waves of emotion
as we all witness within ourselves each day, emotions are fluid, flexible, and multi-layered. if you stay with any one feeling long enough, you will surely see it shift and move and change. that’s how we are built. when we look at our children, we often see emotions shifting (and totally mood-swinging) seemingly by the second.
and with good reason! if we could peek inside of the brain of a growing child and see the chemical chaos happening inside as cells are exponentially reproducing and learning is happening, we would have more appreciation (and compassion) for the fact that our child is even capable of putting one foot in front of the other to walk. i mean, it really is a wonder humans can manage all of this! there are ways of helping children to visualize something as seemingly ambiguous as their emotions — you guessed it: ART!
my husband and i are buddh-ish, and practice mindfulness meditation ourselves, so we take my daughter to a monthly meditation group for children, which she absolutely LOVES! the most recent session involved helping children to identify the quality of emotions through the metaphor of a wave. the speaker read a book to the children called my life with the wave, and talked a bit with the kids about how waves can be tiny ripples or steady crashes or huge tsunamis, and the parallel to how we sometimes feel inside.
the children were invited over to some art tables to create images of what their own personal “feeling wave” would look like in that moment, on that day.
after each child completed the art, s/he was to place it along a longer sheet of paper on the floor to add to the “ocean” of feelings in the room… made up of everyone’s individual wave.
we walked through the ocean gallery in the end to witness each person’s artful and isomorphic wave.
the parents and children gathered together on the cushions for the kids to talk about what they noticed. it was a lovely morning of being present to our feelings and expressing them through art… and, of course, the art therapist in me got all excited about that!
our kids organically live in the present moment – they are experts at it, and great teachers to us in helping us to do the same. (sometimes the shock of reeeally slowing down to BE HERE NOW is the hardest adjustment for brand new parents.) while kids’ lives exist only in the present (not in ruminating about the past or in planning for the future or multitasking,) giving children a language for their innate mindfulness provides a wonderful tool with which to understand themselves and express themselves. here are some books we’ve enjoyed with N ever since she was a wee thing:
- peaceful piggy meditation
- tibetan tales for little buddhas
- the sun in my belly
- starbright: meditations for children (moonbeam is a good one in this series, too)
- there are a couple thich nhat hahn books i’d like to get, too, like planting seeds: practicing mindfulness with children and mindful movements: exercises for well-being
do your children practice mindfulness? what sorts of tools have you found helpful with this?
