When pressure, expectations, and stress make your daughter’s world start spinning a little too fast, this is one powerful way to guide her back toward inner calm, peace, and stillness. Below are three ways mindfulness for teens is pivotal during these transition years.
Kids are incredibly mindful beings, able to hyper-tune into their current surroundings in an awe-inspiring way.
After all, have you ever seen anyone stare at an ant for minutes on end, savor a dripping popsicle or intensely inspect their belly button as if it were a newfound treasure, the way a child can?
Kids have an unparalleled ability to shut out the distractions in their environment and zero in on what’s happening in that moment. We come into the world with this ability because being in the here and now, is a natural state that serves our happiness and well-being.
Children enter into this world incredibly mindful beings, but then they grow up.
As pigtails morph into purple hair chalk and board books turn into chapter books, we see our daughter’s world begin to speed up around her.
Academic expectations start to weigh on her shoulders.
Screens gently tug her away from the present moment.
New social pressures cloud over her interactions with friends.
Unrealistic expectations about appearance pop up around her.
False ideals of perfectionism infiltrate her self-confidence.
As our daughters grow there is one powerful tool that will help keep anxiety at bay.
Our daughters are living in a faster-paced world than many of us can identify with ourselves as parents. We feel helpless when we see our daughter’s emotions and confidence become unsteady.
While there are certain realities of ‘girl culture’ that will remain unchanged, there is an effective and research-driven way to help your daughter slow down amidst the spinning, pulling and tugging of cultural expectations.
Mindfulness.
Many of us know that mindfulness means intentionally drawing our awareness to the present moment, in a kind and unbiased way, accepting things just the way they are right now.
3 Ways Mindfulness for Teens / Tweens is Pivotal
How does mindfulness help to lower anxiety for girls in the tween and teen years? Let’s dig into three pivotal ways practicing mindfulness helps to lower stress during this turbulent phase of development.
1 | Mindfulness helps your daughter get in touch with her emotions.
Look out! Emotions coming in hot! In the tween years, many parents notice their daughter handling emotions with ease one day, and the next looking more like a temperamental toddler.
The tween and teen years are full of emotional upheaval due to developmental factors like fluctuating hormones and brain growth in the areas that support emotional regulation.
How mindfulness for teens can help: It is easy for your daughter to avoid and suppress emotions throughout her busy day, a short meditation will help her to slow down and turn her awareness inward. Whether you refer to it as mediation, downtime or chilling out, finding some short guided meditations that jive with her, will be of huge benefit to her emotional health.
2 | Mindfulness inspires a positive relationship between your daughter and her body.
The tween and teen years often bring change to the relationship between your daughter and her body. While our culture will try and bring her awareness to outside appearance, mindfulness allows her to focus on what’s inside, helping her to tune into what her body is telling her and to pay attention to how she is manifesting emotions or anxiety physically.
How mindfulness for teens can help: A short mindfulness practice known as a body scan will allow your daughter to assess her breathing, and each area of the body, helping her tune into what her body may be communicating. There are many great apps and audio recordings of body scans such as this one from Mindful.org.
3 | Mindfulness helps your daughter gain awareness of her thought patterns.
Did you know that around 80% of our automatic thoughts are negative? Humans are pessimistic by nature due to the brain's wiring for survival, and being in a stressful environment only serves to increase your daughter’s propensity for negative thinking patterns. The tween and teen years typically see a decline in self-esteem for girls, which is undoubtedly affected by your daughter’s thoughts and perceptions of herself and the world around her.
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The power of your daughter’s thoughts can’t be underestimated, as her thoughts drive her emotions and her emotions guide her behavior. Bringing awareness to her thoughts allows her challenge negative thought patterns, replacing them with more positive and accurate ones.
How mindfulness for teens can help: The 3-step breathing space is a quick yet efficient way to help pull your daughter’s thoughts out of auto-pilot mode (often negative and unhelpful) and into consciousness. The practice can be represented by the acronym AGE. (A)cceptance challenges your daughter to observe, “what is going on in my mind at this moment”. The second step of (g)athering means letting go of thoughts and focusing in on one grounding factor in the body (either breath or another physical sensation). Finally, awareness is (e)xpanded to the body as a whole, with an attitude of acceptance, curiosity, and kindness.
Mindfulness is a powerful tool for our daughter’s in a fast-paced world
When pressure, expectations, and stress make your daughter’s world start spinning a little too fast, mindfulness helps guide her back toward inner calm, peace, and stillness.
A place where the safe haven of peace and contentment is always right there waiting for her.
A place to escape the pressures of the outside world that threaten to consume her.
A place that was always meant to be her home.
When your tween or teen daughter learns to foster awareness of the present moment, tuning into her body, emotions, and thoughts, she has gained an enormous protective factor against anxiety, in a world where she surely needs it.
. . .
The research for this article is based on the 8-week Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) training Angela completed with her therapy clinic. Get more information about The Mindful Academy International or mindfulness training from accredited MBSR teacher Tina Romenesko here.
MEET ANGELA from Parents With Confidence.
Angela is a licensed clinical therapist and wants to help you raise emotionally healthy kids that will change the world, by explaining the he(art) and science behind your child's developmental and emotional needs at ParentsWithConfidence.
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P.S. Zina here! I also wanted to take a moment to share this with you...
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