Mindfulness has helped me so much and I would like to use it as a tool for mental wellness for my whole family. I took the opportunity whilst babysitting my brother's kids this weekend to create some mindful tasks and see how they found the experience.

My nephew is 11 years old (and has ADHD and autism), and my niece is 13 years old. You will need to alter the tasks slightly for different ages. At this age I could explain why we were doing what we were doing and ask them how it made them feel. But you can carry out mindful tasks with children of any age, they don't even need to know why they are doing it, it is about giving them the space and tasks to concentrate their mind, for them to practice focus and calmness. Make sure it's always fun and always calm, and if not, just stop and move on.

If you search online, there is tons of research showing the benefits of mindfulness for children, including social awareness, calmness, increased attention and emotional awareness. Of course all good things come with practice, so the key is to do them regularly and often. Also ensure that you, yourself, are in a good space before you start any task by taking a couple of minutes to practice some silence and mindful breathing before you get going.

So the three tasks we did that I have detailed below were: mindful crafting, mindful walking and mindful breathing.

MINDFUL CRAFTING

There are no hard and fast rules for crafting, as long as it is fun, you can paint, glue, build, make a glitter jar, slime, stress balls, anything that you and your children will enjoy. The aim here is to maintain their focus. Talk whilst playing; What are they doing? How are they doing it? Focus on them being observant, what colours or textures are they using? Exercise their imagination by asking them questions. If their mind starts to wander (or even their body, like my nephews did) bring them back and calmly bring their focus back to what they were doing and gently encourage them to carry on. The picture above shows the fruits of our labour.

MINDFUL WALKING

I love mindful walking - if you haven't heard of it before, it's paying attention to the sensations on your senses that you are experiencing whilst walking, giving you something to anchor your focus on when your mind wanders. As I had only two children I held their hands and asked them to close their eyes for our walk up and down the garden. If you have more children they can keep their eyes open, just make sure you lay out the plan first i.e. walk to the end of the garden, turn around and come back again.

Whilst they are walking slowly ask them to breathe in and out deeply, remind them of this often. Ask them to think about the below, to themselves in their head. Give them enough time/steps to do each:

1. Feel each part of your foot touching the ground and focus on how it feels
2. Listen to what sounds you can hear and focus on each one
3. Notice what smells you can smell
4. If they have their eyes open ask them to think about what they can see

To finish ask them to stand still and take a few deep breaths.

MINDFUL BREATHING USING SENSE OF SMELL

Breathing is the easiest thing in the world to do but paying attention to it can be a little more difficult. By introducing another sense, like smell, it can help your children focus. I used chocolate tea (very yummy by the way, but too hot for smaller children). You can use anything with a scent; a flower, food, drink, even fresh washing, something that they will smell and like.

Ask them to hold the item within smelling distance and close their eyes.

1. Breathe in and notice the lovely smell
2. Breathe out and blow like the wind
3. Do this with them
4. Breathe in and smell the chocolate [insert applicable smell here]
5. Breathe out and blow the smell away
6. Repeat this for a couple of minutes reminding them each time how to breathe in and out

This is a wonderful exercise for calm and relaxation. Use different items each time to keep them interested.

RESULTS

To finish off I asked the children to write down words to describe how they felt doing each task, and the words they came up with were: calm, relaxed, happy, chocolatey, nice, peaceful, mind at rest, soothed and focused.

I hope you find this useful and have lots of fun, if you have any questions please do get in touch.

Thank you so much for reading, and lots of love as always.

Come say hi on Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/mamakind.polly