Inside you’ll find a child therapist’s top mindfulness tools for helping kids improve focus, reduce anxiety, and regulate emotions.
**Table of Contents**
Mindfulness offers numerous benefits for children, like improved focus, self-control, mood, sleep, and reduced anxiety. But many parents wonder: how do you practice mindfulness with kids?
Mindfulness means being present and accepting the moment as it is. This approach is quite different from our usual rushed and chaotic routines, where we often operate subconsciously or emotionally.
Practicing mindfulness with children helps activate their thinking brain, responsible for emotional stability and overall well-being. Yay!
In both my therapy work and busy household, I’ve explored many tools for mindfulness and would like to share my favorites. These will make mindfulness activities with kids easy and enjoyable.
You can use these tools in two ways:
1. **In the moment:** During stressful times or transitions, like morning or bedtime, or when calming down from meltdowns.
2. **Preventively:** Regularly, ideally once a day, to maintain a low baseline of stress, especially helpful for anxious or highly emotional kids.
Both methods effectively calm the stress response and engage the prefrontal cortex, where maturity happens!
With growing research on the benefits of mindfulness for kids, many helpful products are becoming available. Different practices will appeal to different children, but here are my home and office favorites:
– **Mindfulness Flashcards:** These include five categories to suit your child’s mood and situation: starting the day, finding calm, focusing, opening the heart, and relaxing. The beautiful illustrations engage children aged 3-12 perfectly.
– **Simple Visual Toys:** Items like calming wands can capture a child’s focus in a relaxed manner, promoting engagement with their prefrontal cortex.
– **Books with Meditations:** The book “Sitting Still Like a Frog” offers guided meditations and explores mindfulness theory, a great start for book-loving kids.
– **Essential Oils:** These oils help children stay grounded in the present through scent, connecting to the brain’s emotion center and promoting deep, calming breaths.
– **Mindfulness Apps:** “Stop, Breathe & Think Kids” is a free app that guides children through various mindfulness practices with cute and engaging videos. The “Insight Timer” app is another resource that offers guided meditations and bedtime stories, great for older kids.
– **Yoga:** Practicing yoga helps children focus and control their stress response by emphasizing deep breathing. “Yoga Pretzels” cards and “Cosmic Kids Yoga” videos on YouTube are excellent starting points.
– **Books Explaining Mind-Body Connection:** “Listening to My Body” by Gabi Garcia helps kids understand physical sensations and emotions. “Breathe Like a Bear” offers a collection of mindfulness exercises for young ones.
Engaging children in mindfulness is a powerful way to support their focus, self-control, emotional regulation, and overall emotional health, both now and in the future.
This post includes a free printable list of mindfulness activities for a quick reset whenever needed.
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