Mindfulness teaches kids/teens to focus
Mindfulness teaches us to focus and be present in the moment – exactly what so many U.S. kids have trouble doing. Their lives are so full – school, social life, sports, after-school activities/jobs – that their minds are often ping-ponging from one event to the next. In the case of teens, throw in building a well-rounded high-school resume, and you’ve arrived at a perfect recipe for stress.
Enter mindfulness meditation – probably not an easy sell to an over-subscribe child or his or her parents. So let’s focus on some facts that might make you a convert.
- Anxiety, depression and stress can all be helped through mindfulness meditation. Unfortunately, kids younger than 8 often find themselves experiencing any of these three conditions.
- Mindfulness meditation helps students focus and concentrate on tasks. This even extends to how students listen to – and absorb – what their teachers and parents are saying.
- If students meditate before an exam – and that includes standardized tests – studies confirm they will perform better on the test than students who do not practice mindfulness meditation.
And the best part: Kids do not have to sit on a cushion for an hour a day to bring mindfulness into their lives. They start slowly, with five minutes, and if they want, work up to 10 to 20 minutes a day. It is the almost daily consistency of meditation that achieves the greatest results – bringing a mindful attitude into every facet of life, which makes them more productive and actually saves them time each day.
The monkey mind
To bring the concept of monkey mind to the life of kids, we ask them to think about school and consider how much of the time they are actually listening to their teachers? Or are they thinking about something else? In most cases, they say they start out listening to the teacher, but soon their thoughts become scattered.
Consider this info uncovered in a Microsoft study:
- The attention span of a human is 8 seconds.
- The attention span of a goldfish is 9 seconds.
We also suggest that teens think about exam week, and the thoughts that are crowding out the important scholastic facts they need for the tests. Many are thinking about the future:
- What if I don’t understand the test questions?
- What if I fail?
- What will a bad mark do to my GPA?
Our minds wander, often obsessing over what happened yesterday or worrying about what is going to happen in the future. And the same holds true when we meditate.
But here’s the difference: When practicing mindfulness meditation you will notice a thought, make no judgment, and erase the thought from your mind by gently breathing. As Elsa sings in “Frozen,” we learn to “let it go,” and that letting go follows practitioners throughout the day.
Through mindfulness meditation, kids learn to notice when their minds are worrying, often causing anxiety, and how to turn those thoughts off and get down to the business of concentrated studying – without the stress of the “what ifs” taking over.
Mindful communication
Through mindfulness, teens are learning a life skill that is invaluable: How to be an effective communicator, listening to what others are saying without interrupting the person or predetermining what the speaker is saying. That’s not to say they will agree with everything they hear. But they will have the tools to listen, evaluate and then form their own opinions.
They will also learn to become a more powerful speaker, not jumping into conversations to be heard, offering their advice or saying the same thing the person before them said. They will learn to speak with clarity, in an ordered and focused way, to advance their ideas.
Power up our brain
Mindfulness meditation enhances brain power – no studying required! In a nutshell, mindfulness meditation:
- Helps regulate attention, emotion and actions.
- Helps us understand ourselves and the emotions of other people
- Helps us put things in perspective.
When mindfulness is brought into every aspect of your life it creates a pause, and instead of reacting, practitioners learn to respond. And this is a recipe for success and less stress.