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Today I'm gonna give you tips
to teach your kids mindfulness.
Are you ready to love parenting and parent from love?
If so slam that subscribe button,
hit the notification bell and meet me back
here same time, same place, every Monday.
The Parenting Junkie.
Hi, I'm Avital.
I'm the founder of the Parenting Junkie,
where we empower parents, imperfect parents like you
and me who face chaos and clutter and conflict,
to reclaim presence, peace, and play in their lives.
If you are ready to teach your kids
a little bit more mindfulness then slam on
that like button so other people can discover
this video too, and let's get started.
Number one, be curious about their feelings.
Mindfulness in a sense is about becoming aware
of what we're thinking and feeling without judging it.
Just noticing and being in touch with our inner worlds.
In order to help our children to learn to do that,
to provide the scaffolding for them to learn this skill,
we can respond to their feelings as we would eventually
want their inner voice to respond,
their own selves to respond to themselves.
When they're very little, we are a big co-creator
of that inner voice, how we talk to them is often
how they eventually talk to themselves,
and that's why when I shame my child,
when I call them names, when I blame them,
when I yell at them, and I do, that's not ideal,
because I'm embedding within them that voice.
Now it's okay because there's always repair,
none of us are perfect, and we need to strive
to do this you know sixty, seventy,
eighty percent of the time, okay?
But there's gonna be that ten or twenty percent
that's really not only imperfect but even damaging,
so just forgive yourself of that from the get go.
But, how can we focus on the good stuff,
on what we do want to do?
Well when they're feeling sad, or even really enthusiastic,
or lots of anticipation or excitement
or frustration or anger, any emotions,
what we want to teach them to do is to notice those emotions
and to notice them with curiosity.
One of the best ways to do this is
to compare emotions to the weather.
Right, we can ask our children hey,
how are you feeling inside, is it sunshiny
and bright skies, is there a storm brewing,
and we notice that whatever the weather is outside,
it doesn't have an emotional charge.
It's just the weather and it always passes
and it just has its own flavor,
but we give it meaning with our story.
A big storm could mean something terrible
if it's your wedding day
and it's gonna ruin the whole day,
or it could mean something wonderful
if you're a farmer and you really need rain for your crops.
It's all about the story we put on it.
Emotions are the same, we can feel big emotions
and they pass, they're just interesting.
They're just an indicator, they're just something
that we want to notice and be aware of.
So when our kids are feeling very angry,
very sad, very happy, etcetera,
reflecting back to them, you're feeling really sad I see,
I see that sadness bubbling up inside you, is that correct?
And just showing them that there's a word for this,
there's a description for this and it doesn't sway us.
We don't get super agitated, you mustn't be sad,
don't be sad, stop crying, we're not rushing to fix it.
We're just saying we can notice those feelings
and that's okay, we can put language to them.
And we can be curious about them,
what's it feel like to be sad?
Where do you feel it in your body?
What does it make you think
or what thoughts made you sad, etcetera.
Just noticing, being aware, and being curious.
Number two, also about awareness.
First we spoke about awareness
and curiosity to our emotions, another part of mindfulness
is being aware of the present moment.
Being aware of where we are.
So starting to notice with our children
and take note, actually speak it, what's going on?
Hey, we're in the bath now, we're splashing in the water,
there are bubbles, I hear a bird outside, right?
I see a tree, this is the weather,
this is what I feel, this is what I'm tasting.
Starting to be grounded in the present moment
through our senses.
What do I feel in my body, what do I hear,
what do I see, starting to really
take note of flavors as we eat,
chewing our food more mindfully,
being more mindful to tastes, to textures,
to the present moment and to how it feels.
So just bring that up with our kids, right.
What are you noticing right now,
where is your body touching the ground, right,
what sounds can you hear that are very far away
and what sounds can you hear that are really close by
such as even your breath.
Perfect segue into number three,
which is practicing breathing, noticing breathing.
Guys, I promise I think I must have been
at least fourteen or fifteen before I even noticed
my breath and that's when I started practicing yoga.
Only there did I start to learn about holding your breath,
different types of breath, connecting to your breath,
being aware of your breath
and using your breath to calm you down.
So we wanna start to teach our children
when they're getting bubbled up with emotions,
when they're having trouble waiting,
when they're having trouble sharing,
when they're frustrated, anxious, scared, angry,
we wanna start to notice where is your breath at?
Are you able to fill up your belly
and expand your lungs, can you make your chest really big?
You can practice little breathing games with your kids.
For example, you could put a cotton wool ball on the floor,
one for you and one for your child
and see if you can blow it further,
right, or who can blow it further,
or if you don't wanna make it competitive,
just how far you can each blow it.
Just noticing that our breath has different qualities to it.
(blows) When I'm blowing that cotton ball,
I'm really kind of powerfully exhaling, right.
Noticing the inhale and the exhale.
One of the things I like to tell my kids to do
when they're very upset and they want to calm down
but can't, is to pretend to blow out birthday candles.
I hold up the birthday candles and I say okay blow it out.
(blows) Just that action of blowing out
and connecting to our exhale
can be very soothing for some children.
