Research suggests that mindfulness if practiced from early life, can bring success and development in later life. This has made learning mindfulness an important art to learn in early life. It has been learned across the world for centuries, however, it wasn't integrated with early education until recently. This approach equips youth with crucial tools, empowering them to behave responsibly and act sensibly. A unique aspect that sets this particular art different from others is that the learning doesn't bind itself to classroom walls. It can be learned almost everywhere and almost at any time. Mindfulness empowers children with excellent self-regulation skills, improved attention to details, increased well-being and resilience to odd situations, as well as promotes kindness and compassion for self and people around.
Teachers can play an instrumental role when it comes to encouraging raw minds to adopt good habits. Therefore, they should put the active effort into conditioning young minds towards adopting mindfulness. Teachers can integrate mindfulness into a child's daily activities in his environment that can help him taking charge of his behavior and actions, increase his focus and engagement, and promote a feeling of ownership and empowerment in him. The idea of integrating mindfulness in a child means to make it second nature of the child, a part of his personality.
The tools used to gain mindfulness aren’t expensive, however, the result you get is worth million dollars. Mindfulness support healthy and quality relationship, be it child to child or child to adult relationships. Read along to know a few techniques that can help your child to adopt mindfulness:
1. Deep Breaths - How do you feel under stress and pressure? Your breathing gets shallow, doesn’t it? How do you react to it? By taking deep breaths! Children need to learn the same technique to cope up with stress. This is the reason why teachers need to teach children the technique of deep breathing whenever they feel stressed about something. With consistent practice, children will be able to PAUSE, BREATHE, CALM, and THINK better when frustrated.
2. Active Listening - Unlike visual representation, listening to sounds need active effort. As simple as it sounds, it takes a great deal of effort from a child to gain active learning skills. However, it is very crucial to gain control over thoughts and gain mindfulness about his environment. By training a child to listen with intent, he will naturally be calm, engage in peaceful listening, and gain awareness about his surroundings.
3. The Glitter Jar - It is easier to hold children’s attention with visual tools. For instance, a glitter jar, ask a child under stress to hold a jar filled with water and glitter. Now ask him to shake it. Ask him what he sees? Apparently, he will say the glitters are moving in random directions. Now ask him to stop shaking the jar, as the glitters start settling down the child will have a sense of stability. This method use sensor (glitters) to calm down the child’s mind. And condition him to be aware of his thoughts and the environment.
According to Tree House founder, Rajesh Bhatia, “Conditioning young minds to be more aware of their surroundings help them to control their thoughts and take charge of their actions. This encourages children to gain stability in their lives.”
