When people learn that I’m a mindfulness teacher, I’m often asked about how to use mindfulness with your kids. This is an interesting question for me as a parent. My professional training and experience is in teaching adults (I don’t teach kids’ classes), but I do share my own mindfulness practice with my son. I can only speak from my own experience, but if it’s useful – here are some things I’ve discovered on our family’s journey towards mindful living.
The first big surprise for me was that there aren’t really any special tricks, there’s nothing I ‘do’ to get my son to be more mindful. I don’t ‘teach’ him mindfulness. I just try to be mindful myself. I practice for myself. Having learned to practice mindfulness, I take it into every area of my life, and this happens naturally more and more. There’s a saying that mindfulness is not so much taught as caught. I certainly have found that the more my own life becomes infused with mindfulness, something transmits in some way to my son – but definitely not through me explicitly teaching him anything. That’s how simple this stuff is. As human beings, we’re wired to connect with each other and it makes sense that we would ‘catch’ a certain way of being from one another. (In fact my son teaches me alot about this stuff, so maybe it’s the other way round too!)
However, being mindful is not always easy. It’s why we call it a practice. As simple as it sounds, mindfulness needs alot of repetition before it starts to become natural – in us grownups, anyway. But for me, this practice doesn’t always have to mean sitting by myself meditating, away from my son. Below I’ve described 3 ways I share my practice with him. Perhaps it might spark some ideas about how you could practice family mindfulness, in your own way.
1. Practising together
My son and I have practised together in various ways over the last few years (he’s 6 as I write this) – it’s always evolving as he grows and changes. For a while he liked me to lead him in a body scan before sleep, which started in babyhood, as I’d name all his body parts while rocking him. Later on we switched to listening to recorded meditations together at bedtime, and he often chose a kindness meditation. He can take a while to be ready to nod off, so this feels like sharing my practice with my him, rather than imposing it on him in a bid to make him go to sleep. At the moment, we listen to talks about meditation. I generally don’t have any particular expectation of what he might get out of it, but he tells me he enjoys it. He’s one curious little man! This evening ritual has become a bonus way to share some time together and for me to get a little extra practice in too.
Informal practices like cloud-watching and taking a slow ‘noticing’ walk have become incorporated into family time. Children are naturally mindful: they’re in awe of the world around them and engrossed in discovery. When we join our son in his world, my husband and I can re-access ‘beginner’s mind’ and take delight in the things we often overlook. We once counted 77 snails on a short walk to nursery. And I can honestly say I didn’t think about work worries the whole time!
2. Playing Together
I’ll be honest, I can struggle a bit with playing. You know, the kind of play when there’s no obvious point: nothing to measure myself against in terms of whether I’m getting it right or achieving a productive outcome. I used to want to join my son in that spontaneous, present-moment space – but felt like I didn’t really know how to ‘do’ free play. I felt awkward and silly. Then I realised that just doing it anyway was a bit like sitting meditation. I could watch all my thoughts about how ridiculous I looked, or about what else I should be doing. I could see all those thoughts and keep letting them go, keep coming back to sharing this moment with my son. That’s exactly what we do in meditation – and during playtime, it’s just that the anchor becomes my child instead of my breath. I decided it didn’t matter if my mind was wandering at times, I was still being with my son, no matter how imperfectly I was playing.
This practice has been really helpful for me in strengthening present-moment awareness and beginner’s mind. At times I see my son use a familiar object in a completely new way within the playing, or I catch myself feeling uncertain, not knowing where the imaginary story is going. It’s all great practice for allowing life to unfold, and not always getting things ‘right’. Even structured play like board games (which offer a comforting objective if I need one!) are a great way to connect with my son and give him my undivided attention. Someone very wise once said that attention is the most basic form of love. And I think that one of the most simple ways to practice mindfulness with someone else is to give them your attention, fully. When I get into Being mode alongside my boy, it halts the incessant pull of the Doing mode, and we both seem to feel the benefit of that.
3. Being human together
One thing I really want my son to grow up knowing is that it’s OK to be human and imperfect. I didn’t learn that until I started practising self-kindness, and I wish I’d had those skills earlier in life. I can’t think how better to show him what mindful resilience looks like than to let him see me meeting challenges in life. To let him see that at times I feel vulnerable, disappointed or unsure. To let him see me offering kindness to myself when things get hard. Sure, I get grumpy when things don’t go my way. I can either throw a tantrum of my own, or name it and hold it in kind awareness. This is really where it really helps me as a parent that I’ve learned mindfulness for myself in the first instance. If I hadn’t learned how to practice these skills, I know I’d be finding certain parenting situations much harder. But instead of trying to make uncomfortable feelings go away (mine or his), I’m able to respond more skilfully and with increased compassion. Often, in these tricky moments, my son and I discover that when we feel strong emotions, what we need most is a hug and some comfort for the vulnerability of being human.
My mindfulness practice has also helped me to really see my son as a human being. That might sound like an odd thing to say. But as a parent I can fall into the trap of needing to feel in control, and when that’s where I’m coming from, it feels quite hard to nurture mutual trust and respect. I’ve come to realise that the most powerful way I can help my son learn kindness is by treating him exactly as I’d like to be treated. To give you an example, let’s say I’m engrossed in doing something that matters to me. I wouldn’t like to be abruptly interrupted and told I have to go and do something else right now (go out, eat dinner, whatever it is). So how must my son feel if I do that to him? I’ve learned much more respect for his needs, even when they seem to conflict with mine.
Mindful awareness has changed the way I approach so many parent-child situations. I’ve become much less reliant on using rules to get my own needs met, and more confident that simply expressing my point of view is often sufficient. When my son does do something I want, instead of using rewards or saying “well done”, I just thank him and tell him I appreciate it. It’s a subtle difference, but has made a big impact. The more I’ve engaged with him in this way, the more I notice him doing things to help me out without even being asked. Because I’m not consciously doing anything to get him to him behave a certain way, I sometimes wonder ‘how did that happen‘? And the only thing I can put it down to is the influence of this powerful practice. Possibly it’s because what I’m referring to as ‘mindfulness’ also includes regular practice of the kindness meditations. I know that this has had a positive impact on my interactions with other adults, so maybe it’s not surprising that a sense of shared humanity can impact my relationship with my child too.
So those are just some of the ways I’ve seen the benefit of my practice in our household. I’m sure they’re not the only ways to share mindfulness with our family. If you’ve discovered anything I’ve not mentioned here, do leave it in the comments below for other readers.
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Lovely piece, its great to share that mindfulness is not just formal practice with children (or anyone!)
my kids are older now and are quite verbally rude about it and I haven’t “done” mindfulness with them since they were about 8 but if I start rushing them or asking what they are doing they say “just sitting” “breathing” … Eldest (16)has now started to go on silent retreats and is thinking of volunteering at a retreat centre at some point.
Thank you so much for posting this comment Fiona 🙂 It’s so encouraging to hear from someone whose children are older – and to hear about the ways they choose to practice. My son doesn’t hold back with his own opinion about my practice either, but as you say, that won’t necessarily stop him using what’s helpful for himself.
thank you for sharing.