Mindfulness Matters!

AVAILABLE NOW

Mindfulness Matters offers teachers, therapists, and other professionals much more than just a bunch of disconnected practices with no instructions. It’s also not a rigid, manual curriculum that won't work for your students and settings. Instead, the authors present an elegant middle path with a flexible and adaptable program that lets you share mindfulness with kids and teens in a way that meets their unique style and needs.

This book contains lots of user-friendly guidance to conduct a variety of engaging, kid-friendly mindfulness activities that range from 3 to 30 minutes in length. Any of the activities can be used in classrooms, therapy rooms, or community settings. In addition, the authors give you information about when, how, and why to use each activity, and how to structure them for diverse groups of kids.

Five pathways guide you through sequenced plans, along with empirically-based rationales for what activities to use and what not to use with specific populations. Pathways are laid out for working with kids who suffer from stress and anxiety, depression, attention problems, emotion regulation and impulsive behaviors, and trauma, abuse, and neglect. And if none of these pathways fit your exact needs, you’re given tools to “choose your own adventure” from a range of activities in effective, fun, and safe ways.

Mindfulness Matters directly addresses the central concerns and anxieties of many teachers and clinicians. Am I competent enough to teach mindfulness to kids? Could mindfulness trigger this anxious or traumatized child? Can I make the right cultural shift to really connect with this child? Down to the nitty-gritty questions of managing resistance—which can take the shape of stonewalling, silliness, or even attempts to sabotage. What’s more, you’ll learn how to manage resistance and field tough questions from parents, administrators, and other stakeholders.

Mindfulness Matters offers you:

    • a unique style that is both structured and adaptable to different settings and needs of kids from 5 to 15
    • accessible, friendly tips and advice to boost your own confidence
    • direct ways to address concerns and anxieties of today’s teachers and clinicians
    • creative, engaging, age-appropriate activities with related home practices
    • printable poems, stories, handouts, and worksheets to increase engagement and learning
    • theory and research explained in a way that’s understandable by novices and experts alike

Mindfulness Matters supports the development of essential social-emotional competencies. Enhanced self-awareness, self-regulation of emotions, adaptability to changing situations, initiative, self-motivation, and cultivation of compassion and empathy support healthy development. Emotionally competent children are more likely to be well adjusted and successful in a wide range of areas, including family and peer relationships, academics, sports, and extracurricular activities.

Mindfulness Matters offers kids and teens ways to:

    • enhance present-focused awareness
    • bolster social-emotional resiliency
    • promote adaptive changes in how they relate to their own thoughts and emotions
    • make more skillful behavioral choices
    • cultivate acceptance of things that can’t be changed