Life as a parent can feel like it’s moving too fast: Parent-teacher nights, early- morning practices, challenging daycare drop offs, bath time, preparing meals, nighttime wakings, so much laundry! It can all feel overwhelming while you’re also trying to manage work and community responsibilities – not to mention carve out time for self-care. Mindfulness is a powerful tool to help slow things down, even just a little. While integrating mindfulness into your life won’t take care tasks off your plate, it can help you reduce stress, enabling you to parent more intentionally.

What is mindfulness?

So often, we tend to live in our heads, especially when managing the mental load of parenting. Often this takes out of the present moment and leaves us worrying about something in the future or focused on the past. Mindfulness calls us to cultivate awareness of our thoughts, feelings, and bodily sensations, without judging them (Mindful.org, 2020). Cultivating mindfulness doesn’t require hours of sitting in meditation each day. Rather, you can use micro-moments throughout your day to focus on being mindful – this could include when eating, doing chores, or walking to your car at the end of the workday (Greater Good Magazine, n.d.).

Find a time of day when it works for you to fully commit to being completely present, even if it’s just for a minute or two. Tune into your breath, engage all your senses, and notice the sights, smells, and sounds that surround you. Feel your feet against the ground and your body against the seat if you’re sitting. This simple practice of grounding yourself in the present moment can help you reset and create a sense of calm, even during a busy day. Over time, these mindful pauses can make a meaningful difference in how you respond to daily stressors.

If you’re new to mindfulness, try this classic exercise in eating a raisin mindfully to get a feel for it. You could also try mindfully washing the dishes. If it’s easiest for you to use a guided meditation, you can search online to find brief guided mindfulness meditations.

How can mindfulness help me as a parent?

Being a parent is a stressful job. When our brains are overwhelmed, our bodies are tired and our small humans aren’t listening, it can sometimes feel nearly impossible to respond calmly. It’s at these time that many of us react with yelling without thinking – it’s like we are operating on autopilot (Clarke-Fields, 2019). By introducing mindfulness, we can start to train our brains to pause before reacting. As a parent, this can be a powerful skill to have in your toolbox, both for you own well-being, as well as for your relationship with your children.

By integrating mindfulness into your daily routine, you can gain a range of benefits that help reduce stress and improve your overall well-being as a parent. Here are some specific ways mindfulness can support you:

1. Reduce Parental Stress (and thereby Your Child’s Stress): A review of more than 200 scientific studies found that mindfulness-based therapy is effective for reducing stress and anxiety (American Psychological Association, 2019). Anything we can do to reduce stress and anxiety is helpful, as it doesn’t feel good to constantly feel overstretched and worried. Stress and anxiety can have negative effects on our physical and mental health, so using mindfulness as one tool to manage them is a great strategy. In addition, our kids grow and learn in relationship with us; their emotional states often mirror ours. When parents feel calmer and more grounded during the day, this can indirectly reduce our kids’ stress levels, leading to a calmer, more regulated home life.

2. Mindfulness as a Tool to Break Intergenerational Cycles: Try as we might be parent differently than our parents did, when we are angry or upset, it can be easy for our automatic reactions to echo those of our parents. Intergenerational patterns can be hard to break, even with the very best intentions, as it can be hard to regulate emotions in trying moments. A mindfulness practice teaches our brain to pause before responding. By practicing even micro-moments of mindfulness, you will find that over time you cultivate the ability to respond intentionally, so that automatic reactions are replaced with intentional, calm responses (Clarke-Fields, 2019). Show yourself grace – learning these skills takes time, and none of us gets it right 100% of the time. This practice is not about being perfect, but about making space for more mindful, compassionate parenting

3. The Positive Effects of Modelling Mindfulness to Our Children: As our kids’ primary role models, kids learn how to regulate their emotions by seeing how we regulate ours, and through the felt experience of co-regulation. When parents practice mindfulness, our children see us respond to situations calmly and intentionally. This type of modelling helps our children develop emotional awareness so that when strong emotions arise, they can handle them without becoming overwhelmed. Hearing a parent say, “I feel frustrated right now so I’m going to take a deep breath” teaches children that emotions don’t have to be scary and that they can respond to them mindfully. When parents can manage their own emotions, it helps children feel secure and creates a calm environment. This helps kids feel less anxious and stressed by unpredictable reactions, and it equips them to handle difficult situations in their own lives, at school, and later as parents.

If you're ready to embark on your own mindfulness journey or need support as you navigating the challenges of parenthood, a therapist can be a wonderful resource. Working with a professional can guide you in developing mindfulness skills tailored specifically to your needs, while also providing a dedicated space focused completely on your well-being. Remember, you don't have to navigate this journey alone – support is available to help you thrive.

References

American Psychological Association. (2019). Mindfulness meditation: A research- proven way to reduce stress. https://www.apa.org/topics/mindfulness/meditation

Clarke-Fields, H. (2019). Raising good humans. New Harbinger Publications. Commune.

(2019, October 17). Thich Nhat Hanh: Mindful dishwashing [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pwi1s_Z63yc

Greater Good Magazine. (n.d.). Mindfulness defined. https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/topic/mindfulness/definition#how-cultivate- mindfulness

Mindful.org. (2020, July 8). What is mindfulness?. https://www.mindful.org/what-is- mindfulness/ Mindfulness Healing. (2015, January 26). MBCT raisin exercise: Mindfulness meditation practice, MBCT raisin exercise [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oMQ7QqaHvW8

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