Mindfulness is a meditation technique, based on vipasana meditation, adapted and currently used as a psychological technique. Due to its multiple benefits and ease of application, the practice of mindfulness has spread, even entering classrooms. Something that seems to us psychology professionals to be a complete success. For both education professionals and parents, in this Psychology-Online article we encourage you to practice mindfulness exercises and activities with children.
Mindfulness, an activity focused on awareness training, is becoming a widely used tool by mental health professionals. Mindfulness training allows us to direct attention towards internal and external experiences that we are experiencing in the present moment without making any type of judgment.
Training in mindfulness techniques for boys and girls has the potential to increase attention, memory, self-acceptance, autonomy and self-understanding. In this Psychology-Online article, we show you some mindfulness exercises for children.
What is mindfulness and how to apply it to children
Mindfulness is a practice or technique that serves to train attention to the present moment.
Why teach mindfulness?
The mind is a machine whose objective is to anticipate dangers, therefore, it is common for it to continually produce thoughts about past situations and how to foresee future situations. This often means that we are so absorbed and distracted that we miss out on enjoying everyday moments.
Mindfulness is a technique that can be used both in clinical practice, and that is especially recommended in children and in the general population with the aim of promoting well-being and preventing psychopathological symptoms.
Benefits for children
Specifically, the benefits that we can find in boys and girls are the following:
- Focus your attention on the present.
- Improved concentration.
- They learn to regulate their emotions.
- Reduction of stress and anxiety.
- More self-control and better ability to reflect.
- They learn to be aware of what they think and feel.
- They listen to each other more and that improves their personal relationships.
- They become more conscious about the health of their body.
- They criticize and judge others less.
- Improvement of your emotional and psychological balance.
How is mindfulness practiced?
Mindfulness exercises or activities always consist of being fully aware of the here and now. It is practiced by focusing attention on an object while gently letting go of the thoughts that cross the mind and that are unrelated to the present activity.
Mindfulness exercises for children
We have seen the benefits of mindfulness for infants. Next, we recommend mindfulness exercises for boys and girls:
- Mindful walks: walk and pay attention to everything that happens around you.
- Still and still like a frog: helps you focus on the present moment and not get carried away by what’s going on in your head.
- Mindful eating: be attentive and attentive to how you relate to food and what sensations the food ingested at that moment produces.
- Accept emotions: recognize the emotions that come at every moment. Do not deny or avoid them.
- Be grateful or grateful: be grateful for what you have and not think so much about what you want.
- Breathe deeply: it helps us be aware of our breathing and live in the here and now.
- Breathing Partner: Helps children control and be aware of their breathing.
- Listen to music: Listening to songs they have never heard before improves the flow of ideas.
- look into each other’s eyes: develops attention and awakens empathy.
- Draw what you feel at the moment: Doodling helps improve attention and concentration.
Mindfulness stories for children
There are other ways to work on mindfulness during childhood. Mindfulness stories for boys and girls are a good way to practice this type of discipline with them. Next, we are going to see examples of mindfulness stories for boys and girls.
- Close your eyes, Ona: tells how Ona, the frog, learns to overcome her fears.
- Calm and attentive like a frog: guide to help little ones calm down and relax.
- How do you feel today? Reviews 12 common emotions while helping them identify their mood.
- Meditation for children: discover the benefits of meditation for boys and girls. How it helps them develop memory, creativity and imagination.
- Labyrinth of the soul: dictionary of emotions that helps children reflect on them.
- Tickling for the heart: Teaches how to find happiness in the details of everyday life and how to make others happy.
- Imaginary: Helps boys and girls develop their ability to read and understand the meaning of the stories they read.
Mindfulness activities for children
There are different mindfulness techniques for boys and girls. Next, we will see real examples of activities to work on mindfulness during childhood:
- bee breathing: consists of covering your ears, closing your eyes and exhaling while pronouncing the letter m. This activity helps focus attention on the present moment.
