Teaching history to children can be a fascinating and enriching experience. It's an opportunity to help them understand the world's past, gain perspective on current events, and develop critical thinking skills. Incorporating mindfulness into history lessons can further enhance their learning experience. Here are some tips on how to help your child with mindful history:
Incorporating mindfulness into history lessons can enhance your child's learning experience by promoting curiosity, empathy, critical thinking, and reflection. It can also help them develop mindfulness skills that can be beneficial in their overall well-being. By combining history with mindfulness, you can inspire your child to develop a deeper appreciation and understanding of the world's past.
]]>Statistics from KidsHealth Medical Experts show that kids will view 200,000 violent acts on television before they are 18 years old.
This article focuses on ten mindfulness kids’ TV shows and animation that will make screen time more fun and beneficial.
Mindfulness is defined as paying attention to what is going on by blocking distractions. The mental state of mindfulness requires a person to slow down and be calmly focused.
Almost all parents will relate to the struggle of unsuccessfully trying to get a kid to do something meaningful without being distracted. No worries!
This is simply because most kids lack the mindfulness skill necessary for them to complete a task of several steps without being overwhelmed by distractions.
Kids that practice mindfulness benefit in the following ways:
A recent report by the CDC shows that kids Ages 8-18 spend an average of 4.5 hours watching TV each day; this makes ensuring the kids are watching the right content a high priority issue.
“All television is educational television. The question is: what is it teaching you?” Nicholas Johnson
In most of the available TV shows, there is a theme of making kids understand the concept of choices and consequences. For instance, people who do good even when others are doing wrong end up gaining the most in the end.
Below are ten mindfulness TV shows and animations that would greatly benefit your kid.
This is an animated TV show about a community of birds that live, learn and play on the branches of an old tree.
The story gets to show the interactions between the adult birds and the baby birds. The characters in the show encounter various challenges and require specific skills to succeed or survive.
This TV show teaches kids how to be patient as well as kind to one another.
This is a TV show about Addison, a young girl who undertakes brain-teasing adventures when she’s not creating innovative items.
The mysteries she solves require emotional intelligence and patience, a virtue that is important while nurturing mindfulness.
Addison also cooperates with the friends to solve the mysteries, overcome setbacks, and support each other through the mystery-solving process.
By encouraging the kids to use their imagination, Addison challenges the viewers to expand their reasoning limits while perceiving the world around them.
This animated TV show features Arty and his sidekick, Epiphany, who uses art to solve problems creatively.
The two use their wits to create a fun environment that nurtures their creativity that is later expressed in their art projects.
One of the important lessons that kids learn from the show is the need to plan before embarking on the project. Having just a simple plan allows the two main characters to remain focused on the task and complete it within a short period of time.
By getting an idea of what the two want to accomplish, they can maintain their focus throughout the process.
Mindfulness requires focus and the ability to block out distractions in the process, a skill that kids can gain from watching Creative Galaxy.
This is an animated series about Doc McStuffins, a 6-year-old doctor who takes care of unwell toys.
The series teaches about compassion and a can-do-attitude while solving problems.
Although Doc McStuffins understands all toys, he still takes time to treat each toy individually and communicate with it.
This show teaches kids to value mindfulness while dealing with others.
This is an entertaining animated series about Princess Elena’s adventures.
On her quest to regain the throne taken from her parents, Princess Elena employs the wisdom imparted on her by her ruling council.
At first, you might get lost, but the innate lessons of mindfulness start to project themselves in her decision-making process soon enough. It combines the thrill of her adventure with lessons in kindness, patience, and self-esteem.
The best thing with this series is that as a parent or guardian, you start to get sucked into the story soon, making it a great show to watch with your kid or kids.
Franklin is an animated series about Franklin and his friends.
While it outlines gentle moral lessons at the end of each episode, the series does an excellent job of teaching the values of honesty and patience throughout the episode.
Kids learn about mindfulness when interacting with friends from Franklin while still getting a good laugh out of it.
This series is about an 11-year old boy who suffers from social anxiety disorder and is comforted by a loving dog.
Noah finds strength and courage from his relationship with his dog Dude. This story’s inspiring storyline dwells on the fact that it’s okay not to be perfect and it’s okay to seek help when in need.
