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22

Mindfulness with Children:

Working with Difficult Emotions

Trudy A. Goodman and Susan Kaiser Greenland

“Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore, only kindness that

ties your shoes. . .only kindness that raises its head from the crowd of

the world to say it is I you have been looking for, and then goes with

you every where like a shadow or a friend.”

– Naomi Shehab Nye

Introduction

In Buddhist psychology, difficult emotions are defined as forces that visit the

mind. Imagine that your mind is like water in a pot and your emotions are the

wind. When the wind blows, the water ripples on the surface and the still

water below is hidden from view. If you were to gaze at the water’s surface

your reflection would be obscured by ripples. Damaging emotions make it

especially difficult to see the water’s surface clearly; they make waves, and in

the ensuing turbulence you may feel upset and confused. Mindfulness prac-

tice helps you see and calm the emotional turbulence, allowing your mind

to be clearly reflected on the surface of the water. This is one way we talk to

children about their feelings.

In this chapter we discuss mindfulness as a way to help children under-

stand their emotional pain. We present a method that we dub
scram
to help

children loosen the grip of their difficult emotions and respond more mind-

fully to them. We choose this acronym because children and mentors (ther-

apists, teachers, parents, and others working with children) often want to

scram – or quickly leave – when faced with difficult emotions.
scram
is a

step-by-step approach toward a mindful resolution of a painful emotion or

experience:
Stop
or slow down;
Calm
your body;
Remember
to look at what

is happening both inside and out; and only after completing the first three

steps, take mindful
Action
with kindness or
Metta
.1

This chapter is a collaboration between two writers with different

perspectives. Trudy Goodman (Trudy) co-founded the Institute for Med-

itation and Psychotherapy in 1995, and founded InsightLA in 2002, a

not-for-profit organization for the teaching of mindfulness. Trudy, a psy-

chotherapist for 25 years, has worked with children and mindfulness in

1 Metta – Pali for friendly.

417

418

Trudy A. Goodman and Susan Kaiser Greenland

a variety of therapeutic settings and family mindfulness programs. Susan

Kaiser Greenland (Susan) co-founded
InnerKids
in 2000, which brings

mindful awareness practices to children in pre-kindergarten through high

school. In collaboration with educators and therapists, she adapts tradi-

tional mindfulness practices so that they are developmentally appropri-

ate for children/teens and suitable for use in a secular setting. We hope

that by bringing together insight from mindfulness, psychotherapy and

classroom experience, this article will contribute to the emerging body

of knowledge regarding the secular practice of mindful awareness with

children.

Background

The traditional objective of mindfulness is both practical and therapeutic; by

viewing experience with clarity and discernment at the moment it occurs,

it is possible to free the mind from emotional suffering. This process, in and

of itself, trains attention, promotes emotional balance, and cultivates com-

passion2.
It is well suited to children because the approach can be playful, experimental and is always experiential; we invite children to “come and see,

to try this for yourself.”

“What is unique about mindfulness-oriented child therapy (or educa-

tion) is the enhanced ability to return to the present moment again

and again, with openhearted, nonjudgmental attention to both the expe-

rience of the child and to one’s own experience.”
(Goodman, 2005.).

The objective of practicing mindfulness with children is to develop and

strengthen their ability “to pay attention to their inner and outer expe-

rience, with curiosity and k
indness”(Kaiser-Greenland,
In Press) in a variety of ways consistent with their level of development. Through this

process children are encouraged to become gently introspective, to look

a little closer at life experience as it is happening. As a result, they

learn to objectively see: (a) internal processes, how they tend to act and

react; (b) external interactions, how they interact with others including

setting boundaries and managing conflict; and (c) connections between

themselves, others and the environment.
(Kaiser-Greenland,
In Press.)

This letter from Eliot, one of Susan’s fifth grade students, illustrates this

process:

“I get mad easily and [mindfulness] helped me calm down. On the test, I got

mad at some questions and got out of concentration. [Focusing on my breath]

got me back on track. I just let the monkeys go.” (Monkeys refer to the col-

loquial Buddhist term “monkey mind,” where thoughts and emotions swing

through the mind like monkeys in a jungle, swinging through the trees.)

Through the practice of mindfulness, Eliot observed his internal processes

(he gets mad easily), external interactions (he lost his concentration on the

test), then made a connection between his inner experience, outer experi-

ence and mindfulness (breath awareness got him back on track by helping

him calm down and focus).

2
InnerKids
programs refer to attention, balance, and compassion as the
New ABCs

of learning.

