7 Ways to Teach Your Child Mindfulness

1. Listen to the Bell

An easy way for children to practice mindfulness is to focus on what they can hear. You can use a singing bowl, a bell, a chime, or even a phone app with different sounds. Tell your child that you will make a sound, and ask them to listen closely until they can no longer hear it (usually between 30 seconds and a minute).

2. Practice with a Breathing Buddy

Following an instruction like 'focus on your breath' can be challenging for young children. In a video on Edutopia, Daniel Goleman shares a 'breathing buddy' exercise from a second-grade classroom. Each student takes a stuffed animal, lies down on their back, and places the toy on their belly. As they breathe in and out, they focus their attention on the gentle rise and fall of their toy buddy.

3. Take Mindful Walks

One of my children's favorite summer activities is a 'noticing walk.' We walk through our neighborhood and try to spot things we’ve never noticed before. We also dedicate one minute of the walk to complete silence, focusing entirely on all the sounds we can hear—frogs, woodpeckers, or distant lawnmowers.

4. Practice Gratitude

Rather than focusing on all the toys and things they want, teaching children to appreciate the abundance already present in their lives is a fundamental component of mindfulness.

5. Try the Spider-Man Meditation

My five-year-old son loves everything about superheroes, and this Spider-Man meditation is perfect for him. This exercise teaches children to activate their 'spider-senses' and focus their attention on everything they can smell, taste, and hear in the present moment. It is a wonderful, engaging concept!

6. Check Your Personal Weather Report

In her book 'Sitting Still Like a Frog', Eline Snel encourages children to 'share the weather report that best describes their feelings right now.' Is it sunny, rainy, stormy, calm, windy, or a tsunami? This activity allows children to observe their current emotional state without overly identifying with it. Just as we cannot change the weather outside, we cannot instantly change our emotions—but we can change how we relate to them. As Snel describes, children can notice their feelings in a healthy way: 'I am not the downpour, but I notice it is raining; I am not a fearful person, but I notice a big feeling of fear near my throat right now.'

7. Create a Mind Jar

A mind jar is like a snow globe—shake it up and watch the storm! But if we sit, breathe, and simply watch the swirling glitter, it soon settles to the bottom. Our minds work the same way. In addition to these activities, remember to keep things fun and simple. You can offer many opportunities to weave helpful practices into your child's growth—some will work for them, and some won't. But the journey of trying them out is half the fun!