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Quote of the Week
"Life is a dance. Mindfulness is witnessing that dance." - Amit Ray
An Accidental Discovery That Resolved Many Of Our Family's Discipline Issues
"It’s infuriating isn’t it? You read a million articles about how to be a better parent and study a million new techniques to master this discipline thingie, and still your kids are masters of misbehavior and will tear each other apart at the slightest provocation. What gives?
I am a committed skeptic when it comes to parenting know how. But I recently discovered something that helped our family resolve sibling rivalry, discipline issues and more, and changed our family forever.
Mindfulness.
When I started, I had no idea that it had a new-agey name or that it was being hailed as some new fangled parenting mantra. I stumbled upon it by accident – and all the hype and hope aside – it really worked for us. What it boils down to is this; mindfulness is simply taking a moment to notice what’s happening in your family and accepting it. It’s noticing your own thoughts, noticing your child’s behavior and choosing how to react without letting your emotional baggage and your bad temper stomp all over your life.
It all started like this. On a couple of well-slept days I realized that when I could focus enough to see what was going on with my kids and then took a breath before I reacted, their behavior got better.
So did mine."
Keep reading one parent's humourous and insightful experiment with incorporating simple mindfulness practices into family life, which lead to the children being more present, emotional outbursts lasting for shorter periods and the parent feeling calmer Win-Win! [Read Article]
Reading Corner
Title: Sitting Still Like a Frog: Mindfulness Exercises for Kids (and Their Parents)
By: Eline Snel
Ages: 5-11
"When my kids were younger, they absolutely loved the mindfulness exercises in this adorable book and found it very easy to follow along. As a parent, it was helpful to have simple mindfulness activities with visuals and clear steps to follow in a very accessible format to share with my family -- I also enjoyed doing them alongside my children! It was especially lovely to do these together in the evenings as we were preparing for the children's bedtime and calming their minds down for sleeping."
-- Trishna Shah (Kindful Kids Editor and Mom of Teenage Daughters)
Recommended by Kindful Kids Editors
Be The Change
As Julie suggests in this week's article, "Spend the next week watching yourself, your spouse, your kids, your general schedule and take note of how often you lose your temper with your kids, how often they bicker, how often you are unhappy with a situation, how often you set each other off and so on. This in itself is a little exercise in mindfulness and will make it easier and easier for you to embrace mindful parenting more."
To step things up a notch, try taking a breath before responding to whatever situation is unfolding around you and see if it changes anything.
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