How to practice mindfulness with your kids, according to a child psychologist

Mindful play with toys like Lego can encourage kids to be present.

Think of ‘mindfulness’ and journaling, meditation or breathing exercises probably come to mind - but have you ever considered that simply playing with your kids could be an act of mindfulness? On World Mindfulness Day, Auckland-based child psychologist Dr Emma Woodward reveals how mindful play can help children learn how to regulate their emotions and equip them for adulthood.

If you’re a parent or caregiver, you’ll know that children can struggle to regulate their emotions as they develop.

As author, life coach and counsellor Rebecca Ballagh previously told the Herald’s parenting podcast One Day You’ll Thank Me, when children first start to experience those “big feelings”, they can feel overwhelmed and unable to cope.

So, how can you help your kids navigate those feelings - and could mindfulness be the answer?

What is mindfulness?

For Dr Emma Woodward, director of psychological services at The Child Psychology Service, mindfulness isn’t about meditation - rather, it’s the simple act of “taking a moment to pause and breathe”.

“[It’s] a space where we can pay attention to what’s going on in the present moment with no judgement - so just observing what’s going on around us,” she tells the Herald.

“It’s really, really important because it stops all the chatter in our heads and stops all the chatter in the outside world, and just kind of settles our nervous system and grounds us. It’s coming back to what’s actually happening and ‘how do I just give myself a moment to choose what I want to do next’. It’s the way that we get in contact with our values. It’s the way that we get in contact with our emotions.

Dr Emma Woodward is the director of psychological services at The Child Psychology Service in Auckland.

“Emotions are just data, they’re there to protect or connect us. So if our emotional brain wants to protect us from something, it makes us feel an aversive emotion, like fear or anxiety, that wants to connect us to something. It makes us feel joy or happiness or excitement. Mindfulness gives us a moment to analyse that data.”

Young children are already quite good at noticing the world around them, Woodward explains - and it’s a skill that we can lose touch with as we get older.

“If you go on a walk, they’re really good at noticing the flower or the insect or the lavender or, you know, the butterfly - and we don’t see that stuff anymore. So it’s just about really capturing those moments and making sure we join them in their world and making sure they don’t lose their ability to see all the good stuff.

“It’s something that life conditions out of us as the demands get heavier on us, as we get older, and the responsibilities increase. So making sure that we intentionally practise it so we have that skill ready whenever we need it is really important to our mental health and wellbeing.”

How can you practise mindfulness with your kids?

Woodward says you can start by showing them how to breathe deeply and take notice of their surroundings.

“What can you see? What can you feel? What can you hear? What can you taste? It’s really about making sure that you can control your emotional response to situations. It doesn’t change the situation, but it gives you that moment to choose your response.”

You can start practising these skills with your child from a very young age, Woodward says.

“It’s really important that we teach skills to counteract some of those attention-hijacking stimuli that we have in modern-day life, otherwise we miss all the other stuff - you know, the stuff that actually gives us joy.”

Kids are already good at noticing the world around them - it's important to help them maintain this skill, Dr Emma Woodward explains. Photo / 123rf

One way to demonstrate this is through play.

“I’m a mum to four boys, so we use Lego quite a lot. We all sit around together and we have it on a mat. So one way to be mindful and present in what we’re doing is we sort all the Lego bricks out, so all the red bricks go together or the green bricks go together ... we’re making time to be together and focus on what we’re doing. We talk about the shapes of the bricks, how they feel in our hands and our fingers and we talk about what we’re going to make.”

Woodward often uses Lego in her practice as a child psychologist to “create calming spaces”.

“We create our ideal kind of relaxation space. So there might be a seaside scene or it might be clouds or it might be a castle, and we talk about how that makes us feel when we are in it or building it.”

This kind of play can help children get into a flow state, she explains.

“Mindfulness is being fully present and flow state is being fully absorbed in an activity, and both of those things are really important as a kind of radical act against screen use and device use. It’s a way to get a dopamine hit that’s natural and slow-burning and sustainable.”

What are the benefits of mindfulness for both children and parents?

According to the Child Mind Institute, mindfulness can help children of all ages improve their focus, which can benefit their learning.

“If you can be more mindful and grounded in the present, you can take on board what a teacher is telling you, for example, or actually think about how to manage conflict more effectively,” Woodward explains.

It can also help build resilience, she says.

“It helps with managing your emotions, so it really is the foundation to good mental health and wellbeing.”

The benefits aren’t just for children, but for their parents too.

“Social learning theory tells us that children do more of what they see us do and less of what we tell them to do. So if you practice mindfulness, your children will practice mindfulness,” Woodward says.

“I think lots of us parents don’t realise how many hotspots we’ve got until we have children. Our children are really good at activating our buttons and so having a mindfulness practice to be able to take a deep breath, pause and respond to what’s actually going on rather than our emotional response to what’s going on not only regulates you, but also regulates your children.”