Getting kids to think about mindful topics can be tricky, so parents and teachers find themselves trying to think of mindfulness questions for kids to help them get started. When researching some useful questions about mindfulness to ask kids, we discovered there are many avenues you can go down.
For example, you could ask your kids mindfulness questions from any of the following categories:
- Observation questions, e.g. ‘What do you notice about…?’ give kids something to focus their entire attention on.
- Sensory questions, e.g. ‘What does that smell / taste like to you?’ help kids to engage with their bodies and their senses and encourages them to describe their experiences.
- Self-reflection questions, e.g. ‘What is something you’re very good at?’ are excellent for boosting confidence and raising self-awareness in kids.
- Emotional questions, e.g. ‘How did you feel when you were shouting?’ or ‘How do you think this character felt when this happened?’ might be beneficial for teaching kids to be mindful of how to cope with emotions and give them the language to discuss them.
- Questions that encourage reflection on the world, e.g. ‘What made you happy today?’ or ‘Name something you’re grateful for’ can encourage kids to look outside themselves and reflect on events that affect them.
But why are so many parents and teachers turning to mindfulness as a focus for their kids? Is it important to teach your kids mindfulness at all? With the rise in popularity of self-improvement and personal development, there has been an increased focus on teaching our kids mindfulness from a young age.
Even if you’ve never tried yoga or partaken in any meditation activities, we’ve all heard the benefits of these practices on mental health. Yoga and meditation are not new concepts to us – both originated in India hundreds of years ago and have been widely adopted by western society as established methods of improving mental health and wellness.
Mindfulness has become a buzzword in recent years, and as more people see the benefits of mindfulness, now many are asking the question: does mindfulness for kids improve their well-being?
What is Mindfulness?
In today’s world of 24 hour streaming, multiple platforms of entertainment, being constantly reachable by phone or email at all times, there is so much noise in our lives, and in the lives of our children, that it has become too easy to live life on autopilot.
Many of us rarely give ourselves the opportunity to think and reflect on the things we do, see, hear, and say. Mindfulness aims to change that. Mindfulness activities can include meditation, breathing exercises, mindful eating, acknowledging gratitude, single-tasking, and more.
The term ‘mindfulness’ was introduced to the west by Jon Kabat-Zinn, who defines the practice of mindfulness as
In other words, engaging in mindfulness can help you to be more present in your own life, and enjoy the benefits of reduced stress and anxiety, better sleep, and a calmer state of mind. We can all agree that less stress and better sleep is desirable, and why should we wait until adulthood to learn the skills we need to achieve it? Mindfulness can surely have a range of benefits to young kids, too.
Why Teach Your Kids to Practice Mindfulness?
Kids are constantly exposed to a barrage of information and stimulation everywhere they go, and this overload may lead to a feeling of disconnection from themselves and others. Parents and teachers are increasingly concerned for the mental health of kids, and, with the rise of serious disorders such as anxiety and obesity in kids and adolescents, it’s no wonder people are turning to mindfulness as a possible solution.
Since so many adults find meditation apps, gratitude journals, and relaxation YouTube videos helpful, and are gaining a sense of wellness from practising mindfulness in their daily lives, it stands to reason that there is much to be gained from mindfulness for kids, too. What are the supposed benefits of mindfulness for kids?
- Meditation for mindfulness in kids: meditation is the achieving mental focus or a quieter mind through a mixture of mental concentration and physical techniques. Teaching your kids how to quiet their mind at a young age may help to improve their attention span and behaviour in school and help them get a better night’s sleep.
- Breathing exercises for mindfulness in kids: breathing exercises are a stress-reduction and relaxation method in which you focus on your breath over the course of several minutes. Helping your children learn to practise mindful breathing can help to lower anxiety and can teach them a useful coping strategy for stressful situations. Regularly doing breathing exercises with your children can boost their ability to make decisions and regulate their body’s reaction to uncomfortable situations.
- Mindful eating for kids: eating a meal is something to be enjoyed, even if you’re doing it alone. Of course, we’ve all mindlessly reached for snacks and eaten meals in front of the television without really taking the time to savour our food, but if we increase the number of days where we choose to eat mindfully, we may notice many benefits. Teaching kids to take the time to notice every smell and taste of the food they eat, and to be present for each bite, can promote a healthier relationship with food, and parents may notice improved eating behaviours. Encouraging mindful eating habits may help to prevent overeating and poor dietary habits which cause excessive weight gain.
- Acknowledging gratitude as mindfulness for kids: becoming more mindful of what we’re grateful for in our lives can be anything from creating a habit of jotting down things you’re grateful for in a notebook each day, or saying what you’re grateful for out loud. It is claimed that practicing gratitude can improve your life in numerous ways, including lowering anxiety and elevating the mood. Teaching children to think about what they’re grateful for (their possessions, their families, their friends, their experiences, etc) is a good thing to do, whether you’re interested in mindfulness or not. A child who is taught to appreciate people and the things they have will inevitably become more hopeful and happier.
- Single-tasking as mindfulness for kids: having the ability to multi-task has become something to be proud of. In fact, many people use the term in their resume as a selling point to prospective employers. But these days, we are chronic multi-taskers. Everyone knows someone who is unable to watch a movie or an episode of television without looking at their phone. The goal of single-tasking is to be mindfully present for each task you’re doing. This can mean focusing on one work task at a time to increase efficiency without causing yourself burnout, or it can mean walking your dog without listening to a podcast or audiobook at the same time.
