chapter 4
When your child is struggling to maintain focus, a challenging aspect of the problem is often a persistent feeling of being disconnected from others and from the present moment. Your child may find that his mind is always wandering, sometimes without him even being aware of it. It can be startling for a child to suddenly realize that he has missed an important part of a conversation, or that his teacher has been calling his name and he didn’t hear it until the third or fourth call. We’ve all had times when we feel fragmented, ineffective, and overwhelmed—when we can’t remember what we were thinking about, or realize we are listening to someone talk but have no idea what he or she just said. The stimulation of modern life increases these moments, and for many children this sense of disconnection is frequent and frustrating.
In this chapter we will explore activities that can help reorient your child to his present-moment experience, as well as train the mind to stay tuned in to what is happening physically, mentally, and emotionally.
The inability to stay connected to present-moment experiences has an impact on many areas of your child’s life. In social settings it may be hard for her to connect with friends as she struggles to maintain conversation; she may often miss the pauses and nonverbal cues that indicate it’s her—or someone else’s—turn to participate. As a result, friends might think she is tuning out or not interested in them.
In academic settings, the refrain of pay attention is likely to be something your child hears all day. You may have heard teachers tell you that your child is so smart and could be so successful in school if only she would “apply herself.” We will discuss strategies in later chapters that can help your child focus on what she is trying to learn (and that can help you communicate with her teachers), but first we need to recognize that if your child is expending all of her energy on simply trying to remain present and aware (and even awake) in her classroom, then she may not have much mental energy left for learning.
The emotional consequences of this sense of disconnection can vary substantially from child to child. When so many things are pulling at your child’s attention, the nervous system never gets a chance to rest. Your child isn’t getting any downtime. This can lead to an increase in anxiety and a sense of constant worry. Noted physician Gabor Maté (2000) describes the feeling as being akin to always worrying that you have something that you are supposed to be doing but never being able to remember what it is.
This frenetic feeling is like a constant companion that serves to distract children away from the other emotions that they are experiencing. This overlay of anxiety colors their emotions, heightening some and damping others. In this context, it can be very hard for your child to make meaningful decisions and take appropriate actions, because what she is experiencing emotionally is not necessarily connected to the reality of the present moment.
Connecting to External and Internal Experiences
This chapter explores activities that help your child tune in to both the external environment, and the emotional landscape of internal experience. Both types of connection are crucial for experiencing the richness of life and navigating successfully through it. Becoming more aware of your external experiences, and practicing staying connected to those experiences, will, over time, contribute to your capacity to more accurately recognize your inner emotional experience and lessen the stress and anxiety that come from constantly wrapping your mind around the past, present, and future all at once.
The following activities will help your child connect to what is around him and tune in to the most essential aspects of his experience. Practicing these activities will develop a habit of slowing down, increasing awareness, and experiencing life in a more complete way.
Don’t worry about your child understanding the activities in a cerebral way. Instead just let him actually have the experience. When we practice mindfulness we are working on rewiring the brain. The experience itself does the work. It’s not important for the child to get it or make some sort of larger connection to his life. Just allow the activities to unfold and, through repetition, become a part of your child’s life.
Keep in mind that while some of these activities may seem simple, they will be a challenge for any child. It is your job to cultivate a sense of exploration and playfulness during these practices. Your child should not feel any pressure or judgment. You will want to internalize the idea that there is no one right way to practice mindfulness and yoga. The activities are all experiences and explorations. The success is in the trying, and each repetition strengthens the mind and contributes to developing a habit of awareness.
It is very useful to try these practices yourself before introducing them to your child so that you can better understand the experience and anticipate your child’s challenges and questions.
Connecting with Life Experiences
The first three activities in this chapter—Layers of Sound, Walking Meditation, and Mindful Eating—are about learning to slow down and experience the complete fullness of daily life. Staying connected to what is happening in the present is the first step toward developing more control over your attention.
