Only by spotting
“Ten Mindful Minutes” at
library did I realize Goldie Hawn, the American actress, is actually the
author and founder of the
MindUP program
to foster mindfulness training for both kids and parents and supporting various
researches on the benefits of mindfulness.
Its Chinese version is translated as
陪孩子靜心十分鐘。
Based in neuroscience, mindfulness and positive
psychology, MindUP™ teaches children greater emotional self-control, resiliency
and helps develop better decision-making skills.
Even for us parents, we can practice mindfulness in
controlling our emotion. I love the quotes below:
“I can’t think of a better way to become better parents than to nurture
ourselves and our ability to be mindful to gain greater insight and
understanding as to who we are as people."
“If a peaceful child can create a peaceful world, then a peaceful parent
can create a peaceful child”
“Parenting is like a relay race in which you run alongside your child for the
first eighteen years”
“all we can hope is that our children experience more positive than
negative effects from our parenting and become the healthy pilots of their own
lives.”
The book offers simple and handy tips on how we could
teach our kids how the brain works and some practices we can do at home with our
kids to be more mindful, optimistic, be grateful and
controlling our anger.
Here are some easy to follow tips:
Kindness
l A kind
act a day – making a kind act chain
Empathy
l Seeing
from different angle or height
l Drawing
pictures from different side
Sadness/Anger
l Use
Traffic light analogy
l Ask them
to draw or write about their feelings
Fear
l Put fear
in a box
l Acknowledge
your fears to them and rate a scale of
10
Gratitude
l Gratitude
jar/box
Optimism
l Half full
water story
Mindful
sensing
l Play I spy
l Mindful eating
l Mindful
awareness -- (eg) cleaning tooth