Teaching kids to be mindfully present when they’re carrying out a task can help improve their focus and concentration, and their performance in completing tasks. Whilst it’s beneficial to be able to multi-task sometimes, if kids are taught how to choose when to single-task, they will be better at coping with excessive demands, and they’ll know the importance of being present for certain experiences. After all, if you go for a walk in a beautiful forest, do you want to hear the air brush the leaves, and the birds singing, or do you want to divide your attention by listening to Taylor Swift songs?
The intention behind teaching kids’ mindfulness is overwhelmingly positive: we want our kids to develop good mental health and to grow into happy, well-adjusted adults. And since teaching your kids anything requires spending time with them and bonding with them, can there really be any downside?
Mindfulness for kids - What Does the Research Say?
Whilst many scientists have suggested there is merit in implementing mindfulness curriculum and programs in schools, there is a lot of research being conducted about the actual benefits of mindfulness for children, with conflicting results reported from each study. The Living Mindfully Primary Programme study involved school-based mindfulness lessons for 108 children in Year 5 of three primary schools in the Northeast of England.
In 2020, positive outcomes of the programme were reported, with students showing ‘significant improvements’ in mindfulness, positive outlook, and life satisfaction. In a more significant set of studies, The MYRIAD Project conducted research on over 28,000 adolescent students across 100 schools in the UK and reported that mindfulness education had ‘no impact on preventing mental health problems or promoting wellbeing.’ The results of the study found that students saw mindfulness lessons as boring, which may have been a factor in the outcome.
One takeaway from the study is that teaching mindfulness can’t be outsourced to schools unless there is a significant shift in how this curriculum is delivered. Mindfulness is a discipline which takes time and patience; it should be practised as a part of life in a distraction-free environment and should probably not be treated as an extra lesson on an already overburdened school timetable. For now, if parents want their kids to be more mindful, they may need to turn to online resources for ideas of how to achieve that with their kids at home.
How to Introduce Mindfulness for kids
- Be a role-model. You can’t teach mindfulness effectively if you don’t practise it yourself. See our tips on how to add mindfulness to your daily routine.
- Keep it short. Mindful.org recommends 8 minute meditation sessions and fun little games as a starting point.
- Find opportunities in your daily routine. Psychology Today suggests using one of your daily hugs as an opportunity for a breathing exercise. For example, when you hug, ask for a ‘breathe-in of 3’.
- Focus on the 5 senses. There are many opportunities to ask mindfulness questions for kids and adults. When practicing mindful eating, encourage your child to slow down a focus on the taste. When in the garden, ask them to describe the smells of flowers and grass. When walking somewhere new, ask them to describe what they can see – colours, shapes, etc.
- Teach them about their body: When doing short meditation sessions, ask them to stretch and focus on the feeling of moving their bodies. Get them to feel their heartbeat and listen to their breathing.
- Engage with nature: If your child struggles to focus during meditation, try using a fixed point in nature to help them. For example, get them to look at the clouds, watch the branches of a tree, or focus on a flower.
- Make it crafty: When teaching your child to practise gratitude, consider making the activity artistic. If they’re grateful for a person, perhaps encourage them to make a thank you card. You could collect pebbles or shells and paint them with gratitude messages, or make gratitude jewellery with beads or thread, if your child enjoys that sort of activity.
- Learn about emotions through reading and discussing books: There are hundreds of picture story books about emotions and how to cope with them, for early readers. You could read the books with your child at bedtime and encourage them to talk about a time they felt that way. Use this time as an opportunity to explain what to do the next time your child feels angry, upset, confused, etc.
Resources to support you further when teaching Mindfulness for Kids
There are plenty of resources available for parents wanting to introduce their kids to mindfulness. Don’t forget that plenty of parents are interested in teaching their kids mindfulness, so it might be worth trying to find people to talk to so that you can share your experiences and learn from each other. But if you ever feel like you’re on your own with teaching your kids mindfulness, check out the following resources:
Paid Resources
The Headspace app is available for all smartphones. The app contains lots of guided meditation audio files to listen to and they might give you lots of ideas for meditating with your kids. Headspace offers a 14 day free trial.
Free Resources
A comprehensive range of activities and ideas: https://www.susankaisergreenland.com/
Audio exercises: https://www.shambhala.com/sittingstilllikeafrog
Free online mindfulness lessons and suggested podcasts: https://www.oxfordmindfulness.org/
Games and activity worksheets: https://positivepsychology.com/mindfulness-for-kids/
Guided Meditation ideas: https://annakaharris.com/mindfulness-for-children/
Ideas for Nature Walks: http://bit.ly/3SbuNJQ
Further ideas about teaching mindfulness for kids: https://www.mindful.org/mindfulness-for-kids/
References
Websites
Greater Good Science Centre: http://bit.ly/3ElhOjj
Psychology Today: http://bit.ly/3IAoD2H
The MYRIAD Project: https://myriadproject.org/
The University of Oxford: http://bit.ly/4179YDz
Journal Articles
Mindfulness in primary school children as a route to enhanced life satisfaction, positive outlook and effective emotion regulation, by Amundsen, R., Riby, L.M., Hamilton, C. et al.
Teaching Mindfulness to Children by Karen E., Hooker, Iris E., Fodor, Ph.D.
So that is a lot of information to answer “What are mindfulness questions for kids?”. Please comment below with your thoughts about the topics mentioned in this article below.
