 Teaching Mindfulness to Children
Contrary to common thinking, just like adults, children deal with stress coming from serious family and social problems such as parents divorce, domestic violence, poverty, a parent’s death, or ordinary experiences at school, conflicts with peers, simple news about the world or worries they build inside their minds. In these conditions, teaching mindfulness to children can be not only a solution to reduce anxiety and stress, but also an investment in the well-being of the child, just like attending school, practicing a sport or an extra-school activity.
Teaching mindfulness to children was associated with benefits like: increase of the concentration power during classes, decrease of violence and anxiety, enhancement of the children’s creativity. Teaching mindfulness to children differs slightly from teaching mindfulness to adults, implying more creativity and persuasive skills from the teacher’s side.
According to brain research, unlike adults, children spend most of their waking time in the alpha electrical level of the brain activity – the equivalent of the meditative state. Moreover, children are closer to mindfulness than adults, by not letting past experiences hold them back. Think about how easy a child goes on playing after taking a serious fall or how quickly kids forget their fights and become friends again. On the other hand, children also live most of the time on the automatic pilot, being told what to do and not really paying attention to their current activities. That’s why sometimes they have difficulties in recalling what they ate or what the teacher said one day before.
When teaching mindfulness to children, one must take into account these particularities of the age. Here are a few principles recommended to follow when teaching mindfulness to children:
- Do not underestimate children’s likelihood in realizing if you master enough what you are teaching. If you are teaching mindfulness, especially to children, make sure you have a deep understanding of this practice and have been practicing it longtime before.
- Clearly explain children what mindfulness is about and the benefits it brings into their lives. Many of them may associate mindfulness only with religion, saints or holy practices or think that it implies going into some kind of trance. Remove any misperception about mindfulness.
- If for adults, the first meditation sessions can be 15 minutes long, when teaching mindfulness to children, these should not exceed 5 minutes.
- Use creativity to the fullest when you are teaching mindfulness to children. In “Tuning In: Mindfulness in Teaching and Learning”, Richard Brady, one of the co-authors, recalls that when he started teaching mindfulness in a high school he invited pupils to reach awareness by imagining a scene where all their thoughts, feelings, sensations performed.
- Gradually expand the mindfulness experience. When you are teaching mindfulness to children, start with exercises that help them become aware of the environment, then introduce exercises that can help them observe themselves and their actions within the environment, become aware of their experiences and thoughts and finally, exercises that induct relaxation and unleash creativity.
Teaching mindfulness to children may seem easy because they perceive it as a game and, therefore, they put more passion and are less vulnerable to distractions. But the teacher’s mastery consists in adding to this “game” the value of a guideline in their life.
|
|
|