Another thing you could do is place a small light object
on their belly and have them lie down
and let them watch their belly rise and fall
and notice this incredible rhythm
that is with them at all times.
Give me a love in the comments below if you love the idea
of teaching your children to use breathing
as a calming mindfulness tool,
and let me know if you have any ideas
of how to do that as well.
The next one is gratitude practice.
I have a whole video about gratitude
and how to introduce it into your children's' lives,
I'll link to that below.
But basically I want to say gratitude is a mindfulness tool.
It brings us back to be focusing our minds
on the things that we want to perceive more of in our lives.
It focuses us on calming down
and being thankful for what we have
rather than focusing on the things that are lacking
and the things we're afraid of.
When you're in a space of gratitude
and love you can't equally be in a space of fear and worry.
And so having a gratitude practice established in all
of the ways that I outline in that video
is going to help your children be more mindful.
It also just helps them be more mindful of their stuff,
of what they've got, of what they've been
blessed with in their lives.
So you can do this in your dinner time,
at bedtime, during bath time or first thing in the morning.
It can be with a song, a prayer, or just a little practice
of noticing three things that you're grateful for that day.
Most of all it's something that we have
to model for our children.
Showing them that we are grateful
and that we continuously point out
the things that we're grateful for.
The next one is forest bathing.
It is absolutely proven without a doubt
that spending time in nature, being at the forest
or at the beach or at the mountains, any type of nature
that you can get to easily is going
to be extremely beneficial on all levels,
physical, emotional, and spiritual,
and it helps you to practice more mindfulness.
When you're in the forest it's easier
to disconnect from outside stimuli
and be less distracted and really kind of bathe yourself in,
and your senses, in a soothing but stimulating environment.
The beautiful thing about nature is
that it's balanced so that it's both challenging,
right it's hard to climb on those trees
and those rocks and up the hill and up the tree,
it challenges us, but it's also soothing.
There's a very cohesive and harmonious palette,
there are very soothing sounds
and generally if you go in okay weather,
then the outdoor air, the breeze,
the wind, is pleasant to the senses.
So being in the forest allows us to connect to nature,
to feel at one with nature, and it is also an excellent
fertile ground for lots of mindfulness games.
For example pretending that we're different animals
and noticing how those animals might walk.
Feeling our feet touching the ground,
noticing what sounds we hear, what we see,
collecting some of the beautiful natural items
like leaves or acorns and taking note of them.
That brings us right down to
this present moment and to gratitude.
The next one is teaching our children
to sit with their feelings.
This is a hard one, I know.
Most adults cannot do this.
So you definitely have to have realistic expectations
when it comes to all of the mindfulness practices.
Never force it and never push it.
But learning to sit with feelings is such an amazing skill
that I wish we all learned in childhood.
Doctor Lawrence Cohen in his book,
an incredible book by the way,
The Opposite of Worry teaches us how
to be what he calls the second chicken.
Okay hold up, what does that mean?
Basically when a chicken sees another chicken freaking out
and getting scared, it also freaks out and gets scared
even if it doesn't see the source of the danger.
So even if it doesn't see a fox coming to eat it,
it will copy the first chicken.
And humans are the same, if you see a whole bunch
of people running down the street
like crazy scared for their life,
you'll probably start running in that direction too.
Children look to us to indicate whether we feel safe or not,
whether we're anxious or not,
whether something is a big deal or not.
And so if they have a big strong reaction,
we wanna teach them to sit with that emotion,
then we need to indicate to them that it's okay.
So if they're feeling very, very angry
or very, very scared or very, very sad,
our response is often to fix it,
to stop it, to stop the feeling, right.
Okay okay, I'll get you the cookie,
I'll tell them not to treat you that way,
I'll get you back your ball, right, I'll fix the problem.
Now we may or may not want to fix the problem,
that's a separate issue.
But your initial reaction should be
that of the calm second chicken.
The chicken that says yes, those feelings have come up
for you but they do not need to overwhelm you.
They do not need to flood you,
they do not need to create this massive reaction in you,
it's going to be okay we will work with this,
it's okay to feel sad, it's okay to feel angry,
it's okay to feel frustrated, all of those things are okay.
They don't get me riled up on your behalf.
I can stay calm, see you in that situation,
and then we can evaluate together.
Now that doesn't mean I don't empathize.
I do, I empathize and I validate,
but I don't take on the emotions
and act them out myself like yes we need
to be very stressed about this or yes it is,
my poor baby you're so scared,
you're so scared, no it is very scary.
We don't wanna go that route, we wanna stay calm
and teach them that their big feelings
don't need to freak them out.
Their big feelings pass, it's a wave,
and that's what I mean in my peaceful tantrum webinar.
You can go and watch it after this I'll link to it below.
That's what I mean when I say sitting with emotions,
that's what I mean about being the calm second chicken.
It means yes I see your big feelings,
they're real, you experience them and they're valid,
I'm not gonna just tell you you're okay nothing happened.
Something happened, but even when something happens
and even when things are hard,
we can still metabolize those feelings,
we can let them go through their pieces,
we can let the wave ride and we'll ride that wave
and let it calm down because what we're teaching
them here is that all feelings pass,
that's an incredibly important tool to learn.
