Mindfulness practice for children with ADHD by Vivian Valentin - September 2024

We have been teaching mindfulness to kids from Kindergarteners to teenagers, and the challenge has always been to create engaging lessons and activities appropriate to their developmental level and interest. Recently I have been giving a lot of thought to how to help kids with ADHD engage more with mindfulness practice, since it trains the mind to focus, notice distractions and come back to the intended focus: the skills that are at a deficit and need to be practiced. And research supports that practicing mindfulness can help strengthen the ADHD brain. However, often the instructions to meditate is to sit still, and focus on something boring, like the breath, and for those who are naturally wiggly, impulsive, and distractable, these instructions fall short. While these are not helpful suggestions to people with ADHD, it turns out, these are not the best for neurotypical children either. To awaken wonder and curiosity in one’s present moment experience, we can do more than just suggest that they find the feeling of their breath in their body fascinating.

Here are suggestions that make learning mindfulness more fun and more accessible to any kid, and especially ones that have ADHD symptoms.

• Start with Brain basics: “What’s going on in my brain during mindfulness practice?”

• Sensory engagement

• Music

• Visual guides

  • Mindful looking at art: Video library link (scroll to and click on “Mindful Looking”)

• Hands on activities - drawing, collecting, pouring, coloring, etc.

• Movement

• Nature immersion

• Games

• Self-compassion

• Mindful communication

In this blog I will give examples of each of these. It is a work in progress.