Teaching Mindfulness to Young Children: Tips for Parents and Teachers
“Pay attention, please!”
How many times a day do we ask this of our children and students? The number is probably higher than we can count on both hands. It’s no easy task getting those wandering minds to focus and those little bodies to be still.
But what if part of the problem is that we’ve never shown children how to pay attention?
Increasingly, parents and teachers are turning to the practice of mindfulness to help children learn how to pay attention — to their thoughts, to their emotions, and to their bodies. And that skill of paying attention can have a profound impact on how a child develops and learns, both within the classroom and outside of it.
The benefits of mindfulness
Mindfulness is the act of being aware of what is happening in the present moment, without judgment or expectations for a particular outcome.
There’s no one way to practice mindfulness. In mindfulness meditation, participants sit quietly and focus on the breath, letting thoughts float by without granting them attention or judgment. Because mindfulness is about awareness and acceptance, almost any task can be done mindfully. You might wash the dishes mindfully, noticing how the suds and warm water feel on your hands and paying attention to the feeling of your feet planted firmly on the ground.
Scientific research has found that practicing mindfulness improves well being, physical health, and mental health. Last year, in an article titled When Mindfulness Meets the Classroom, the Atlantic reported that mindfulness improves attention, reduces stress, and results in better emotional regulation and an improved capacity for compassion and empathy.
Because of its benefits, mindfulness is also considered an effective treatment for children with aggression, ADHD, or anxiety.
Mindfulness creates space for learning
In classrooms, a mindfulness practice can take different forms. It may include asking children to sit quietly for three minutes at the beginning of each day while the teacher offers breathing instructions, or it may mean asking students to enjoy snack time mindfully, paying attention to the five senses as they eat.
In one research study, first, second, and third graders who participated in a bi-weekly, 12-session integrative program of mindfulness and relaxation showed significant increases in attention and social skills and decreases in test anxiety and ADHD behaviors.
In another study with second and third graders, students who did Mindfulness Awareness Practices for 30 minutes twice a week for eight weeks experienced gains in behavioral regulation, meta-cognition, and overall global executive control.
And mindfulness is needed in our classrooms now more than ever, especially for students walking through the classroom door with stress or trauma from their lives outside of school.
“A traumatized brain can be a tired, hungry, worried, rejected, or detached brain expressing feelings of isolation, worry, angst, and fear,” writes Dr. Lori Desautels in a post called “Brains in Pain Cannot Learn!” These children’s abilities to problem solve, reflect, or regulate their emotions may be particularly compromised.
Expressing a similar line of thinking, a clinical social worker tells The Atlantic, “If you don’t address the noise in a kid’s head that they bring in from the outside, I don’t care how good a teacher you are, you’re not going to have much success.”
In other words, when children with stress, anxiety, or trauma walk into a classroom, they likely are not in a cognitively healthy space to learn.
That’s where mindfulness comes in. Mindfulness primes students to feel safe, de-stress, and focus — all which readies them to learn (and is learning in and of itself).
Tips for parents and teachers
- Establish your own mindfulness practice.
Teaching and parenting are stressful jobs. You’re under pressure to teach, support, and nurture small humans so they grow into happy, healthy adults. And you may face any number of limited resources or challenging circumstances, such as working in an underfunded school or raising children in a single-parent home.
Parents and teachers must practice self-care in order to be able to give care. A mindfulness practice can help decrease burnout and compassion fatigue, while increasing empathy and effective communication. Plus, practicing mindfulness yourself will help you be a better teacher of the practice. You might also consider reading about mindfulness or taking a course.
2. Make mindfulness a routine.
Incorporate a short mindfulness practice into one of your already-established routines, like your bedtime ritual, snack time, or morning gathering. In classrooms, a mindfulness practice after lunch or recess can help kids settle. When a mindfulness practice is a daily routine, it can be embraced as part of the home or classroom culture.
3. Use a mindfulness practice script with your children.
- Simple daily mindfulness lesson. Megan Cowan, founder of Oakland-based Mindful Schools program, offers a 1–2 minute mindfulness lesson that begins with asking kids to get into their “mindful bodies.”
- The Still Quiet Place. Intended for students in kindergarten through second grade, this dialogue introduces children to a space where they can talk to their feelings and perhaps discover they are not as big or as powerful as they seem.
- Morning Circle breathing routine. Teacher Anne Mechler describes a snapshot of a typical breathing routine in her class.
Have you ever tried a mindfulness practice with your students or child/ren? Let us know in the comments. And for more resources about mindfulness in education, visit mindfulteachers.org, helpguide.org, or edutopia.org.
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