This might seem too simple, but it is actually an important first step in teaching your child mindfulness. Of course your child recognizes their emotions when they are at extremes. But, how are they are recognizing the feelings that lead up to the extremes?

You can help them become aware of these subtle changes in mood and emotions. A good place to start is when your child is happy or content. Ask them how they are feeling, but take it further. Talk to them about how their body feels. When they are excited about an upcoming trip, ask them if they feel butterflies in their stomach or how their face feels when they can’t keep their smile off of it.

Later, use this same technique when your child is upset. Ask them how their stomach feels, how the muscles in their body feel. Help them discover where in their bodies that they physically feel emotions. As your child becomes tuned into these subtle body changes, they will be able to recognize them before they reach an unpleasant extreme.

Eline Snel, author of the wonderful book “Sitting Still Like A Frog,” asks children to think of the weather event that best fits the mood they are in at any particular moment. This is a familiar and very appropriate activity for children, as we learn to observe the weather from a very early age.

The Weather Station is a  wonderful way to teach younger children about emotions.

Mindfulness for children – Weather Station

Purpose: Emotional regulation

Best For: Ages 4+

What you need: Nothing

The exercise is super simple. Simply explain that we can identify good feelings with sunny days and difficult feelings with stormy days.

To do this, sit down and close your eyes, taking a few deep breaths. Now identify the weather event that best matches how you are feeling right now. Do you feel a bit cloudy, or sunny, maybe windy and blustery or stormy and chaotic?

Now think about the weather. We cannot change it. It may not be what we want on that particular day or at that particular moment, but we can get through it, and we know it will pass. Realize that we are not the rain, but we can feel and see the rain, and the rain will come and go throughout our days. We accept the rainy days as we do the sunny days. They are all part of this wonderful life.

Recognizing and labeling emotions, this way, can take away the power of the emotion. Describing emotions like weather events can be used as a fun shorthand with your child when talking about emotions feels hard.

Wishing you many fun mindful moments with your children :-)

Chris Bergstrom

Chief Mindfulness Ninja @ Blissful Kids

 #1 Best-Selling Author of:
 
★★★★★ Awesome “Bought this book for my 6 year old, but even my 3 and 15 yo love the activities. We usually incorporate activities on a daily basis and it’s been working so far.”
&
★★★★★ Cute and calming “With the craze being all about baby sharks, it’s a great idea to take it and use it to help our kids calm down themselves. I’m a therapist and look forward to using this with my kid clients.”

See also:

Liking the Music

Stay Cool Game

5 Mindful Games

If you are new to mindfulness with children OR you want to make practice easy we recommend our online mindfulness courses.


Chris Bergstrom is a bestselling mindfulness author, a leader in the field of mindfulness, the founder of BlissfulKids.com, a blog dedicated to children’s mindfulness, and a dad who is thrilled to practice mindfulness with his son. He is a certified mindfulness facilitator and trained to teach mindfulness to students in K-12. He’s also known as “the dad who tried 200+ mindfulness activities” and has taught meditation for more than 15 years.