to happiness. How valuable to be able to reword those inner thoughts in young girls and boys before they ever become ingrained.
One of the affirmations from I Am Amazing that I really like is quoted below. Using this affirmation throughout my day recently was pretty eye-opening. The first thing I realized was that I had to use it almost immediately after deciding to do so. The first thought that popped into my head—a fraction of an instant later—was negative. I had MANY more opportunities to use this affirmation throughout the day. This made me aware of just how negative most of my thoughts are. The second realization brought about by this affirmation was about the role of choice in our mental state. So many things happened on the day I worked with this affirmation, and so many of them initially appeared negative: a late-start day at my daughter’s school got cancelled (and no one informed me), a work meeting got cancelled, meaning I endured a long commute for nothing, and so on. But as soon as these negative thoughts started swirling, I recalled my affirmation and I realized: I’d been given the gift of a morning alone with my daughter; I’d been in the office when an email came in telling me a huge project was printed and ready to be delivered, which wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t been there.
Affirmations are not a magic wand (and they’re incredible cheesy, as my husband jokingly illustrated by reading a Jack Handy affirmation to me one morning). It’s not as though I thought of this affirmation and was immediately cured of all annoyance. It was more like each time that negative thought arose, having the affirmation in my mind forced me to reframe. Like meditation, affirmations provide mental practice for resetting our thoughts.
“I am positive. Whatever happens throughout my day, I always choose to think the best thought about it that I can.”
Photo by Piotr Chrobot on Unsplash
Meditation is an Open Sky
Another recent library find is Meditation Is an Open Sky: Mindfulness for Kids written by Whitney Stewart and illustrated by Sally Rippin. The book begins with some very simple instructions (find a quiet place, sit down) and talks about how meditation works. The book is then organized into ten child-friendly meditations with illustrations to provide further guidance. As with I Am Amazing, I found that these exercises operated on a level that was simple enough for a child but still valuable for an adult. Meditations cover topics such as kindness, wisdom, decision-making and openness (thus the open sky) and many more.
“Let your mind be as wide and open as the sky”
One of my favorite podcasters, Noah Rasheta, talks about teaching mindfulness to kids in this podcast episode. I think it’s pretty useful to have guides like this because while mindfulness is, on one hand, the essence of simplicity, it is also somewhat abstract. Defining it for children seems like a perplexing task, and tools like these books make it easier.
Despite our fervor for mindfulness practices, my husband and I have agreed that we want our kids to choose their own path. We’ve tried to offer both books, and their exercises, as options and choices, rather than as required tasks. To us, the payoff is huge, and we’d love to help our children find an easier path through suffering, since it feels like it took both my husband and I a long time to find our way. Still, the path is also a teacher. So for now, we’re just leaving crumbs along the trail.
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