What is mindfulness?

Mindfulness can be described as present moment awareness, without judgement.

At first, babies and toddlers are fully aware and in tune with their bodily sensations and tend to have no filter about them, or even about their thoughts. Every parent has an horror stories in which their little one has share something shameful to the whole world.

Growing up, kids are taught how to behave in a community and how to filter their spontaneity. It is important for them to learn about boundaries, communication and socialisation. The downside being that those many rules tend to bury their capacity to be a mindful being.In addition, screen time and new technologies bring them further away to be present to themselves and their surroundings.

Mindfulness is an important social-emotional tool for kids. It will them in particular to better manage their stress or anxiety, to boost their self-confidence and to deal with their negative thoughts. Yet, mindfulness is not being seated silently in observation. You can promote mindfulness with games, activities, breathing exercises and of course meditation.

Toddlers (2 - 3 years) are already quite mindful beings: curious about everything, exploring the world with their whole sensations and voicing loudly their emotions.

Mindfulness for toddlers aim at helping them identify and name feelings and emotions, and engaging their 5 senses. Mindfulness activities usually last a few minutes, and it is fully okay (and already great) as they have a very short attention span.

Be careful to try it when the little ones are relaxed, otherwise they will not engage. Remember also that every kid has its own development curve (for instance some might be more mobile whereas other be more vocal first), if they don’t engage with an activity at one point, try a few months later. 

Games and activities can be for instance:

1. Nature / surrounding exploration: 

• Show me something orange? and now red? and something that can roll?

2. Emotion identification: all emotions are ok as long we know we feel it.

• Simple emotion cards: how does this person look like? Happy? Sad? Angry?

• Emotion acting: show me somebody very sleepy …

• Animal yoga: can we do the angry cat? the happy dog? the sleepy turtle?

3. Mindful eating: look at your cake, how is it? which colour? and shape? is it rough or smooth? how does it smell?…

4. Bubble breath: they love trying and blowing bubble, and looking at how big or small, where it goes and their colours.

5. Hand breath: spread the fingers on one hand and trace along each fingers with your other hand. Inhale while going up and exhale going down.

• Check this lovely song by Kira Willey.

• You can also perform variation with geometric forms or even star.

6. Sensory guessing games: put objects with different forms and textures in a bag, the let the little one run his.her hand into it and try guessing what the object is.

7. Staring contest:

• Look into each other in the eyes, the first one who looks away or blinks loses.

• French variation - « la barbichette »: look each other in the eyes, the hand on the other’s chin, the first one that laughs loses.

You can expand on the activities above and make it a little more complex, depend on the children. For instance, adding more emotions or asking them to mirror emotions. In addition:

1. Scrunch and release: tense one body part very part, e.g. feet, then release with a big exhale, move to legs, belly, hands, arms, shoulders, face (make silly faces) then whole body.

2. Thought swirl: show them how the mind can become very noisy with all our thoughts and emotions, and can become quiet when we let all the thoughts and emotions settle.

3. « Swirl bottle »: 

• Buy or build your own swirl bottle and have them look as the glitter go down.

• Also good with a rain stick.

4. Belly breathing: on their back, place a soft plush toy on their belly and have them look as it goes up when they inhale and down with the exhale. If they don’t manage to do belly breathing, it is ok, it will come, have them relax and breath naturally.

5. Spaghetti relaxation: on their back and if they are ok, come and take their hands, shake their arms softly like a noodle, do the same with their legs. I like to hum a little song.

6. Sky gazing: go outside in the evening, where there is few lights, look at the sky, search for stars and planets.

7. Move and count heartbeats:

• Let them place one hand on their heart and notice their heartbeats.

• Then make them do e.g. jumping jacks or dance, stop and notice their heart beats again.

8. Colouring: mandala and colouring practice are very good activities to train focus and present moment awareness.

   • For instance: pixel colouring.

9. Bedtime gratitude routine: 

• Teeth brushing and bedtime ritual are great moments to introduce mindfulness:

• Let’s try and brush our tooth one by one by one.

• Ask them what they did like about their day, did they do something they are proud of, did somebody do something nice for them ?

• check this blog post.

And remember: monkey see, monkey do! Meaning kids will be more likely to start mindful practices if you do it yourself.