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Night time meditation for kids
Morning meditation for kids
Meditation for kids instead of discipline
After school meditation for kids
Meditation for whenever your kids are overexcited
Night time meditation for kids
It's common to think that night time is the best time for kids to meditate. And bedtime is indeed a great time of day for kids to meditate.
Every parent will agree that bedtime can be a challenging time. You are tired after a long day. All you want to do is sit down with a cup of tea or glass of wine and begin to unwind from your day's stresses and strains. Conversely, your child is also tired from their day of running around, playing, and learning. However, few children will accept their bedtime gracefully as there is still more fun to be had. Whether bedtime is 7, 8, or 9 pm, children appear pre-programmed from birth to want to push this boundary. Thus, if you're not careful, you have two stressed individuals with diametric objectives battling it out.
Few parents will say No to a strategy that is effective in getting kids to sleep, and meditation is ideal. It's an excellent tactic to bring in guided meditation at bedtime. It's not just the fact that you want kids to get sleepy and destressed. You, as a parent, need to destress yourself. You'll also be calmer and better able to guide the bedtime routine without being irritable and snappy as you crave your downtime.
Bringing meditation into the night time routine is perfect for getting happy, peaceful children to sleep. Don't forget that while you have things that stress you out as an adult, such as an unreasonable boss and mortgage payments to meet. A significant worry that kids have is based around bedtime. It's not just that they are desperate to watch another half hour of TV. They have genuine fears of monsters or bad dreams, separation from parents, and being alone in their bedrooms.
Thus, meditation can help your child to overcome such concerns. Even if you're only a beginner at meditation and yoga, it's easy enough to guide a few minute session of meditation for your children. It's also a good way of meditating since children find their parents, in particular, their mother's voice very soothing and calming.
It's fine to guide the meditation session with sleepy kids laying in bed with their special sleep toy. For sleep meditation, you can have a slightly longer session than your child's usual minute per age. The tracks here at MFK are ideal. There are tracks for different age groups, and for boys and for girls. It's possible for kids to be asleep by the time the ten-minute meditation track is over. Also, you'll be calmer too. Thus, when you head downstairs to discuss your day's problems, you'll be in a better frame of mind to tackle them.
So that's bedtime meditation tackled, but meditation can also be very helpful at other times.
Morning meditation for kids
Meditation can also be used first thing in the day to help sleepy kids wake up and start their morning routine of getting ready for school. It's not always easy to wake up. We can all relate to pressing the snooze button repeatedly. The same applies to kids. You can practice guided meditation in the mornings to help sleepyheads to wake up, focus, and be thankful for the new day.
After school meditation for kids
Another time of day that's great for kids to meditate is straight after school. Kids can come back from school turbo-charged as though they are running on rocket fuel. It can be difficult to get some kids to behave. A post-work meditation helps you to transition from work and your kids from school to home life.
Often we play very different roles from work to home life. At school, your kids spend time with children their age, and when they get home, they are suddenly the older or younger sibling. The teacher has gone, and instead, it's mum or dad. So you can view this meditation as a reset button. Meditation at this time can allow you to let go of whatever happened at work and similarly whatever happened at school and to refocus yourself on home life. This time, meditation allows everyone to refocus their energy on what's important, which is family.
Meditation for kids instead of discipline
If your kids are getting out of control, you can call for a meditation time at any time. There's no need to wait until one kid has smacked the other to call for meditation time. Anticipate when your kids are getting out of control and start a guided meditation to calm everything down. There are tracks available on MFK that can help your kids with this.
If kids have got unruly and are resistant to you warning them about unacceptable behavior, then you can use meditation instead of the naughty step. Check out this article about how meditation is a better timeout tactic than the dreaded naughty step.
Meditation to calm
You can also use meditation to calm everything down when kids are getting too excited. They are talking a mile a minute, you can't get them to listen, they've had too many E numbers, or life is just too darn fun. Use meditation to bring excitement levels from five thousand back to ten.
And for the same reason, why not use calming meditation at a children's Birthday party? It's the 21st-century version of sleeping logs before party food. Play a short track when you have a dozen children that are so excited they are literally bouncing off your walls. Think, prizes for the quietest and least wriggly kid in a Shavasana pose!
Best of luck!