Exploring Mindfulness with Your Child
Mindfulness offers many benefits to your child’s life. It can be used to help your child relax, improve
their sleep and increase their concentration.
Mindfulness is a meditation technique which helps you to focus on the present moment. This is
achieved by paying more attention to your senses, feelings and surroundings.
Mindfulness is particularly helpful for developing a child’s emotional intelligence and coping skills. If
you would like to introduce mindfulness to your child, here are some great tips from an independent
school for boys in Twickenham…
AD -This post is a guest post and may contain links for which I will have been compensated. These thoughts and opinions are in line with my own personal beliefs.
Top tips for Exploring Mindfulness with your child
Tune into your senses
Mindfulness is a technique which can be practiced anywhere. Your child can do it at home, at the
park or in the car. They simply need to slow down and be mindful of their body and their
surroundings. Encourage your child to pause and tune into their senses. What can they hear, smell
or feel? – Share your observations out loud as you practice mindfulness together for the first time.
Savour the flavour
Mindful eating
Is a great way to introduce your child to mindfulness. Simply ask them to choose a
favourite food and then use all of their senses to really savour it. Encourage your child to smell the
food and then observe the texture in their mouth. This will not only give them a better appreciation
of food, but it will also teach them how to slow down and tune into their senses in order to enjoy
things properly.
Focus on breathing
When you child feels stressed or worried, you can encourage them to use mindfulness to calm
down. This can be done by focusing on their breathing. Ask them to concentrate on the air going in
and out of their body by placing their hands on their chest as it moves up and down. After practicing
this for a little while, ask your child how it made them feel. Do they feel calmer? Breathing is a
particularly helpful technique for calming anxiety and insomnia.
Practice before sleeping
To help your child relax at bedtime you could try a mindfulness technique called the body-scan
meditation. Your child will need to lie comfortably in bed and close their eyes. Then ask your child to
take a deep breath and begin to observe different sensations in their body. It can help to start at the
feet and work up to the head. What feelings do they have in each part of their body and how does
their body feel against the mattress? Remind your child that there is no right or wrong answer; it is
all about being present.
Occasionally we encourage our children to sit and tune into the sounds of our garden birds, the bees buzzing and the sounds of our chickens clucking. Dougie has done some breath work with Teddy for a while now and it really works. We will definitely be open to trying some of these practices, especially at bedtime. Have you consciously practiced any mindfulness with your child before? If so we would love to hear what you do and the benefits you have found from practicing it with your child. Please let us know in the comments box below.
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