How Mindfulness Improves Early Child Development

Jun 7

When a friend was living in Cape Town, South Africa, she regularly attended mindfulness classes at a yoga studio. During the class, the teacher instructed the students to imagine the mind as the sky and any thought that comes in like a cloud.

“What are you getting at?” I asked her.

“The idea of the exercise was to allow thoughts to pass without judging them, positive or negative thoughts,” she said. “The idea was to not let those thoughts affect your behavior, but to instead use those thoughts as a guiding force to understand yourself and the source of your emotions. The idea was to not let a poor thought affect your actions, and to just observe.”

What does this have to do with early childhood education?

As it turns out, everything. To be precise, mindfulness is intentfully paying attention within the present moment in a non-judgmental way. Although mindfulness is often associated with eastern religion and meditation rituals, it could easily be done in a way that is secular and interoperable.

While the idea of imagining your mind as a sky seems simple, mindfulness is not that easy. There are multiple layers to how deeply you could immerse yourself into a mindfulness practice. As Dr. Seth J. Gillihan pointed out in a recent Psychology Today blog post, mindfulness takes time and commitment. The research that I discuss later on in the article were done over the course of months, not just one yoga class.

Also, mindfulness can be done in an unhealthy way. For the extremely busy person, as Dr. Gillihan points out, it could just turn into another thing to check off the list. It should not be looked at as some sort of errand. It is like the morning coffee for your soul. It is an awareness that you’re trying to rush through your life. It is a way to thwart life in default mode and to stop yourself from simply going through the motions. That is no way to live.

Instead, mindfulness gives us a glimpse into the motivation of our actions and our thought sources.

What the Research Says

In addition to being helpful for the practicing yogi, mindfulness-based education models have been shown to improve both teacher readiness as well as increased social competence (Flook, Goldberg, Pinger, and Davidson, 2015).

For teachers, research has shown that introducing a mindfulness practice as part of a teacher competence training could enhance how the teacher identifies misbehavior. Research has also suggested that a combination of focusing on the present moment, self-awareness activities, and longer periods of mindfulness meditation could reduce stress for teachers (Linehan, 2014).

As for the developing child, mindfulness that was included as part of a curriculum for 4-year old children was shown to improve pro-social skills. A group that was given the mindfulness training exhibited less selfish behavior, had higher grades, more cognitive flexibility, and more delays in gratification (Flook, Goldberg, Pinger, and Davidson, 2015).

What does this mean?

Mindfulness is not only effectively improving a child’s behavior, but it is also improving the teacher’s ability to instruct. It is not some Eastern ritual, rather, it is a tool to understand yourself, your actions, and your reaction to the bad thoughts that pop into your mind like stormy clouds. The fact that research has shown a positive effect on childhood education shows that mindfulness can be introduced at a young age. While any and all research does not prove anything, it makes you think: how young can we start mindfulness training to the point where it’s effective? The answer might be younger than we think.