According to reports, the stress levels of children today are relatively high, and they need opportunities to unplug each day to relax and focus. To help kids break from these, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) urges parents to include meditation in their children’s lives to integrate mindfulness. This helps children cope up with anxiety, depression, and hyperactivity.
Early introduction to meditation and yoga can provide children with the most significant benefit. Various studies and experts have confirmed that children who meditate develop positive personality traits, exhibit self-control, demonstrate attention, are empathetic, and are respectful to others.
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What is Meditation?
Meditation is the process of focusing on one’s inner self, clearing the mind, and practicing mindfulness.
Benefits of meditation for kids
Here are some of the benefits of meditation for kids
Reduce Stress and Anxiety
Meditation can reduce stress and anxiety in children. You can teach your kids to focus on their breath to come back to a calm, present state anytime, day or night.
Allowing kids to spend time outdoors, time away from the screen, is a great way to help them experience nature’s serenity. Additionally, guided meditations for kids are a great way to get children started on the path of meditation. Children can benefit from meditating for as little as five minutes a day.
Improved Focus
We live in a fast-paced world with technology, gadgets, social media, the internet, and so on. Adapting to this lifestyle is a more significant challenge for children, as they must learn to focus and cope with it.
Children who are taught mindfulness meditation at an early age can focus on better and more productive activities like reading, writing, and playing, rather than being distracted by video games and other screen activities.
Mindfulness meditation has been shown to help children with Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and improve their neuropsychological measures and behavioral symptoms.
Boost in Self Esteem
Our changing world can sometimes push children into a state of anxiety and depression. In addition, children may develop insecurities from experiences like bullying, competitions, and online interactions. The practice of meditation educated children to stay confident and boost their self-esteem, security, love, and compassion.
Empathy
A child’s world revolves around love, compassion, and empathy. The practice of meditation teaches children how to share, understand, and help others. Further, it aids in decision-making.
Promotes Happiness
A clear mind is a happy mind! Mindful children are aware of the many ways they can stay attentive, focused, stress-free, and content. Therefore, mindful meditation gives children a sense of peace from the inside out.
In a perspective published by Cambridge University Press, a study concluded that mindfulness meditation reduces stress, fear, and anxiety in uncertain times like the pandemic outbreak. In addition, mindfulness meditation has been found to reduce cortisol levels (the stress hormone).
Improves Sleep
Meditation can strengthen a child’s immune system and help them sleep better. It can also help them lower their stress levels.
Meditation works best right after waking up and right before sleeping. Meditating before bed enhances your child’s sleep quality, allowing them to wake up feeling refreshed and ready for school.
Better Breathing
A meditation routine that emphasizes deep breathing can be highly beneficial for children. Even for adults, proper breathing is something few of us are familiar with! So children who are taught how to breathe correctly will likely carry this subconscious habit into their adult years, which is of immense benefit.
Furthermore, encouraging children to meditate from an early age could help counteract low attention span and anxiety.
Better Understanding
The practice of meditation leads to long-term brain changes. Kids who practice meditation develop a better understanding. For instance, when you explain organic clothes as a simple example of sustainability to children, they become more interested and pick up organic clothes every time they shop. Meditation is a skill that needs repetition to be developed.
Boost Physical and Mental Health
Children and adults who meditate regularly benefit in many ways, including stronger immune systems, fewer headaches, lower blood pressure, and fewer aches and pains.
Further, meditation is proven to be beneficial to mental health as well. Regular meditation practices can decrease your child’s anxiety and depression, improve their attention span, help them become more self-aware, and boost confidence.
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About Author
I am Andrea Micheal, a post-graduate in humanities and communications, and an inquisitive person who loves writing. I’m working for Tiny Twig and my forte is digital marketing and everything that has to do with phones and screens. I am someone who believes that one person can make a change, and that’s precisely why I took up writing, which is the best tool to communicate these days. I have a decade of experience in writing and marketing, and I still find myself learning new things about it, which I want to share with my readers.
