Meditating with Your Child

 

By Shirley Wilson

Imitation is the highest form of flattery, and that’s while children do it.

Children imitate their parents because they want to be like them, act like them, and be included in their activities—even the quiet ones.

You want to start the meditation process by making an area where you and your child can relax and be stress-free. Pick a quiet area where there are no distractions, and the area should be well lit, preferably with natural lighting.

Meditating with Your Child

Meditating is an excellent way to calm your mind and ease your tensions and stress from the outside world. Meditation helps to keep you calm with you enter a stressful situation and helps you handle things differently.

When we involve a child in our meditation process, we can find ourselves with a rumbustious child who doesn’t want to sit still or focus on a quiet time activity. However, if your child wants to participate,  having Chamomile tea on hand may help calm your child down.

1. Position your child to sit in front of you, facing you with their feet out so that you can begin the meditating process with them. This is beneficial, so your child can see how you are doing your meditation and can imitate what they see. 
2. For the first few weeks of meditation, instruct your child how to meditate with you. Sit down and close your eyes, take a deep breath, and teach your child how to release their tensions and cross their legs.
3. You don’t have to tell your child what to look for while meditating or have an end goal. As time progresses, your child will have a better sense of the meditation process and will be able to know how to relax, relieve their stress, and finish their meditation at their own pace.

Benefits of Teaching Meditation to Children

The benefits to teaching meditation to a child are endless. They don’t only help our children with their current lifestyles, but will also assist them later on in their adult lives.

Studies show that children who meditate are easier to be around, understand people better, communicate well, and know themselves better than children who don’t meditate. These studies also show that children who meditate are less angry, handle arguments better, and know how to react to angry people.

Meditation also provides them with the ability to quickly make decisions, respond better to situations and handle stress easier. Five minutes of meditation also gives children the same benefit as if they ran for 25 minutes. 

Lastly, meditation is known to increase health and life longevity. Meditation reduces stressors and life changing situations that can be detrimental to health, but because of meditating each day, your body and mind can react differently to these impacts.

Relaxation and Thoughtfulness

While meditation creates a relaxing and stress-free atmosphere, I would not recommend it be used before bedtime. Meditation will not have the same effects if used for bedtime, rather than different parts of the day.

You want to encourage your child to stay awake and work through their emotions, stresses and feelings during meditation, allowing everything to flow freely and for them to be at ease. Meditation will help your child become a self-aware individual who can assess situations and understand others.

Meditation will also help your child communicate to you better, and build a bond between your activity.

It’s good for both you and your child.

 

 

Shirley Wilson is the proud mother of two beautiful children. She has been writing informational blog posts for parents for a few years now and hopes she can help with your questions and concerns with parenting. You can visit her blog at toptenstrollers.com or follow on Twitter.

 

 

Photo: (source)

Editor: Dana Gornall

 

Comments

comments