All feelings pass, so big feelings, notice them,
accept them, validate them, empathize with them,
do not rush to put a Band-Aid on or stop them.
The next one is to model mediation and mindful practices.
Listen, a lot of people ask me
if I meditate in front of my children,
and the truth is that it depends on the season
and on my flow and how much help I have
and if I have an opportunity to meditate
without my children, honestly for myself,
for selfish reasons, I prefer it
because that's when I actually get to meditate.
If I meditate in front of my children, they interrupt me.
So if I have any one else watching my kids
and I have five minutes to spare, I prefer to do it alone.
Of course, but doing it in front of my kids
even if they do interrupt me, at least puts those you know,
ideas in their head that this is something that people do,
that this is something that's available to them,
that it's a good use of their time.
And so if you can model that even just for a few moments,
I do my journaling for example typically
in front of my children and I'll sometimes
do a five minute meditation and they'll get used to it.
I'll kind of say to them, you know,
unless there's a fire or someones bleeding,
I'm busy right now, I'm meditating,
and that's a valid thing for me
to be doing and you can't interrupt me.
Can my babies not interrupt me during that time?
No, of course not, it's not realistic.
They do interrupt me and I often have to stop
but even a one-minute mediation, thirty-second meditation
that they've witnessed is still good modeling.
And when you are practicing mindfulness
as in noticing what's going on around you,
being aware of your feelings and not judging yourself
or your surroundings, you can voice that out loud
when you are in a long line at the supermarket
or you're frustrated because of what your boss said,
you can actually do deep modeling which is when we show
what's going on behind the scenes.
Expose it to your child, you say you know initially
I felt massive sense of frustration at that email
my boss just wrote me, but then I focused on my breath
and I just watched those emotions and I noticed,
I witnessed myself, and I didn't judge myself,
I just noticed that frustration and I allowed it to pass
and now I'm feeling a lot calmer
and now I have a clear head to decide how
I wanna respond to that email.
Do you see?
So if my child hears me say that,
that sets them up for their success,
it gives them that tool almost by proxy,
it's like by osmosis.
They hear that enough times it just becomes something
that they know how to do for themselves as well.
And my favorite point is this final one.
Allow for discomfort.
Allow for uncomfortable situations in your child's life.
Do not rush to pacify, to solve problems,
or to reduce their discomfort in any way,
unless it's truly painful and frustrating.
In yoga it always goes like this.
You push yourself to the edge of discomfort,
you hold it there and breathe,
but if it's painful then of course you need to back off.
We don't want our children to be in pain,
but we do want them to experience
a lot of uncomfortable situations.
Let me give you some examples.
Not getting the plate that you wanted,
not getting the color pants that you wanted,
having to wait your turn for something.
Having to wait in general.
Having to wait in the car for someone,
or wait for a gift that you wanted,
or wait in line at the bank.
Having to wait for a parent to be
off the phone before you can speak to them.
Being in discomfort in all of these kinds of ways,
not getting exactly what you wanted,
not getting exactly your preference.
Not getting it as quickly as you wanted.
All of those things are excellent and important experiences,
they're like vaccinations for mindfulness, right?
You get a little dose of discomfort
while you're a child, very low stakes,
you learn to deal with that with mindfulness,
you learn to work through those feelings
and then when that discomfort sometimes comes later on
in life and it's a bit bigger like losing your job,
then you have that embedded in you
of how you can handle that with equilibrium.
Or relative equilibrium.
So we want our children to experience
many situations throughout the day, throughout the week,
and you don't have to orchestrate this,
you don't have to make them uncomfortable,
life has discomforts and dissatisfactions
already embedded in it.
It's preloaded with dissatisfaction.
So every time your child says it's not fair,
or I hate this, I don't like this,
it's my turn I should've got it, you can say, yes
I see, it's true, it's not fair, life isn't fair.
We have to deal with dissatisfactions all the
time, I know it's not easy and I'm here to support you,
but I'm not gonna fix it, I'm not gonna rush to pacify it,
I'm not gonna rush to change it,
try to smooth out all the bumps,
we want them to feel each and every bump,
and learn to respond with mindfulness with our support.
Now I would love to hear from you.
Which of these tips was your favorite
and what are your tips for teaching children
about mindfulness and perhaps meditation.
Have you ever meditated in front of your kids?
How did that go?
Give me all of your tips, lay it down on me
in the comments below I would love to hear.
You are warmly invited to join
my Facebook group Love Parenting with Avital
where we talk about all things mindfulness,
minimalist, and just peaceful parenting
and play and peaceful partnering.
All the fun stuff, come on over there it's lots of fun.
And I would love to see you over on Instagram
at Parenting Junkie where I share a lot
of the behind the scenes and a lot
of my random spontaneous thoughts.
Plus I have a podcast now, The Parenting Junkie Show.
You've been leaving me phenomenal reviews,
I am so grateful, you can find it pretty much
anywhere you listen to a podcast or just go
to the parentingjunkie.com/podcast to find the links.