Mindfulness for Children

Mindfulness of the future means taking into account the long-term consequences of our own actions for our children's generation and their children's generation, and beyond - Daniel Goleman

I have been reading, practicing and trying to learn about mindfulness for quite a long time. The personal psychological and more importantly mental benefits I've experienced are tremendous. My research interests lie in helping underprivileged children acquire important social skills that enhance their quality of life. Suffice to say, a researcher who cannot enhance their own mental well-being, would not be able to do much for the children he is working for. With that logic in mind, I try to be careful with how I handle my own mental health and development. After having practiced it for quite some time, I think, mindfulness can play a huge role in learning in general. 

 Let's see how. Mindfulness is an act of being present in the now. Paying attention to how the mind and body feels at any given moment. It has been found to enhance attention. In fact, I would put it best as a meta-attentive process, as it makes us pay attention to the state of mind to understand, if at all, we are paying attention in our life or not. I think, and some recent reading ventures, have led me to fully appreciate and share the knowledge that mindfulness and inner peace development practices do have long-term positive effects.

Mindfulness is an act of being present in the now

"It feels nice inside" and "It made me have happy thoughts" are some of the reported answers from children of low-income shelter school on how regular mindful practice made them feel (which is great to know because that's exactly how mindfulness makes me feel as well, children are more meta-analysts than we consider them to). These are reporting of an 8-year old, to put things into reference. What mindfulness asks a person to do is deceivingly simple, however, I believe that's exactly what makes people shun away from it. People think that it is so simple and their lives so complicated. Mindfulness would not be able to help them.

 According to neuropsychology, we know that simple mindfulness exercises such as mindful breathing enhances the attention circuitry as well as the circuitry that calms us down. This dual enhancement of calm and attention circuits makes for an excellent combination for an inner state of learning. It calibrates the brain to learn. Mindfulness boosts attention and perceptual sensitivity and lowers aggressiveness, frustration along with down moods. It helps a person to stop, reflect and provides them an opportunity to be more kind to themselves. I am sure the perceptive of you already see how this helps with learning.

 However, it helps learning more directly as well. Mindfulness can boost inquisitiveness as well, in fact it implores us to be curious about ourselves and our surroundings. Sort of asking us to adopt a playful attitude towards life experiences. This leads them to be more sensitive to others. It helps us to stop on demand which is the fundamental of cognitive control. Many of our day to day decisions are dominated by the impulse (driven by amygdala). Mindfulness helps us shift this load of decision making from amygdala to the executive- function driven prefrontal cortex, affectionately known as the rational mind. The pioneering work of Roger Weissberg in 1980 on 'Social Development' is a stellar example of that.

Furthermore, mindfulness can also enhance the emotional awareness of the person. It helps the complex interactions between both hemispheres of the brain occur more smoothly, by exercising the corpus callosum ( a structure that connects both hemispheres). It is also worth mentioning that mindfulness has been known to boost both Classic and Selective attention, imperative for learning and a good quality of life. When I first starting working on my research in my bachelor's and visited an orphanage, the first thing I thought was our contention that education is the key to help underprivileged attain a higher quality of life is so misguided and simplistic. How can they sit in a classroom if they can’t listen and lack other basic skills that so many of us take for granted?

My thoughts were echoed by various people and professionals alike. Daniel Goleman reports in his book FOCUS that "Kids who can't pay attention can't learn; they also can't manage themselves well". It was a bittersweet moment in this research journey to know this piece of information. Happy because I got to know that I was doing something right when it came to learning more about underprivileged children and sad because this is a serious, fundamental and often ignored facet of development for children, let alone underprivileged or not. It will make smaller changes in the cognitive life that will help one, more likely than not, produce more positive changes in later life, to put it in an oversimplified way. Needless to say, in all my coming ventures I aim to make sure that I utilize all the benefits mindfulness research can offer to help all children!

 Keep Thinking,

 Anand