The simplicity and brevity with which the series communicates this makes it easy for kids to understand.
Mindfulness at any level requires self-awareness and self-acceptance, a point emphasized by Noah’s story of resilience.
This is an animated series about two friends who have many issues usually resolved using constructive dialog and open communication.
Kids can learn how to resolve conflicts in a non-confrontational way and listen to their friends’ concerns. Patience and listening are skills that can be taught when the kid is still young. Kids with these skills can readily embrace mindfulness in their interaction with their friends and family.
This classic TV show has been a favorite for many kids for more than a decade now.
The show teaches kids about being there for each other, treating each other with kindness, and the value of honesty.
The best part about this show is that it combines social lessons with academic lessons in a fun way that makes your kids' learning experience fun.
Your kids would have fun watching the show and still get valuable life lessons about kindness and patience as an added benefit.
This is an animated series that promotes cultural diversity. The main character of this show is a fun bear that goes around the world on a bike, encouraging kindness and respect.
With Mouk, you get a simplistic TV show that addresses issues that kids are bound to face in their interactions with other kids from different backgrounds.
It encourages learning more about how other people from different backgrounds live and appreciating each other’s diversity.
Embracing new experiences helps kids value the concept of mindfulness as they focus on learning new ways of doing things.
Screen time utilized on the right content provides an excellent opportunity for kids to gain essential life skills and qualities such as mindfulness.
Choosing the right content is very important, and parents should ensure that they understand the content the kids are being exposed to during screen time.
]]>Kids of all ages can significantly benefit from practicing mindfulness. It can help them develop positive qualities like focus, curiosity, compassion, and empathy while also keeping them entertained.
Mindfulness is the simple practice of embracing the present moment with an accepting, gentle attitude and bringing your attention to it. In children, it helps promote happiness and decrease anxiety. Studies show that mindfulness activities help increase focus, reduce stress, and improve academic performance in kids.
By introducing kids to mindfulness practices, we can equip them to face the stresses of the world with presence, openness, and self-compassion from an early age.
In recent years, mindfulness has gained lots of popularity. However, not many people discuss its potential in children's lives and how we can help them practice it.
In this article, we’ll discuss its benefits and the three fun mindfulness activities to get your kids started. Let’s begin!
According to a study carried out on pupils from grade 1 to 12, practicing mindfulness can bring significant benefits:
The study found that children who practiced mindfulness developed better conflict resolution skills and portrayed overall better well-being.
Children are known for their short attention spans, jumping from one thing to another all day.
Mindfulness practices were found to be effective in improving self-control, focus, classroom presence, involvement and participation in activities, and compassion among peers.
As children learn to draw their attention to the present moment and accept it with a positive attitude, risks of anxiety and depression fade away.
Hence, the study found mindfulness-practicing children to show decreased signs of anxiety, depression, and disruptive behavior.
In all development stages in a person’s life, mindfulness can be incorporated as a powerful tool to promote overall well-being, reduce anxiety and stress, and promote happiness. The same goes for children of all ages.
Children as young as three years of age can learn and practice breathing techniques and feel a significant positive change in their bodies.
With guidance in the right direction provided by their parents, a child can regularly practice mindfulness and retain and use those skills when they need them.
By around age 4, they can develop strong mindfulness skills, which they can utilize independently.
If your child is old enough to benefit from mindfulness, here are three highly entertaining ways to get them started.
Yoga is an incredible mindfulness activity that can open the doors to countless physical and spiritual health benefits. These include:
With children, you should always start small—no matter what you’re introducing them to. After all, they don’t have an adult’s stamina to practice yoga for 60 minutes straight.
Start with merely a few minutes of breathing and movement every day, focusing on bringing your child to a calm and relaxed state. You can practice it at any time of the day, but it’s best to hold these short sessions at the same time slot every day.
It can be added to their morning routines or act as a calming transition to bedtime, or whichever slot you (or they) might prefer.
Once they get comfortable focusing on their breathing and extending their arms comfortably, it’s time to introduce them to basic yoga poses. You can get a kid-friendly yoga book with appealing illustrations to take inspiration from.
Also, the idea that yoga requires absolute precision and seriousness has no place here. Keep your sessions as lighthearted and fun as possible.
