Teaching our children to be mindful, is teaching them long term life skills that will help them as they grow. These life skills will minimize their anxiety and stress, improve their focus, increase their happiness and improve their ability to cope when they find life getting too overwhelming or overstimulating.
Make mindful activities a positive part of their day. This includes familiar activities that they enjoy, especially when they are just beginning to learn how to be mindful. Include mindful activities in your child's visual schedule. This will help them to expect and understand that this will become a part of their routine. After a while, you will notice that your child is practicing being mindful on their own naturally.
Benefits for teaching children mindful activities
• Increases emotional regulation
• Decreased depression
• Better memory
• Cognitive improvements
• Stronger relationships
• Reduces anxiety and stress
• Better focus and attention
• Improve sleep
• Better moods
• Increased self esteem
• Increased feeling of calm
Mindful breathing can be done in so many different ways. You want your child to be comfortable. Practice breathing slowly, closing or opening their eyes and asking them to take notice when their chest moves when they breathe.
There is a wide variety of mindful breathing activities for children that you can practice. Here are a few ideas. Some breathing techniques your child will absolutely love, others not so much. Try a few to see which what works for your child.
5 Breathing Techniques for Kids:
1. Teddy Bear Breathing
Teddy bear breathing is an easy and fun breathing technique for children. Ask your child to lay down on their back and get comfortable. Ask them to take their teddy bear and place it on their belly. Inhaling slowly and exhaling slowly. Ask your child to focus on their teddy bear, watching it go up and down as they breathe. Repeat several times until they are focused and calm.
2. Blow Out The Candle Breathing
Ask your child to pretend they are blowing out the candles on their birthday cake. Taking a deep breath through their nose and breathing out through their mouth blowing out the candles.
3. Pinwheel Breathing
Pinwheel breathing is a great mindful breathing activity for children. It can be done while sitting down or standing up, although you will need a pinwheel for your child to do this activity. Get your child to take a deep breath through their nose and then slowly breathe out blowing on the pinwheel watching the pinwheel spin. They can repeat this a few times until they are calm. Pinwheels can be found at some dollar stores and also available on Amazon.
4. Elephant Breathing
Ask your child to stand with their feet apart and their arms dangling in fron of them like the trunk of an elephant. As they breathe in deeply through their nose get them to raise their arms up high above their head. Then slowly swinging their arms down again as they breathe out through their mouth. Your child can repeat this several times until they are feeling calm.
5. Bubble Breathing
Ask your child to sit down and pretend to be blowing bubbles through a bubble wand. Inhaling deeply through their nose and blowing out slowly as they are blowing bubbles through the bubble wand trying to blow the biggest bubbles they can blow. They can repeat this several times. For fun, you can try this breathing activity with real bubbles and a bubble wand.
