collaborative guest post
Building an environment where your child embraces mindfulness will help them embrace a lot of other resilience-building skills as well. These areas like resilience, solving problems and handling adversity will be essential to your child’s development, which can all be discovered through regular mindfulness sessions.
In this guide from an independent school in Gerrards Cross, we explore how you can help your child understand and appreciate the benefits of mindfulness.
Start by talking openly about how gratitude will help your child
Mindfulness entwines into a lot of core moral values your child will begin to appreciate as they grow older. This can be spurred on from how your child understands mindfulness to begin with - they may not know anything about it or show no interest in it to start with. This is where you can advise your child on how it can help them in their general development.
Showing your child what gratitude is and how it’s helpful to development will guide them through this. Ask your child what they feel grateful for each week and then ask them to close their eyes and take a moment to think about that moment from the past. Ask them to think about how they felt at the time and how it’ll build their reliance on mindfulness.
Try mindful eating
This involves asking your child to slowly enjoy their food instead of wolfing down their food as soon as it reaches the plate. Have your child take some time to really embrace what they’re eating and what ingredients go into its production. It doesn’t really matter if it’s a salad, a piece of fruit or a chocolate bar - they all go through a process and your child is still able to make that connection with eating mindfully.
Mindful eating helps your child feel more connected with what they eat and how they can appreciate what they’re tasting. It could be a good exercise for when your child is trying a new food.
Slowly incorporate meditation
It’s often the first thing a lot of people think of, but mindfulness doesn’t just involve meditation. Have them sit cross-legged and with their hands resting on either side of their knees. They don’t have to sit this way if they don’t feel comfortable - if there’s a position they prefer to sit in then encourage them to sit that way. Next, show them how to take deep breaths. Over time your child will be able to sit still for more than 5 minutes and reach up to half an hour of dedicated focus.
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