Your Happy Child: A Parent's Guide to Mindfulness

EASY and FUN activities to do with your child (aged 3–11) to encourage MINDFULNESS.

Mindfulness helps children FOCUS, become more RESILIENT, CALM their emotions, and experience greater JOY.

Helping children to be more mindful is a powerful gift: they will learn valuable lifelong skills, such as how to recognize and manage their emotions, how to calm down when they are upset, how to concentrate on important tasks, and how to interact with others with empathy and generosity. These fundamental skills often aren’t taught explicitly—frequently we demand that children “pay attention” or “calm down,” without showing them how to do so. Now parents can, with help from mindfulness expert Sarah Rudell Beach.

Easy-to-follow activities and games cover several mindful actions—Soothe, Focus, Feel, Pause, Appreciate, and Connect—with helpful variations for different age groups and “emergency how-tos” for particularly stressful moments. Advice for parents on how to become more mindful themselves is also included, so that they can more efficiently teach and demonstrate these techniques.

Sarah Rudell Beach holds a master’s degree in education and is a Mindful Schools Certified Instructor. She teaches mindfulness courses to children, teens, and adults. Sarah has written about mindfulness and healthy living for the HuffPost and is the author of Self-care for Busy Mothers and Your Mindful Pregnancy (published by CICO Books). She lives in Minnesota with her husband and two children.