As you introduce them to more and more yoga poses, they’ll discover their favorite ones soon. They’ll try those repeatedly, giggle at failures, and may even keep trying them throughout the day. That’s when you know their journey as a little yogi has begun!
Mindful meditation means learning to bring your attention to what’s happening around you at this moment.
At its core, it’s merely an honest and positive look at what you’re feeling in the present, but more importantly, a skill to develop for guiding one’s mind.
You can introduce your children to meditation by doing formal and informal meditation practices along with them.
The younger your child is, the shorter their initial meditation sessions should be. This ensures that they don’t get bored of meditation in the first couple of days but experience it gradually every day.
For formal practices, you can sit down with them and start explaining the concept of meditation to them and what you’re about to try together with them.
With that out of the way, you can ease them into 5 to 10 minutes of guided meditation sessions together, which govern your breathing patterns and help you relax.
Apart from these formal sessions, you can also introduce them to informal techniques, such as doing whatever they do with complete, undivided, and unbiased focus.
These include activities like eating their food ‘mindfully,’ paying attention when they walk, etc.
Tai Chi can be an excellent activity for kids to practice mindfulness.
Drawing its origins from Wudang, China, Tai Chi is an inner-focused mind-body practice backed by Taoism and Yin-Yang theories. Several Harvard studies researching the bodywork involved in Tai Chi found that it can help maintain flexibility, balance, and strength.
As Tai Chi involves all joints and muscle groups to perform its particular movements gently and slowly, it has shown to significantly improve flexibility, balance, strength, stamina, and coordination.
Tai Chi is commonly referred to as ‘meditation in motion,’ with profound spiritual and physical health benefits.
The particular movements of Tai Chi may be challenging at the beginning, especially for kids under the age of 6, as they require focused bodywork and concentration.
As children train and perform these moves correctly, it can significantly help them achieve truly mindful movement.
There are plenty of free video resources available for children’s Tai Chi online. Put them on, and imitate the movements with your child!
With consistent practice, their balance and movements will only get better. Make sure to boost their confidence with positive reassurance when they do well!
Mindfulness is the key to finding happiness in the modern, fast-paced world. Ingraining mindfulness skills into your kids’ habits at an early age can have tremendous effects on their personality development.
Kids as young as 3 to 4 years of age can be taught simple techniques to learn and practice. With practice, consistency, and continued guidance, they’ll soon be able to practice mindfulness independently through fun activities like yoga, meditation, Tai Chi, and more!
]]>Fairy tales appeared thousands of years ago in India and ancient China. There are testimonies of fairy tales going back to the thirteenth century B.C. in ancient Egypt, while in ancient Greece fairy tales are referred to by Homer and Herodotus.
The fairy tale, an age old form of entertainment, has been the focus of interest of multiple and varied academic disciplines. Folklorists, philologists, sociologists, historians, psychologists, educators, and even theologians have all approached the fairy tale from a different perspective, as a result of which a number of theories abound on the subject. Here we would like to focus on the psychological aspect of this intriguing topic.
The universality of fairy tales:
What is justifiably interesting about fairy tales is that even though they come from various civilisations at different time periods, traditional folk tales share many common traits in their mythological content. Even non-neighbouring countries as well as those distanced from one another have similar traditional fairy tales. A fairy tale from a remote German village is almost identical to one of Greece or India. For instance, the story of Little Red Riding Hood may be found in 70 variations in France, Iran, China, and several African countries. Furthermore, African tribes share narrative similarities with the indigenous peoples of north and central America. The notable point about this universality of fairy tales is that it manifests periodically, which does not easily explain how these myths were passed along on the trade routes of old, due to the enormous distances involved and the lack of means of transport at the time.
The psychoanalytical approach to the origins of fairy tales:
Based on these facts, research into fairy tales has produced various interpretations of their origins and the messages they potentially convey. The most interesting of these is the psychoanalytical interpretation of mythological narratives. In attempting to explain the source of mythical expression and its significance, Sigmund Freud equated myths with dreams, concluding that in both cases (myths and dreams) the same psychological mechanisms are at work. Just as man’s dreams stem from the individual subconscious (where repressed desires and urges of the human psyche are expressed), so do myths make up the deposits of unconscious processes (where the unfulfilled desires and internal conflicts of humanity are essentially expressed).
