Teach your little one about their self-safety.

Mindfulness towards self-safety involves being aware of our surroundings, paying attention to our surroundings, being alert to potential dangers, and taking appropriate action to avoid or mitigate potential threats.?

The human mind is always full of a cluster of thoughts and feelings. In such scenarios, focusing on a particular task with dedication and concentration gets tricky if your mind is not sorted. Take a pause and think whether your ‘mind’ is ‘full’ or you are ‘mindful’.?

Mindfulness is a technique that helps to be in the present moment without thinking about past thoughts or worrying about the future. In mindfulness, all you have to do is to focus on what is happening within and outside you. Focus on what you are looking at, hearing, and sensations in your body, feel your body parts and skin, feel the texture of the surface, and focus on the taste of the food you are eating. Mindfulness is useful for acknowledging and accepting one’s actions and thoughts without being judgmental. It helps reduce stress, self-regulate, increase self-awareness, and create a base for developing social skills and strong bonds in relationships. According to science, mindfulness helps in boosting the immune system, increasing resilience, enhancing focus improving memory and attention. It is also helpful for kids in increasing empathy, compassion, and willingness to help.

Safety is essential for kids, whether at home, school, parks, or on the road, and parents are always concerned about the same. Mindfulness can be an added element to increase safety awareness in kids. Young kids are naturally mindful as they have new and exciting experiences most of the time. But, older children and teenagers are mostly lost in their thoughts or are busy with something. It is the caregiver’s or teacher’s responsibility to teach them the importance and the ways to practice mindfulness and encourage them to form a habit of mindfulness. Kids who practice mindfulness are better at carefully focusing on the activities at hand and can also help others in need by being calm and relaxed during resolving a problem and making better decisions.

Let’s see how mindfulness helps in self-safety:

• Potential dangers: Kids and teens are always on the run. You can never see them sitting idle unless they are sad or heartbroken. Rushing or jumping all around without being aware of what is happening in and around them increases the risk of potential dangers such as road accidents, internal or external injuries, and sleep disturbance because of academic and life stressors that can lead to anxiety and depression if not taken care of, emotional dysfunction and so on. Mindfulness helps us to be calm and focused on what is happening within and around us. If your kid is mindful about self and the surrounding, he/she will be able to concentrate and take the appropriate decisions needed at the moment.?
• Sensing something unnatural: While you getting your kid to prepare to face things, make them aware of some situations like someone following them on the road, trying to touch them inappropriately, or someone older than them trying to befriend them in their parents/caregivers' absence, a stranger tries to gift them something, someone asks them to meet them alone, someone tells them their parents have sent him/her to bring them home. Once you brief them on the potential danger do let them know about the Do’s and Don’ts.
• Trusting the instincts:? Prepare your tween well enough so that they can respond to their instincts. Trust our instincts: If we feel uneasy or unsafe in a situation, we must trust our instincts and take appropriate action to remove ourselves from the situation. Sensing danger vibes, or having a sense of danger or threat, can be an important survival skill. It can help protect us from harm and allow us to take appropriate action to avoid dangerous situations.
• Reporting: Observing any unsafe or unnatural activity is important to be safe but what comes next is to report such activities to a trustful authority/parents/caregivers. If your teen/tween is mindful, he/she can use their enhanced cognition to inform and report the mishappenings, abuse, bullying, and accidents, or help someone else to report if someone else is being bullied, abused, or got hurt.
• Self-defence: Self-defense is nothing but defending oneself from any type of harm. A person can’t defend themself if they are not mentally present at the moment and are not self-aware or less distracted. They need to be able to focus on minute details and the actions of others, and take necessary action to save themselves from any dangers, predators, or anyone who wants to harm them physically.

Parents cannot be tension-free when it comes to their kids. But helping them practise mindfulness and making them 'mindful' will surely help you to reduce your tension regarding your kid's safety.

We wish you happy parenting!