Lorraine Murray - Calm Kids: Help Children Relax with Mindful Activities

My daughter did her first meditation today. She loved it and couldnt believe what she saw. She only did it for five minutes but found it amazing. Thanks for all your help.

Parent

Hello and welcome to this book, which I hope will bring some peace and harmony not only into the lives of your children, but into your life too.

I appreciate that as a parent or anyone who works with children, your time is precious and there is usually not enough of it! Thats why you have my sincerest thanks for buying this book. It will help you share time with your children in a positive and enlightening way.

First of all let me be clear, I am not yet a parent. However I am an auntie, a godmother and a friend of many people with children of all ages, and these roles allow me to observe how people interact with their children from a holistic perspective. I do not judge anyone but simply see this through my teaching experience, having worked with meditation and healing for many years.

I realised very early on that children are unique. Each child is a walking, talking, breathing, sleeping collection of energy that is as beautiful as it is individual. Whilst we may think that as parents and teachers we are here to guide children and that its pretty much a one-way street for most of their younger lives, the truth is that its a two-way street. They learn and you learn. Sometimes the lessons are easy and beautiful, and sometimes the lessons are hard and challenging. But the relationship with your children is a precious jewel that needs attention, care and a level of understanding from the heart as well as the head. Thats why I felt compelled to write this book.

The idea of teaching children how to meditate came early on, just before I set up my business teaching meditation to adults, running courses in healing and massage whilst practising as an aromatherapist. After I returned from a holiday in Canada, I noticed that the media seemed to talk about nothing else but how stressed children were, whether it was from bullying, school or just life in general. I thought at the time, Wouldnt it be great if we could teach children simple methods of dealing with stress like meditation? My thinking was that it would help them through these challenges, rather than waiting until they grew into adulthood and then having to unpick all the damage from the past before they could live peaceful lives.

I set about exploring these ideas. I had been teaching adults but knew nothing about working with children. I was fortunate to meet an inspirational, local head teacher who liked the idea of teaching children these methods and allowed me to run relaxation and meditation sessions in their quiet room. To help you understand, this school is in one of the most socially challenged and difficult areas of Edinburgh. These children were the starting point and I am eternally grateful to them for what they taught me.

My work took me into other schools and I was also asked to run sessions for staff, teaching them how to run meditation sessions with children. I even asked friends if I could borrow their children so I could test ideas with them to see how they responded to certain techniques. All the while these experiences helped me to build up my knowledge of the differences and similarities between teaching children and adults meditation.

I developed a meditation CD based on my findings, and have received wonderful feedback about it so I felt encouraged to continue. I then started to receive phone calls from people asking me how to teach these meditation methods to children. This got me thinking and I decided to write this book so I could consolidate all I have learned and present it to you in a practical way for you to use and enjoy.

In addition to all this, I continued to teach meditation (and other complementary therapies) to adults in private classes. It was during this time that I noticed how adults progress in their meditation practice. They sometimes start off being very ungrounded, which means they cant keep their feet flat on the ground or they fidget (see section on the Importance of Grounding, p.38). However by week three or four of our course, they became much more settled and would often comment on how this had a positive impact on their lives: they were more able to focus and complete tasks; they had more energy and slept better etc. I cant recall exactly why this led me to make a connection between ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder), but it did. In my experience, many of the symptoms of being ungrounded are very similar to those displayed by children who have ADHD. I decided to explore this a little further with the help of willing clients who had children with ADHD.

This also led me on to the issue of the autistic spectrum. What a huge area of opinion this is! I can assure you I have not covered all aspects. However I came across many parents whose children were struggling with the condition, so I decided to explore and research this area too. I recalled listening to a lecture given by Raun Kaufman, son of the founders of the Son-Rise Program, which offers a treatment and educational model for anyone working with (or who have) children with autism. Raun was diagnosed as autistic but the programme his parents founded in 1974 helped him recover from his autism. He gave an excellent lecture and many of the things he spoke about struck a chord with me from a meditation perspective. This encouraged me to believe that meditation and mindful activities had some part to play in helping both children on the autistic spectrum and their families. In this book I share some of these ideas, some of which I have tested with children who have Asperger syndrome.

The research in this book is not conclusive and it is not meant to be. I have realised that there is no one size fits all solution. Just as I said that all children are unique, autistic children are even more so! But they have a beautiful gift to share. I hope that meditation can be one of the keys to help you unlock this gift and show their true potential, whilst revealing your potential too.