As a family, are you taking steps to encourage mindfulness?
In children and adults alike, mindfulness is a key component to success and overall happiness. With effects that span both body and mind, its an important (but overlooked) part of parenting. That’s no surprise, since most adults aren’t familiar with what it is or how to practice it themselves.
So what is mindfulness? Mindfulness is the ability to be fully present in the moment, aware of where we are and what we’re doing, and not be overly reactive to situations or emotions. The best way to encourage this is to meditate, even for short periods of 5 minutes. Sit on the floor with your children and ask them to close their eyes with you in silence. It sounds impossible, but explain that we are going to practice taking big elephant breaths in and out. They’ll love the game at first, and get better and better at being still.
You can also play our game of Mindfulness Bingo to help your kids build a self-regulation framework early (with the added benefit of some fun family time!). We created this fun game to give parents an easy way to integrate it into your week! We found that our kids LOVED it! They soaked up the strategies and use them to calm down and to control their feelings more in daily situations.
A few of the many, many, many benefits:
⚜ Increased Self-esteem
⚜ Decreased reactivity (outbursts, anger, etc.)
⚜ Improved academic performance
⚜ Decreased stress
Want this PDF for fostering intellectual growth in your children? Sign up for our email list here and get this PDF along with an entire guide for at home activities for the quarantine time and beyond.
This page over at Positive Psychology also has great resources to understand more, and additional ways to teach mindfulness every day! The studies are enough to definitively prove that teaching mindfulness should absolutely be a part of every parenting plan. ❤️
-The TG Team