Nasty or Nice: How kind are we to ourselves or others?

The Students started off today with a safe place meditation. They were asked to think of a place they could go to in their minds when life got hard and full of worries. This place would be full of positives and feel completely safe for them with no demands.

For some this place was their house, for others this was with friends at school. 

For a large majority the place was outside of Hong Kong, at a holiday destination, or a grandparents house. It was often in their country of origin, and often in a quiet countryside location, a field, a forest or a garden.

The following discussion centered around being kind and unkind to self and others. A mention of siblings allowed the children to easily understand how frustration with one thing led them to take out their frustration on another person, often a younger brother or sister. So a difficult maths task would lead them to shout at their parents and/ or siblings, blaming them for their difficulty. We discussed useful alternative actions when you were angry or frustrated. The students generated the following:

• Punch or shout at a pillow
• Bounce on their bed.
• Do something nice for someone.
• Do something active. (run, trampoline etc.)
• Do something creative.
• write in a  frustration journal, or write a letter that they rip up.

We also discussed how burying your feelings with candy didn't help in the long run as it just suppressed the emotions rather than acknowledging and dealing with them.

What was really positive, was that the students talked at great lengths about all the kind things they had done for themselves and others over the past week. We discussed how people who perform spontaneous acts of kindness are often more happy and successful in life.

So this week the students are going to take special notice of when they are kind or unkind to themselves or others. You can really help them by noticing and commenting when you observe kindness or unkindness, but try to err on the side of positive noticing!

Next week is the final week of the course and we will look at the Secret of Happiness! 

The Worry Factory: Students share what is on their mind...

With two weeks to go on the mindfulness matters course we turned our thoughts towards thoughts and worries.

Thoughts are the storyteller in your mind, sometimes wanted and sometimes not.... 

An interesting discussion followed trying to think about nothing for 15 seconds. A really hard task only achieved by those who held their breath!

I asked the children to share with each other what they worried most often about. They could volunteer these worries in a class discussion if they wanted.

The results were unsurprisingly similar across all four classes, and typical of children their age about to make a big transition:

• I worry about people close to me getting ill.
• I worry what other people think of me.
• I worry about my gran because she is ill in hospital.
• I worry about spiders.
• I worry about snakes.
• I worry when my parents argue...I worry they might split up.
• I worry my dog might die.
• I worry what older children might do to me when i get to KGV.
• I worry I'll get lost and be late for lessons when i get to KGV.
• I worry the work will be really hard.
• I worry about peer pressure.
• I worry about doing well in tests.
• I worry about remembering things in tests.
• I worry about burglars in my house.
• I worry about murderers in my house.
• I worry because my dad is ill.
• I worry when my mum is sick.
• I worry about growing up...

I asked the children what they could do about these worries and we came up with a list of helpful approaches.

1. Acknowledge that you are worried. Sometimes just recognising that you are worried, and that it is an emotional state that will pass can be helpful.
2. Share your worry with someone. We agreed that sharing with a friend or parent can often make the worry smaller or go away
3. Write the worries down. Sometimes a list of the worries can get them out of your head and turn them into concrete problems to deal with
4. Do some belly breathing as a focus on your belly and becoming calm often takes attention away from a worried head 
5. Use come scaling questions. e.g. On a scale of 1-10 how worried do I feel? then On a scale of 1-10 how big a problem is this actually? Sometimes this can really help

As a parent sometimes its good to share your own worries and how you manage them as it will often help a child talk about theirs.

In america a large, national survey of adolescent mental health reported that about 8 percent of teens ages 13-18 have an anxiety disorder, with symptoms commonly emerging around age 6. 

Using the strategies above can be a real boon  in helping students reduce any anxieties and be happy.