Layers of Sound
This mindful listening practice asks your child to explore what she can hear around her in an intentional way. Our hearing is so sensitive. We don’t have any way to block out sound the way we can close our eyes to reduce what we see. All of the sounds around us are competing for our attention all of the time. Learning to attune our hearing to the sounds that are most important at the moment is a life skill that children are called upon to exercise from the moment they enter school.
Follow-up: After practicing Layers of Sound, talk with your child about what she heard in each layer. Some children love to use a drawing activity after this practice to express the sounds that they heard, while others like to talk about them. Make sure that your child doesn’t feel any pressure to identify the sounds—if she wants to share them with you she can just make the sounds out loud.
Challenges: The periods of silence in between each layer of sound are important parts of the activity, but they can be challenging for your child. If your child is finding this activity too long, or is struggling with the silence between layers, you can break up the practice by discussing or drawing what she heard after each layer, instead of all together at the end of the practice.
Daily Practice: Layers of Sound is a wonderful activity to practice before bedtime if your child struggles to fall asleep. Make sure you have introduced the activity during the day when your child is engaged; once it becomes comfortable and is no longer new, it is a very relaxing nighttime practice that can help reduce the impact of noise distractions keeping your child awake at night.
Walking Meditation
Practicing Walking Meditation is a grounding and steadying mindfulness activity that gives your child access to something that he can do anytime and anyplace when he needs to tune in to his own body and mind. It is a simple but supportive practice. The repetitive movement is soothing, and for many children the movement helps to quiet their minds. This is best done without shoes on.
Follow-up: Mindful walking is a great way for children to tune in to the sensations in their physical body. In fact, there are many other activities that your child does that can be similarly explored. Ask your child what it might feel like to mindfully take a ride on a swing, or to jump rope, or take a shower. Some children appreciate knowing that learning to tune in to their bodies while moving can help them become a better athlete.
Challenges: If this practice is a struggle for your child, you can invite him to walk in more playful ways. Ask, “What does it feel like to walk on your heels? On your toes? On the outside edges of your feet?” By changing the experience we increase engagement and ease of focus; however, as your child learns this activity, slowly reduce the amount of time spent walking playfully and reintroduce the simple mindful walk.
Daily Practice: As a daily practice, mindful walking keeps us grounded in our present experience and helps us stay connected to our bodies. It is best to give children (and yourself) a concrete and attainable goal. Try to get in the habit of making your first walk when you leave the house a mindful one. Setting an intention to walk mindfully to the car or school bus in the morning can have a powerful impact on the rest of your day.
Mindful Eating
Every day we think about food, prepare food, buy food, and eat food. But sometimes we are so busy that we forget to taste our food! Eating is an activity that we do several times a day, and it has the potential to bring us so much pleasure, but often both children and adults miss out on the sensations of eating because we are in a rush and distracted by other things. In this activity, we are going to explore all of the sensations of eating a clementine (one of the small, easy-to-peel kinds works best).
Follow-up: Be available to talk with your child after this practice and ask her about her experience. Throughout the day you can take advantage of moments to ask your child what she is experiencing through her senses. What is she smelling while dinner is cooking? What does she hear during a walk to school? What does she see during a car ride?
Challenges: If your child is a picky eater, it might help to let her choose the food the first time that she tries this practice. Other things that work well are raisins, carrots, and even ice cream cones, but you can really do this with any food. Don’t be concerned if things get a little messy.
Daily Practice: Because we eat every day, making mindful eating a habit ensures that we are fully connecting to our present-moment experience of life a little bit each day. A useful practice is to try making the first bite of what you eat in the morning a mindful bite. If this works well for you, and starts to become a part of your life, you may want to try making the first bite of each meal a mindful bite.
When children (and adults) are overwhelmed it can be hard for them to stay connected to their emotional experience. Actions become automatic responses to input, and self-control becomes harder. The first step toward regulating your own behavior is recognizing your emotions, but when your attention is always being pulled outward, your own emotions often go unnoticed. Rapid changes in emotional state are common for many children. For children with ADHD, this tendency is even more pronounced, and because their impulse control is not very strong, rapid changes in behavior are also common. The first step toward self-regulation and meaningful decision making is learning to tune in to your emotions and feelings as they are arising.
