How Do We Cultivate Mindfulness in Our Children?
June 12, 2012 § 3 Comments
A piece I posted on Facebook last week has stuck with me, a short post from PBS’s MindShift blog on how an overreliance on technology can leave a “mindfulness” gap in our children – a world where there is never a disconnect, never a power-down time to recharge and be aware of the present. This dystopian thought, that our kids are inundated with so much media, content, and imagery that has been produced outside of their own minds, without a moment to think, process, or reflect, has caused all kinds of alarm bells to go off in my mind. So I thought I’d dedicate a little blog space to considering what actually constitutes mindfulness, exploring whether or not our kids need it, and how we can incorporate mindfulness practices into their lives – and maybe ours, too.
What is mindfulness? According to Psychology Today, “Mindfulness is a state of active, open attention on the present. When you’re mindful, you observe your thoughts and feelings from a distance, without judging them good or bad. Instead of letting your life pass you by, mindfulness means living in the moment and awakening to experience.”
Do your kids get to experience this on a daily basis?
The MindShift author, Aran Levasseur, tells us that the average American consumes 34 gigabytes (about one full-length movie) PLUS 100,000 words of “content” every single day. Highly doubtful then that many children, between school, homework, commuting, extracurricular activities, and what amounts to 3-4 hours of media consumption are experiencing much in the way of mindfulness. Mr. Levasseur also wisely notes that our cultural attitude toward mindfulness, contrary to our Puritan roots of work and constant doing, reeks of the “laziness” associated with boredom, so we Americans tend to think of being present and living in the moment, without goals and measurable achievement to guide us, as a waste of our precious time. As a culture, we view time as a commodity that’s in great scarcity – makes sense if we have so much to do, right?
Being mindful does not mean giving up ambition and technology, keeping no time schedule or having no goals. Just as it’s not the smartphones, videogames, and computer screens themselves that are causing us to ignore the present – it’s the space they fill up, and the frenetic distraction they cause, after our other tasks are done.
Unplugging from technology in order to be still and quiet, researchers say, is beneficial both to well-being as well as academics. Recent studies on the importance of play and the time to daydream point to the benefits of our children tuning out, even for a short time.
Why do we need to be unplugged from technology to be mindful?
On yesterday’s Opinionator blog at the New York Times, A Natural History of the Senses author Diane Ackerman says upfront, “We’re learning about the world without experiencing it up close in all its messy, majestic, riotous detail.” That really hit me; I have felt that during times when I interact with more online friends than real ones, or when I ingest more online “content” than experience time with my family. In her op-ed, “Are We Living in Sensory Overload or Sensory Poverty?” she says,
“As an antidote I wish schools would teach the value of cultivating presence. As people complain more and more these days, attention spans are growing shorter, and we’ve begun living in attention blinks. More social than ever before, we’re spending less time alone with our thoughts, and even less relating to other animals and nature. Too often we’re missing in action, brain busy, working or playing indoors, while completely unaware of the world around us.”
Sound familiar? How could we get our schools to cultivate presence? Do you have any ideas?
How do we teach mindfulness to our children?
This is the real kicker, the one that causes my face to get hot, because I know that children pay much more attention to what we do than what we say. I’m as addicted and dopamine-high on blog hits and Facebook likes as the next. I would have to say, reluctantly, that they are watching us, in all our time-deprived, attention-deficit, Twitter-checking, manic race to the end.
Perhaps the way to teach mindfulness to our children is to take a deep breath, put down the iPhone, and go catch some fireflies.
I’m outta here.
My daughter is in middleschool and “mindfulness” has taken on a new meaning for her. In her classes, the teachers actually instruct on how to have mindfulness momemnts – how to put concerns/stresses about the future out of their minds and just focus on the here and now. Breathing. Quiet time. Reflection. In theory, a good idea. I’m entirely in favor of having kids learn to digest all of that input (digital or analog), absorb and feel before reacting, and just be present. But I think I’d prefer we all just go catch fireflies rather than making this a formal subject. My daughter hates this time at school most of all. She says it makes her stressed out more than just going through the day – what is she supposed to think about? What has she forgotten that she is upset about that she can now forget during her mindful moment. Ever the pleaser, I find that she could be in a pefectly present state only to have it ruined as she is required to turn her mind inward and focus. I probably sound like a ranting ninny. Maybe I am. I agree with Holly’s idea, though, that we need to just go catch fireflies – literally or figuratively. Having time in the day devoted to being in the here and now, without consequence (save for possibly an errant catch of a poor small glowing beasty), without a schedule, and certainly without media in any form has got to be a good thing.
Wow, Wallace, I would have been exactly like your daughter. I was also a pleaser, and I, too, would have tried to figure out how to do it just right. I have to agree with you that mindfulness and being present is more a cultural mindset than a class you take in school – although I suppose, in our overloaded world, being exposed to what mindfulness IS is at least a step in the right direction! Maybe mindfulness is something we need to internalize as a society, a symbol being catching fireflies or other mindless pursuits that only serve us with beauty and the fleeting-ness of time. Thank you so much for your thoughts, I hope you will come back and comment again!
Hi Holly,
I wonder if whether ‘mindfulness’ training is one thing and being mindful is another thing. I know that my daughter had a similar experience that Wallace’s had with the mindfulness dates at her school. They were artificial and seemed to force turns of attention that seemed unnatural — since when do you focus on your breathing? But I think that there’s the time to focus on getting the skills and there’s another at exercising them. I know that my daughter used those skills while riding in the car on a very long trip recently, and we didn’t have to prompt it.