Chapter 22 Mindfulness with Children

419

Attention

Mindfulness is a word that has come to mean many different things to many

different people, but in Buddhism mindfulness, or bare attention, is in the

very first perception – a fleeting moment of open awareness, before the con-

ceptual, thinking mind takes over. From Sarah Doering: “Mindfulness is the

observing power of the mind, the active aspect of awareness. It is present in

a moment of seeing that’s nonverbal, pre-verbal. It’s seeing with very great

clarity and no thought. The object noticed is not yet separated out, but is sim-

ply part of the whole flow of the process of life.”
(Sarah Doering, 2003.)
This is the realm of mindfulness. Whatever is happening is accurately reflected,

as if in a clear mirror. It simply reflects, without passion or prejudice, what

is here.

There is overlap between the quality of attention fundamental to mindful-

ness and executive function (the mental capacity to control and purposefully

apply one’s own mental skills). In what may seem to be a tautology, mind-

fulness strengthens executive function while executive function strength-

ens mindfulness. Pilot studies suggest that this may be true for teens and

children as young as four years old. The Mindful Awareness Research Cen-

ter at UCLA recently completed two pilot programs studying the effect of

mindfulness on attention in teens and pre-school children. A small pilot

study in ADHD teens, found improved performance on selected executive

function tests (specifically, tests measuring inhibition or conflict attention)

and reduced self-report symptoms of ADHD
(Zylowska et al., 2006).
In a

larger randomized and controlled study conducted at UCLA’s Early Child-

care Center, pilot data shows that pre-school children’s participation in

an InnerKids mindfulness program that Susan developed, was associated

with improvements in executive function specifically working memory, plan-

ning and organization, global executive functioning and emergent metacog-

nition (thinking about thinking). (Smalley and colleagues, 2007.) While

this data is preliminary and requires further investigation, the results are

promising.

Robust executive function in and of itself does not constitute mindfulness,

however. The quality of attention, or one’s perspective, is critical. Susan

describes this mindset to children as one of curiosity and kindness. Dr. Jeffrey

Schwartz has adopted the more formal term “impartial spectator” to describe

this stance: “the part of your mind that has the ability to become aware of

the difference between “me” (the watcher/observer) and “my brain” (the

thought or feeling)”
(Schwartz, 1998).
When practicing mindfulness with

children Susan refers to this perspective as one of a
friendly and impar-

tial spectator
, combining both the concepts of kindness and of impartiality

into a single phrase. This view helps children differentiate between identi-

fying with an emotion (“I am angry”) and observing the emotion (“I know

this angry feeling”). By making a clear distinction between identification and

observation, a child can begin to understand that an emotion does not nec-

essarily reflect who she is, it only reflects how she’s feeling right
now
about

what’s happening right
now
. Viewing emotions as a from the perspective of

a
friendly and
impartial spectator is not meant to take children out of their

experience, nor does it mean becoming dissociated. Rather, it is a way to help

them develop confidence in their capacity to stand fully in their experience

420

Trudy A. Goodman and Susan Kaiser Greenland

and observe it for what it is, seeing it clearly and as completely as possible

given their developmental stage.

A child in the grip of frightening or overwhelming emotions is frequently

unable to attend to the task at hand. An example of this emerged from Susan’s

work with one of her students, Sara. Here is the way Susan’s work in the

classroom unfolds:

In mindfulness class we use secular and age appropriate exercises and

games to promote awareness of inner experience (thoughts, emotions and

physical sensations), outer experience (other people’s thoughts, emotions

and physical sensations) and both together without blending the two. The

program consists of 8–12 consecutive weekly sessions with each session

broken down into three standard sequences: the first and last sequences con-

tain introspective practices and the middle sequence contains activities and

games that promote each week’s learning objective. The program is designed

to expose children to progressively longer periods of introspective practices

each week. This is accomplished by gradually extending the duration of the

first sequence (which includes a brief period of sitting introspection) and

the third sequence (which includes a modified body scan or concentration

practice while lying down). As the duration of the first and last sequences

increase, the duration of the second sequence containing more goal directed

(as opposed to introspective) practices decreases. This dynamic course struc-

ture permits the length of time students engage in introspective practice to

increase gradually and organically, through the course of the program.

Recently Susan taught an
InnerKids
mindful awareness program in a pub-

lic school (pre-k through middle) located in a shelter for moms and children

who are victims of domestic violence. Sara is a 10-year-old student who was

enrolled in one of Susan’s classes.

Quiet and studious, Sara was always one of the first to participate in class

discussions and enthusiastically engage in mindfulness activities and games.

Sara was a leader within the shelter and frequently helped younger students

on the playground and at home. It was hard to imagine she was the victim of