With family holidays it can sometimes feel like an impossible mission to find time to relax and reset. Parents and carers often feel stress, anxiety and dread when thinking about the summer holidays.
Whilst a holiday may seem like a lot of fun, for a child or adolescent it means being in new and unfamiliar surroundings which can sometimes be overwhelming and cause them to act up.
Global leader in meditation and mindfulness, Headspace provides in-app activities for families to bond whilst on holiday, providing an invaluable wellbeing support option for kids and adolescents, which can be used anywhere, and at any time.
According to Dr Sophie Mort, Mental Health expert at Headspace and Clinical Psychologist, “It’s important to remember that kids don’t have enough tools and life experience yet to navigate the highs and lows of life. When experiencing intensely difficult emotions for the first time, they may assume that this is how life will be going forward.”
With that in mind, it is important to give adolescents the age-appropriate tools to manage their emotions, which will help them feel more in control of their behaviour. Meditation has been shown to help young minds develop a keen sense of emotional intelligence, the ability to identify and manage one’s own emotions, as well as the emotions of others. It has also been proven to be an effective way to practise positivity and be aware of your thoughts – just 10 days of Headspace has been shown to increase satisfaction with life by 7.5%.
Eve Lewis Prieto, Director of Meditation at Headspace also shares a quick mindful game to help practise mindfulness which can be played with the whole family whilst on holiday:
- Sight: Look around the room in silence for one minute, and point out all of the things you never noticed before
- Taste: Take a small piece of food, such as a kiwi fruit or strawberry, and use all five senses to describe it. How does it feel, how would you describe the smell in the most exciting way, what does it look like or remind you of, what sound does it make when you rub it and what does it taste like when you eat it?
- Sound: Set a timer for one minute and count how many different sounds you can hear with your eyes closed, and then share what you heard with each other
