Mindfulness has become a popular buzzword, but its roots stretch back thousands of years through various cultural and spiritual traditions. Psychologists have long recognized its benefits, and it is now widely used to support emotional well-being in children. 

If you’re reading this blog post, I’m guessing you’re at least a little bit interested in mindfulness for kids. Maybe you want to teach mindfulness to your kids. Or perhaps you want to expand your practice and add a few more tools to your arsenal. But I’m also guessing that your kids are similar to mine, and sitting down to quietly meditate for 30 minutes (or even 10 minutes!) every day is not their idea of a good time. But do they like craft? Are you nodding right now? Awesome! What about mindfulness crafts?

The great thing about mindfulness is that it doesn’t have to involve quiet meditation. When teaching mindfulness to kids, we want to make it as fun as possible! Mindfulness for kids can be active, noisy, and messy. It works best when we incorporate their senses and make it a whole-body experience for them, so craft is a great way to practice mindfulness with your kids.

Mindful listening is a form of deep listening which encompasses listening with our whole body. Many of us, without realising it, don’t listen fully. We tend to think about what we are going to say next. We make judgements. We offer solutions. And sometimes, we try to divert the conversation onto something we want to discuss.

We all want to feel heard. When someone truly listens, it validates our feelings and demonstrates genuine caring and interest. It helps us feel okay about who we are and what we are experiencing in a way that offering someone a solution rarely does.

A martial artist once asked Bruce Lee to teach him all he knew about martial arts. Bruce held up two cups filled with liquid and said, “The first cup represents all of your knowledge about martial arts. The second cup represents all of my knowledge about martial arts. If you want to fill your cup with my knowledge, you must first empty your cup of your knowledge.”

To create a life you love, find solutions to problems or discover your life calling, you need to ’empty your cup’ by quietening the left hemisphere of your brain. The left hemisphere is the logical, analytical part of the brain that processes information sequentially. Give this part of your brain a problem, and it will work on finding a practical solution for you. The brain is a beautiful tool. However, if you don’t know what you want or don’t know how to create what you wish, logic, reason, and analysis can have you going around and around in circles. This can lead to feelings of frustration or uncertainty, and that’s when it sometimes gets too hard, and we settle for what is.

Christmas can be challenging for kiddos, especially for our more sensitive little people – toddlers and preschoolers, kids who experience anxiety, those who struggle with emotion regulation, and those with sensory processing difficulties and special needs. Christmas can be hugely overwhelming for many of our little ones.

And, of course, I created the Mindfulness for Children to help you set up a calming, quiet space for your kids and to teach them how to self-regulate when they experience big emotions. But Christmas, with its often over-the-top sensory experiences and extra social expectations and obligations, can bring its unique challenges. And I’m frequently asked – what can I do when we’re not in the house and can’t use our calm down space? How do I help my child then?

So I’ve put together something special to help your kids (and you!) manage some of those BIG feelings that come up more often at Christmas. Mindfulness for Children. This kit is designed to support your child to process their big emotions during the holiday season. It contains Christmas-themed activities and resources that your child will love to use, AND it’s a bit smaller than the original calm-down kit because it’s designed to be more portable.

Teenagers face unique challenges, from academic pressure to social media distractions. Teaching them mindfulness can be particularly helpful in managing stress and anxiety.