The following activities all support the development of a healthy inner life for your child: both Checking In and Emotion Jar work to develop the habit of noticing the inner experience, Caring Feelings deepens and expands that inner awareness to others, and the I Am In Charge Mantra is a practical and easy exercise that creates a regular reminder to your child that she is the boss of her actions.
Checking In
Sometimes the most challenging part of connecting to how we are feeling is actually recognizing the feelings. Sometimes we are just so busy that we don’t notice our feelings; sometimes feelings blur together and we only notice one of them (such as when we feel sad and angry at the same time but only notice the anger); and sometimes our feelings are just very confusing. Filling out the Checking-In Worksheet is a way to start becoming more aware of what you are experiencing in your body during different emotional states. Every person is different, and each person’s body sends different messages to help him or her understand him- or herself better. Once you learn what your body’s messages are, you can start to listen to those messages, reading your own body’s clues to help you figure out what is happening with your emotions.
Follow-up: As your child learns more about his response to emotions, you can help support this development by compassionately pointing out situations when his body is giving him a clue that he doesn’t notice. For example, you might say, “I can see that your eyebrows look scrunched.” Being noticed in this way is very validating for your child. It tells him that you are tuned in to his experience and that you think his feelings are worth noticing.
Challenges: There may be some emotions that are harder than others to figure out, and there may be times when your child is too upset or too frustrated to notice what is happening. Take this activity slowly, and, especially in the beginning, don’t ask your child to fill out the worksheet if he is having an intense emotional experience. See the A Guide to Compassionate Parenting in chapter 10 for guidance on communicating with your child during times of intense emotion.
Daily Practice: As you start to get into the habit of noticing your body’s response to emotions, you will discover more nuances, and a richer emotional landscape will develop for you. Try printing a large version of this worksheet and hanging it on a wall where your child can access it. Throughout the day as he experiences different emotions, he may find that walking over to the worksheet and checking in can help him make sense of what he is feeling.
Checking-In Worksheet
Please photocopy the following pages or use them as an example to complete in your child’s journal.
When I feel HAPPY what do I feel?
My body:
My breath:
My belly:
My face:
When I feel FRUSTRATED what do I feel?
My body:
My breath:
My belly:
My face:
When I feel EXCITED what do I feel?
My body:
My breath:
My belly:
My face:
When I feel ANGRY what do I feel?
My body:
My breath:
My belly:
My face:
When I feel SAD what do I feel?
My body:
My breath:
My belly:
My face:
When I feel NERVOUS what do I feel?
My body:
My breath:
My belly:
My face:
Emotion Jar
The Emotion Jar activity is a simple way to help remind your child to stay connected to her own feelings throughout the day, and to show her how feelings change over time. Creating opportunities for your child to check in with her feelings also shows her that you think her feelings are important and worth taking time to note. This validation strengthens your relationship and your capacity to help your child thrive. This activity was inspired in part by the work of Linda Lantieri. Her book and companion CD, Building Emotional Intelligence, is a great resource for more activities to help your child connect to her feelings.
Follow-up: You child may have questions about this activity as she begins to pay more attention to her feelings. Make sure that you are available to talk; let her know that all emotions are important, even the ones that don’t feel so great.
Challenges: The greatest challenge of the Emotion Jar activity is that sometimes it can be hard to know what you are feeling. Make sure your child knows that this is something you struggle with also—our feelings are complicated things, and it’s possible to be having more than one feeling at the same exact time. If this is the case for your child, let her use more than one object in her jars.
Daily Practice: Emotion Jar is an activity that is best used on a daily basis. You want to reinforce the habit of tuning in to emotions and figuring out the names of less-familiar feelings. Make sure that you encourage your child to move her object to both positive and negative emotions. Remember, the goal is not to change your or your child’s emotions or try to feel any particular way. The important part of this activity is to learn to notice all of your feelings, and to learn that you are still loved and accepted by your family when you have negative feelings.