- Silence game: It involves sitting with your classmates in a circle, asking them to close their eyes and be calm until a certain time passes. You have to use a clock to determine the time the activity lasts and make sure it has a pleasant sound for the boys and girls.
- chant mantras: Mantras help transmit positive messages to the minds of children. In addition, they promote concentration.
- touching game: you have to put the boys and girls in pairs. An object is given to one of them and the one who has it must describe what he has in his hands. The same process is repeated but in reverse. It helps them focus their attention on their experience and that of others.
- Observe non-verbal language: mindfulness activity done as a couple. One must tell the other about an experience that has happened recently. While he does it, the other observes what his gestures, his gaze or his posture convey. With this activity, boys and girls learn to better understand what others feel through the analysis of non-verbal language.
Positive effects of mindfulness on emotions
Mindfulness interventions have been used in treatments for stress, chronic pain, anxiety, depression, borderline personality disorder, eating disorders, and addictions. Additionally, some researchers suggest that this type of training is also beneficial for daily life. In the following article you will find: .
In some children, the:
- Mitigation of the effects of bullying
- Increase of the capacity of attention in children with ADHD
- Reduction of attention problems
- Improvement of the mental health and well-being
- Improvement of social skills when taught and practiced.
Mindfulness for children: exercises with music
It is important for caregivers and educators to provide age-appropriate mindfulness practices. For example, in a study by Flook et al. (2015) explains an activity called “belly buddies” in which children listened to music while they were asked to notice the sensation of a small tone in their stomachs that rose and fell as they breathed. Simple activities like these can have lasting developmental benefits when practiced regularly.
Mindfulness program for children: practical examples
Some mindfulness activities and exercises that you can teach your children are:
“Posing with your mind up”
An easy way to get children to pay attention is through method of body postures. To get your child interested, tell him that doing fun poses can help him feel strong, brave, and happy. Tell him to go to a quiet, familiar place, where he feels safe, and then ask him to try one of the following postures:
- “superman” – This pose is performed by standing with your feet wider than your hips, fists clenched, and arms extended, stretching your body as much as possible.
- “Wonder Woman” – This pose is also performed with the legs wider than hip-width apart and the hands or fists placed on the hips.
Safari
This exercise is another fun way to help children learn mindfulness. This activity consists of taking a daily walk outside in search of a new and exciting adventure.
Tell your child that you are going on a safari and that your goal is to record as many birds, insects, bugs and any other animals that can be seen. Anything that walks, crawls, swims or flies is of interest to you and you need to focus all your senses to find them, especially the smaller ones.
This would be the equivalent of what we as adults call the mindfulness walk. This exercise provokes the same response in children as walking does in adults, it is about reaching a state of consciousness that helps us.
Spider
To introduce your child to paying attention to the present you can use this exercise. Instruct your child to activate his “spider senses,” meaning the senses of smell, sight, hearing, taste, and touch, which Spider-Man uses to control the world around him. This will encourage him to pause and focus his attention on the present, opening his awareness to the information that his senses bring.
This is a classic mindfulness exercise for children molded in a fun and easy way, which makes it ideal for the little ones in the house.
Some tips for teaching mindfulness to children
When you are trying to teach your children or students what mindfulness is and how we can benefit, it is best to start by following a few steps:
- Make sure children are ready to give mindfulness a try. If they are full of energy and feel like running and playing, it may not be the best time to try mindfulness.
- Explain what mindfulness is and what it is not. Provide examples of things that are similar to mindfulness, but are not actually what they are, such as introspection.
- Employ age-appropriate words that they can attend to, but be careful not to make it seem like you are talking down to them.
- Offer to practice mindfulness with them. Sometimes having a model to follow makes all the difference.
- Finally, end the practice by letting them do something they enjoy to ensure they have a positive experience.
This article is merely informative, at Psychology-Online we do not have the power to make a diagnosis or recommend a treatment. We invite you to go to a psychologist to treat your particular case.
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