Mindfulness For Very Young Children by Mrs. Crehan

Greetings to all from retirement! My life currently is dominated by the very young and the very old as I am caring for my 1 year old grandson, I visit two Homestart families (a charity based locally at All Saints Church that cares for families with young children who are struggling to cope) and I sing and teach Mindfulness to our 2 -3 year old St. Helen’s Ducklings. Also, at the other end of the age spectrum, I take out my ancient parents and visit two old people’s homes locally with a group of St. Helen’s College children, singing songs from the 1940s.

Mrs. Drummond and I attended the Annual Mindfulness Conference on Saturday which was very inspiring. It showed how vital Mindfulness is to all ages but also how important it is to teach at an early age because thoughts are powerful and the longer one believes damaging ideas about oneself, the harder it is to stand back from them and not be affected by them negatively. At the conference there were quite a few young people who spoke of how close they had come to seriously affecting their health through anxiety and how learning Mindfulness had allowed them to calm themselves through daily meditation and through the ability to watch their thoughts and remember that thoughts are not facts and that they don’t have to believe them.

There is a member of Parliament, Chris Douane, who has introduced the practice of Mindfulness to a large number of members of Parliament, who spoke at the conference about his intention to get Mindfulness taught in as many schools as possible and maybe introduce it into teacher training because there are so many young people who are suffering from negative mental health and anxiety in our secondary schools and sometimes at the top end of our junior schools and more teachers are needed to teach it.

At St. Helen’s College, Mrs. Drummond has trained in the teaching of Mindfulness and continued the teaching of two different Mindfulness courses in Year 4 and Year 6, while I am inventing my own course for the Ducklings because there is nothing written by Mindfulness in Schools Project for this age group as yet. The age of two may seem quite early to introduce Mindfulness. However, I think that even if children don’t suffer from too many negative thoughts at this age, the regulation of their emotions is quite important as it is the beginning of their will developing and they can experience quite strong feelings, for instance, when their will is thwarted, otherwise known as the ‘terrible twos.’

I have two puppets: a monkey and a lion. The monkey is supposed to represent the agile mind, flitting everywhere, grabbing onto a particular thought or feeling and dominating one’s emotional realm. The lion is supposed to represent stillness and wisdom.

I invent various scenarios where Monkey is unhappy or over-excited and experiencing all the different emotions. Lion advises Monkey how to feel happier by suggesting things such as slow breathing where one breathes out for a longer count than one breathes in, or shows him a snow shaker where the snow flurry represents the thoughts which eventually rest in stillness or finger-breathing where they run a finger from one hand up and down the fingers of the other hand in time with their inward and outward breaths. I believe that this last practice is now often used by some teachers in the early years to settle children down after they have come in from the playground. The Ducklings also have their own snow-shakers with a photo of their face inside which they can shake and watch as the flakes gradually settle, like their own thoughts or emotions.

I have given each of the Ducklings their own monkey and shown them how to put it onto their chest when they go to sleep and watch the monkey go up and down as they breathe. This concentrates the mind on the breathing which calms the thoughts at bedtime and can help them go to sleep.

So in a very simple way through various breathing practices they will begin to learn that when they experience an emotion it does not have to take over their whole being but they can begin to see it in a more detached way and thus have control over themselves. One parent of a current Duckling told me that her daughter is able to take herself off and sit still to calm herself when she is upset.

The concentration on breathing has a dual purpose in that it takes the attention off whatever is dominating the mind but also it has a physiological function in that the slower breathing also slows down the heartbeat and the body calms down and de-stresses, which counteracts an over-emotional state.

We have looked at the use of the senses in detail with fun games, launching it with a Spiderman toy with 'spidie senses', because awareness of each sense is a great way to access the present moment and thus a way to reconnect with the external world, away from the inward all-consuming thoughts and feelings. Having spent a session on each sense we had a great sensory walk outside today where the Ducklings were able to notice the sound of the birds and traffic, could smell the lavender and the herbs, could watch a spider spinning its web and could touch a cold rough wall or feel a smooth leaf. I’m sure we’re all aware how frequently we can walk without being aware of anything and are totally immersed in our thoughts.

I should say that the Mindfulness teaching at Ducklings is only at the beginning of each session and we then sing songs that may be related in subject matter to whatever we have looked at with Monkey and Lion as well as singing traditional nursery rhymes. ‘If you’re happy and you know it, clap your hands’ is a regular, and also our senses version, ‘If you look and if you see, use your eyes!’  We sometimes do a little yoga or mindful movement too.

I am grateful to many parents of Ducklings last year and this year who have told me of the positive effect that the Mindfulness course has had upon their children and that it has given their children control over their moods and given them the tool of seeing that, if they are able to identify their mood, then they can step back from it and take the relevant positive action to feel happy again or at least be free from the dominating thoughts.

If St. Helen's College children can learn to identify how they are feeling and take the steps necessary to alleviate the pain that can come from difficult emotions at this early stage, and with the Mindfulness and Positive Psychology that they will practise at school in Years 4, 5 and 6, it will spare them much heartache in the future as well as giving them the tools to help them to avoid the mental illness that seems prevalent in our young people today. They might be able to teach some Mindfulness to their parents too!

Mrs. Crehan