Caring Feelings
The Caring Feelings activity is a child-friendly version of a Loving-Kindness or Metta practice, which is a type of meditation that can help your child develop compassion, contentment, and a feeling of well-being. In a traditional adult Loving-Kindness practice, kind thoughts would be sent to the self, to people close to you, to people you feel neutral about, and to people who you are angry or upset with. In our version, we are going to start with someone that your child loves very much, as this is the easiest way to access his kindness. We will end with the self, and, eventually, after this practice becomes familiar, you can try including someone challenging.
Follow-up: Ask your child how he felt about sending out the caring feelings, especially how it felt sending them to himself. You might talk about times when he sent unkind feelings to others or to himself, and how that felt. Ask him if there is anyone else he would like to send caring feelings to before you finish up for the day.
Challenges: Once this activity becomes familiar, try including a person that your child has a hard time with in his kind thoughts. Be sure to avoid anyone who your child finds frightening or is extremely angry at. Instead, try using language like “someone who annoys you” or “someone who has been bugging you lately.”
Daily Practice: Caring Feelings is a wonderful practice to bring into your daily life, as an antidote to the negative thoughts we all have about ourselves from time to time. Encourage your child to send himself kind and caring thoughts throughout the day, especially if he is feeling a little bit down. As the practice gets familiar, you can both experiment with sending kind thoughts to someone after an argument or disagreement (especially if you have an argument with each other!). Explain to your child that sending kind thoughts to someone else is a way to help himself feel better, even if he is still upset with the other person.
I Am In Charge Mantra
This children’s meditation is a variation on a traditional kundalini yoga meditation. It is an active meditation that reinforces your child’s personal power and capacity for self-determination. It is accessible and engaging for children who have trouble keeping their bodies still, and for many children this becomes one of their most relied-upon tools in everyday life.
Follow-up: The mantra “I am in charge” raises the question of what you are in charge of. Take the time to talk with your child about the things in life that we all control for ourselves. Children often feel like they have very little control and self-determination in their lives. Help your child explore where she has choices and ways that she has control over her experiences, actions, and reactions.
Challenges: Younger children or those with fine-motor challenges may struggle with the coordination to connect their fingers, especially with their eyes closed. Encourage them to practice the movement first, and even to watch their fingers if they need to, and then add the vocalization as the movement becomes comfortable.
Daily Practice: This activity gains potency with repetition. Encourage your child to practice it for just a couple of moments each day, and then to use it anytime she feels like she needs some extra personal power. This can even be done in the classroom when she feels particularly restless, if she moves her fingers silently. For many children this small movement can help them stay calm and connected during the school day.
Each of these activities has value both in what happens during the activity and what happens to the habits of the mind when the activity becomes part of your way of living. Connecting to the environment and connecting to the self need to become habits for your child, routine practices that, over time, become a normal part of how he operates in the world. For yoga and mindfulness practice to have the greatest impact on your child’s everyday life, make them a part of the everyday life of your family.
When you first begin to introduce these Connect activities to your child, think of them as a chance to explore. Encourage your child to ask questions, and share your own feelings and thoughts about the practices. Reinforce the idea that there is no one right way to do these activities, and keep the mood light and playful. The activities that your child is most responsive to and interested in should be the ones that you focus on including in daily practice. As the activities are repeated you can start practicing them with more intention—working on keeping your body still, keeping your eyes closed, or increasing the length of the practice.
While you may have purchased this book with one family member in mind, all of the activities will benefit anyone. I encourage you to share the practices with your whole family and view them as a path toward developing a more integrated and fulfilling way of life. Embracing the program as a family will change the way your child experiences it. Instead of being singled out as having a problem that needs to be fixed, your child will be part of a collaborative effort to live a healthy and happy life.