First off, true confessions: A few months ago I wrote here about meditating with my toddler. My husband I were trying a five minute experiment—sitting in meditation together while letting her play in the room.
My post waxed on the beauty of comparing the antics of my mind to antics of our daughter. She ran around, whined, demanded attention, jumped on us, and we just stayed in a meditative state, open to the full experience.
Well, that worked… for a few weeks. That’s it. After a certain age it became impossible and we gave up. I desperately wanted it to work (especially since I had wrote about it) but then reality hit. Meditating with a toddler in the room, with both parents in silence, simply did not work. So try it at home only if you have vast reserves of patience and endurance.
We decided to lower the bar and I’ll share the most successful meditation experiments so far:
1. Each parent gets 3-5 minutes in a meditative space while the other watches the child in the room. This for some reason did not satisfy my husband, he thought it felt like more childcare in shifts. But we do it from time to time.
2. Before we eat we hold hands at the table and say thank you to earth and sky and veggies and animals and then we all take a breath. My daughter LOVES this. Simple, effective, and right in the midst of life. When we forget to do it, she often reaches out her hands and whines to remind us.
3. I have taught my daughter to meditate. For two seconds. She watches me and since this age is all about imitation, she wants to be like me. So she sits cross-legged by me and then we smile at each other and take a breath. That’s it. When she seemed to enjoy it I was beside myself. My baby is meditating!
I’d love to hear of your experiments meditating with toddlers and babies. Any luck?
