Last month I had the most joyous experience imaginable when I became a grandmother and met my first grandchild, Avery Elise Potiker. Holding her in my arms took me back to the feelings I had when I first held my own children, and I immediately fell in love with her.
You know how everyone always says being a grandparent is like having all the good parts of being a parent without the struggles? I look forward to that. I look forward to just spoiling this little girl and not having to do any of her training!
If you read my first book, you know that parenting was difficult for me. I really thought I was cut out for it — growing up, I was a babysitter and a camp counselor for preschool kids, and I always wanted to be a mom. And it wasn’t too difficult until my kids hit adolescence and then everything kind of went sideways.
At the time my parents moved to San Diego from Cleveland where I grew up, and I was the only one of my siblings with boots on the ground helping them. My mom was experiencing some health issues and I had these three young teenage kids. That experience led me to get trained as one of the first Mindful Self Compassion (MSC) teachers, as I recount in “Life Falls Apart But You Don’t Have To.”
I love teaching MSC to adults, yet over the years I’ve avoided teaching kids. That is, until last year when a Girl Scout I love named Audrey asked me if I would teach MSC in a workshop to her troop. I really enjoyed sharing that experience and my mindfulness journey on Lindsay Miller’s Podcast “The Stress Nanny.” The episode just dropped and you can listen to it here.
Lindsay uses her 20+ years of child development study and mindfulness certification “to dream up new ways to get kids excited about deep breathing” and to “give families the language and tools to develop mindfulness in a joyful environment, encouraging successful kids and optimistic (guilt-free!) parents.” As someone who got exhausted teaching a pack of Girl Scouts, I have the utmost respect for what she does!
Why was it so exhausting teaching kids? As I told Lindsay, it was hard to keep all of their attention. Even though they were the same age, they were in different developmental stages. A couple of girls were neurodivergent and had a hard time paying attention. I have never been so tired after teaching a group of people in my life!
I brought them polished “here and now” stones that they could each take home and told them to focus on how the stones felt in their hands. I asked, “Do you guys know what you’re doing?” One little girl said, “We’re distracting ourselves.” I said, “Bingo. That’s exactly it.” I also gave them these Compassion It bracelets from Sara Schairer, who is also a Mindful Self-Compassion teacher. These are reversible bracelets that you flip over each time you’ve done something compassionate for yourself or others. The kids loved that.
Then I had them read a bookmark about how to be compassionate. It included things like:
I also gave them smiley stickers they could put on their things (to remind them to pause and take three deep breaths) and my workshop handouts, like I do for grownups. I had them write down their joy list of things they can do when they are feeling bad, so they can learn to shift their mood. And I taught them about how they can use soothing touch to calm themselves when they feel stressed.
There was this one little girl who pushed back on everything I said. I was feeling so challenged and, at the same time, rivers of compassion for her. When I told them about soothing touch, she said: “I don’t like when people touch me.” I told her, “That’s so good that you know that. And it’s so good and brave that you can say that to me. But here’s what I’m trying to explain: Soothing touch is something you do for yourself to calm your own body down. You don’t need somebody else to hug you. You are hugging yourself.” I don’t know if I got through or not, but it was intense.
I also had them read part of a book called “It’s OK: Being Kind to Yourself When Things Feel Hard,” by Wendy O’Leary and illustrated by Sandra Eide. The refrain here, for all kinds of mistakes kids make, is to put your hand on your heart and say: “It’s okay. I love you. I’m with you today.” So, I had the Girl Scouts doing that with me, but I only got about halfway through the book because they felt it was silly.
Teaching Mindful Self-Compassion to kids is not my jam, but I hope they got something out of it that they can use to feel better when things are hard. These are also things you do when you are already feeling happy, as expressions of joy. For me, one of the big ones is writing poetry.
I’ll close with a new one I wrote upon meeting my granddaughter for the first time:
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