Mindfulness ideas for kids

By Jen Barton Packer on 31/1/2021

Parents are getting increasingly worried about their children's mental health as we approach the one-year mark since education was first interrupted and schools shut.
Children's Mental Health Week in February from Place2Be has lots of free activities and resources for kids, encouraging them to express their feelings at this tricky time.
Homeschool brings its own stressors, as does missing out on socialisation with loved ones like grandparents and close friends.
Mindfulness for kids is more critical than ever: it can help stave off tantrums and improve sleep in toddlers, ease anxiety, improve concentration and provide an antidote to total digital immersion. Mindfulness is about being in the present, but it also teaches children to access their emotions – the good, the bad, the ugly – to be more appreciative and grateful and to calm themselves or switch their perspective from a negative to a positive one.
A holistic approach to mindfulness can include everything from meditative breathing exercises to keeping a journal. Here's what parents need to know about meditation and mindfulness...

Unschooling is a child-led approach to learning. Photo: No Guidebook/Unsplash

Embrace a bit of unschooling - not just homeschooling

While homeschooling works on the premise that the parent teaches a child a designated curriculum, unschooling embraces child-led learning that encourages children to try new things and figure out their passions. Unschooling is meditative for parents as well as kids: from tons of outdoor play to prioritising breathwork. Read on for top tips from natural health coach Tony Riddle...

Enjoy the great outdoors

The best antidote to too many Zoom chats and lessons is spending time outside - at a safe distance from others - with the kids. From glorious park walks around London to learning how to rollerblade, it's amazing how just being outside can have a calming, regrounding effect on kids.

Meditation apps and podcasts

From staving off a tantrum to helping kids get to sleep, mindfulness techniques can be game-changers for kids, and the sooner you start integrating them, the better.

If you're thinking of getting the kids an audio player, Yoto and Lunii both offer meditation options for their players.

The Calm app has launched a dedicated kids' section, Calm Kids. You'll also find guided meditation content for children in partnership with Apple TV+ series Stillwater.

Mindfulness and meditation app Headspace has dedicated meditations for kids (including Calm, Focus, Kindness, Sleep, Wake Up), for toddlers through pre-teens, focusing on breathing and visualisation.

Bedtime FM's Peace Out is a podcast which also introduces mindfulness through visualisation techniques and stories, exploring nature and the universe with relaxation and emotion-based examples featuring characters overcoming feelings of frustration and jealousy or learning how to be kind to others.

Try a mindfulness journal or make a gratitude jar

The earlier we encourage children to start living the examined life, the better. Give your child a journal to help them reflect on their actions and remember what they most enjoyed – and didn't – over the course of the day.

We love the HappySelfJournal (£23). Packed with inspirational quotes, in a sunny yellow cover, it's a daily diary where kids jot down their best moments and challenges and pick an emoji to describe their day. There are pages in which they get to catalog their interests and personality traits. It encourages gratitude and affirmations, helps to promote a growth mindset that gets kids thinking that if they work at something, they can improve, and gives them an opportunity to switch off for some much-needed reflection time.

Also try The Big Life Journal, You are Extraordinary (a self-belief journal from Wonderbly) and Happy Confident Me.

A gratitude jar, filled with positive affirmations, makes a fun DIY project. Making emotion stones is another way for kids to learn to express their feelings.

Fab books on moods and meditation for kids

There are now multiple picture books centred on emotions, mindfulness and meditation.

A couple of our favourites for younger readers? Fearne Cotton's Yoga Babies and Lemony Snicket's The Bad Mood and the Stick.

Your Mind is Like the Sky (pictured, Frances Lincoln Children's Books, £11.99), by psychologist Bronwen Ballard and Laura Carlin, encourages kids to pay attention to their feelings, both good and bad, and likens the thoughts in your head to positive fluffy clouds and darker, more difficult rainclouds. The book has advice on how to discuss trickier thoughts with kids at the end of the book.

Kids also love Ruby's Worry and Ravi's Roar by Tom Percival, for talking about emotions, and Mind Hug, which gives kids breathing tips and exercises.

Online kids' yoga for mindfulness

Even though you might not be able to get to a yoga studio with the kids for the time being, there are a lot of online kids' classes that will help them feel zen. We can't recommend Cosmic Kids' Yoga on YouTube highly enough - in addition to fun, themed yoga classes which cover everything from animals to Frozen, they've got meditation sessions too.

Photo: Jyotirmoy Gupta

Mindfulness tips for kids from a pro

Whitney Stewart is a children's book author who has written multiple books on mindfulness for kids, like Barefoot Books' Mindful Kids and Tummy Ride and Albert Whitman & Co.'s Mindful Me for tweens.

Her Mindful Kids card deck works for kids in the classroom or at home: pull out a card and follow the activity instructions for exercises, visualisations and more, wherever you are. She gives us a few of her top tips for integrating mindfulness into your child's life:

Short meditations are key

Very few kids I know to want to sit down and meditate for thirty minutes. In my mindful kids' classes, we do short meditations focusing for three to five minutes on the rise and fall of our tummy as we breathe.

Then, I encourage kids to let mindfulness inspire their day. We learn how to focus on our thoughts or emotions, and how both can shift and change throughout the day – and both can influence the way we experience life.

Be kind

We start with kindness. I ask my mindfulness students to do one kind thing for someone else (or for a pet) each day, for a week. We can also focus on the senses. We do short meditations on listening to the sounds around you.

Or we do a tasting practice, chewing one raisin, for example, slowly, to notice how the flavor and texture change. I encourage kids to eat one bite, or one meal with their full attention on their food (no TV, devices, or talking) and experience how it feels to simply eat.

Take a mindful walk

We also pay close attention to our emotions, and the physical sensations we experience when we have a strong emotion. That's easy to do any time, any place. Whenever anger or sadness arise, for example, we can pay close attention to what happens in our body – tummy ache, tight muscles, hot face, clenched fists, or whatever they experience.

Or, we take a mindful walk. That means walking slowly, noticing our muscles as we move. We can also shift our attention to whatever is around us. If we walk outside, we may notice bird calls, wind, clouds passing over the sun, a rainbow or anthill, a barking dog. We also do relaxation exercises that use the breath, mind focus, and muscle tension and release to help ease our body and mind.

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