Mindfulness For Kids: Why It’s Important And How To Use It
Mindfulness is an excellent tool for adults to use to assist with self care. But did you know that kids can benefit from mindfulness practice as well? Mindfulness is helpful for kids who deal with symptoms of ADHD, anxiety, and emotional control among other things. However, mindfulness tools for kids do not always look like the mindfulness skills that are often taught to adults. Below I’ve included some fairly simple mindfulness exercises that I often use for children to assist them with grounding themselves and managing emotions appropriately.
● The Five Senses Exercise: Ask your child to sit in a comfortable location. Walk them through their five senses as they sit asking them what they can see, hear, smell, touch, and taste during that given moment. Or conversely, you can give them a specific item that they can eat like a piece of chocolate or a chip and walk them through that particular item with the five senses.
● Animal Guided Imagery: Ask your child to close their eyes and imagine an animal. Ask them questions about their animal. Where is their animal? What is it doing? What does it look like? Your child can either picture an animal they know about or imagine a whole new animal.
● Balloon Breathing: Ask your child to sit in a comfortable location. Have them imagine that they are breathing in to fill a balloon and that when they exhale they will deflate the balloon. Have your child move their arms above their head as they breath in and extend their arms out as they breath out. You can count for your child as they do this exercise to ensure that they don’t try to rush their breathing at a pace of 1-2-3 in and 1-2-3 out.
● Animal Stretches: Name a child for your animal and have them mimic what the animal looks like by stretching their body. Have your child hold the pose for at least a few seconds before switching to another animal pose.
● Color Grounding: Ask your child to name everything they can see in the room they are in that is a certain color. This exercise is especially good for calming an upset child because it takes minimal emotional bandwidth to complete on the part of the child.
Keep in mind that it can often be helpful for adults to walk children through the exercises rather than having the child perform them alone. If you’re feeling especially enthusiastic, do the exercises with your child or have them walk you through an exercise once they have completed one themselves. Remember to have fun!