In the investigation of fairy tales C.G. Jung disagreed with Freud, who considered myths to be the dreams of mankind and therefore the remnants of childhood, and by contrast maintained that fairy tales constitute the most mature product of humanity. For Jung, beyond the “threshold of consciousness” lies the individual unconscious where all of man’s inhibitions can be observed, and beyond the individual unconscious there is the collective unconscious of a catholic nature. In the collective unconscious all human beings are participants; it constitutes a shared resource for mankind.
Arising from the collective unconscious are the archetypal images found in myths, fairy tales, and dreams. For many, Jung’s theory was the most satisfactory answer to the question of the interrelationship of mythological content, existing in peoples distanced from one another, geographically as well as temporally. With Jungian theory the metaphysical aspect of almost every fairy tale, expressed in a way that aids the just outcome of the story, becomes understandable. Through fabulous heroes, the unrealistic world of fairy tales enables man to overcome his age old fears and fulfill (even mentally) longstanding desires such as being able to triumph over death, to fly or to be invisible.
Self-knowledge through fairy tales:
Modern psychotherapy went one step further and, through the pioneer Hans Dieckmann, maintained that fairy tales may be used to help adults deal with psychological problems. An effective way of helping a patient is to have them remember and consciously narrate a favourite fairy tale. According to Dieckmann, our favourite fairy tale is not an accidental memory deposit, but its meaning and symbols hold answers to personal problems. Recalling our favourite fairy tale and realising its deeper meaning enables us to understand our troubling unconscious thoughts and fears. Thus re-identifying with our favourite fairy tale hero, his adventures and exploits, we may understand significant dimensions of ourselves.
So if fairy tales were born out of common needs of the human psyche throughout the ages to relieve the anxiety of human existence and comfort the fear of death, then through fairy tales man may approach truths in which hidden answers to existential concerns may be found. By recalling a favourite fairy tale, each one of us might travel into the depths of one’s soul, and find guidelines for greater and smaller decisions in life. Evidently fairy tales – the remnants of ancient knowledge – have not been created to lull children to sleep but to rouse adults to consciousness.
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Bibliography
Chrysoula Hadjitaki-Kapsomenou, To neoelliniko laiko paramythi (The Modern Greek Folk Tale) – Institute of Modern Greek Studies
Donald Haase, Psychology and Fairy Tales
]]>My beloved daughter,
I can totally understand what you mean. I had similar thoughts that everything will change after the lockdown and I still believe it in a way...
But I can also see people rushing to go back to what they had before... It's like they had a nightmare and now it's over.
These words: "I don't want that. I want to have a profound change." are your words and have such a power that you cannot imagine!
I can understand the disappointment you might have once you realise that the world is returning to the same old situation it always was, but you see this is a perpetual pattern of human history… The majority always have the same feeling after wars and other destructions, people want to return to something familiar but the irony is that the ‘familiar’ they will go back to, it will be also different. The change will be so subtle that you have to be very observant to notice it.
The world changes, slowly but it changes and this is happening for many centuries now. We are in a better position than ever before, human rights, technology, internet, even our collective human consciousness has improved.
You don’t have to compare yourself with the rest of the world. What I understood so far is that nobody can understand how you feel, only you can understand yourself and what you need. You will be lucky if you find some people that will understand you, sometimes our family cannot understand our needs that’s why we have to do it for ourselves, the rest of the people in our life (unfortunately for them) have to accept it.
There are two things that you can do in my opinion:
1. ‘Invest’ in yourself
2. “Invest” in like-minded people
Be careful though when I say invest in yourself I don’t mean to do it from a western perspective but from a deep understanding of what you really need to be well. Maybe it is a time-period that you need to invest in yourself in a way that our western culture cannot see it as an ‘investment’, because most probably you won’t get something in return…
Investing in yourself could mean spending time alone or wasting time, doing a hobby that you love, mastering a skill that you always wanted to master even if that skill is useless… Investing in yourself could also be daily relaxing and calming down, daily exercise, healthy eating and daily routine that can make you a better person.
You see, it is a cultural construct the idea that we do something that will lead us in a better place… We don’t do something because it will lead us somewhere, we do something because we want to do it… There is no other reason! Steve Jobs used to say “You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something - your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life”.