Five Ways To Cultivate a Reflective Mind Within Your Child
Mindful awareness is becoming a common language in conscious parenting. People are waking up to their virtual technologies and a mind body spirit parenting approach. They’re searching for information on how to create a more happy harmonious life. People want to live in the moment and be joyful. And, they want the same (if not more) for their children.
Things you can do every day to create mindful awareness within your child.
- Slow down and use your senses. Our senses are an exceptional tool when used in a focused and purposeful way. They can cause the brain and mind to calm, decrease racing stress filled thoughts and become more reflective, peaceful, content and joyful. Do mindful awareness activities with your child like close your eyes, take a few deep breaths and tune into only the sounds around you. See how many sounds you can identify. Another activity you can try is the following: you and your child collect 10 similar pebbles or rocks (or you can do this with a bag of apples, lemons or oranges). Each of you picks one pebble. Look at it thoroughly for 30 seconds to 1 minute. Now put it back into the group. Mix them up and then see if each of you can find the rock that you had. Talk about all the different things that you noticed that helped you identify your specific pebble. Activities like this teach your child to have an observant, reflective and focused mind.
- Practice Mindful Awareness with yourself. Children learn best by watching, so be sure to be more mindful in your behaviors and spoken words. Make it a goal to learn to live in the moment and not get caught up in all of the daily stress, reliving the past or worrying about the future. Children are great at living in the now! Take notice and practice what your kids are teaching you!
- Think about how you are treating your child. Treat your child with respect, love, acceptance and understanding always. Really talk to your child and listen when he or she speaks. They are extremely perceptive and advanced little beings. There is a lot going on inside their mind, spirit and brain that they can’t yet articulate through words. In fact, most children are psychic and they communicate intuitively with the world around them. The frustration for them is that adults often aren’t able to communicate on these (high) frequency levels. As a result, children can become irritated and frustrated because people aren’t responding to them. Do whatever you can to cultivate and reconnect with own your intuitive abilities.
- Practice gratitude. Teaching your child to be grateful for what he/she has helps immunize your child against harmful attitudes and behaviors such as entitlement, taking things for granted, unhappiness, etc. Take time to talk to your child about how blessed he or she is. Teach children to be grateful for life and the variety of experiences it provides. Notice how the world is filled with things in the sky, on the ground, in water and out in space. There are birds singing, splashes of color in nature, different trees to climb and flowers to smell. Having respect and appreciation for all things great and small is the impetus for fostering and maintaining their connectivity and love of nature, people and themselves. Bring it up close and personal too. Play a game of naming things they’re grateful for such a warm home, loving parents, family members, a hug, time to play and so much more.
- Don’t rush through the day (or tasks). Most people can’t wait to cross things off of their to-do list. However, you shouldn’t rush it, especially with children. Talk about what you are doing, the good it does, and why you enjoy doing it (even if it is just the laundry)! Take a walk and really look around you. Children are great at admiring things when they are outside. Harness that and discuss the beauty of the world when you are with your child.
Mindful awareness is easy… and it starts with you. Our brain absolutely loves it and it is our true natural state of being. Talk about it with your child. Discuss why he/she is blessed. Take time every day to practice it and soon your entire household will be living more mindfully!
