Mindful Parenting During Holidays: Teaching Kids Kindness and Compassion

The holidays can be a stressful time, regardless of a spirt of holiday cheer. Your childhood memories of the holiday season may reflect the struggles that you and your family encountered. Regardless of your past holiday experiences, your parenting and ability to manage any seasonal difficulties can make all the difference for your kids. Your kids will pick up on your stress, so practicing mindful parenting during holidays can help everyone to get the most out of this time of year.

Siddha Meditate app offers an extensive range of Kids Meditation classes that, with your efforts to teach your kids these key skills, will allow them to develop lifelong traits of kindness and compassion. Mindful parenting during holidays can transform stressful times into meaningful family bonding moments.

Mindfulness tips for teaching and demonstrating compassion

There is no one size fits all approach to teaching children kindness and compassion, so learning several tips and tricks to support your children in their development of these key life skills can make a world of difference. Teaching kindness to children during Christmas is an excellent way to emphasize these values during a festive time.

How to introduce your children to compassion with mindfulness

The first step towards teaching kids kindness and compassion is to begin by explaining what mindfulness is and how they can observe it in their lives. Mindfulness is when you are present in the moment and don’t judge yourself or anybody else. The second piece of this definition is where the kindness and compassion come in, when you don’t judge yourself or others you are being thoughtful and kind to them. Mindfulness activities for kids during holidays can make it easier for them to grasp these concepts.

Kids may notice their sense of compassion towards their favorite pet, such as when they see that their dog or cat is hungry and they feed it. They may even observe that when they are compassionate to their favorite animal that their dog wags their tale or their cat purrs. They may recognize compassion in when they watch adults, like you and your partner or you and your family members, working together to complete home improvement projects or cook meals together. You are already their hero, so acting with compassion ensures that they’ll always do the same!

How to define kindness for your kids

While kindness may seem intuitive for adults, we forget that as many times have been asked to be kind, they may not truly understand kindness until they fully understand what it means. So, defining kindness for kids can be an important parenting tips for holidays. Kindness is the quality of treating others and yourself with respect, generosity and friendliness. Helping kids practice kindness during the holidays creates a foundation for year-round mindfulness and care.

You are already their hero, so acting with compassion ensures that they’ll always do the same!

Five ways that kids can experience kindness

1. Kindness for the earth– Kids may observe their kindness to the earth by leaving no trace at their favorite state or national park or by recycling at home and learning the benefits of this practice. Practicing kindness for the earth aligns with mindfulness activities for kids during holidays, teaching them to care for the environment.
2. Kindness for other kids– Kids may learn kindness for others by taking care of library books and returning them on time so that others may have a chance to read that same book. The same goes for the park, when they let others have a turn on different slides or swing sets, they are being kind. Mindful parenting during holidays allows parents to guide these small but meaningful acts of kindness.
3. Kindness for you and your partner– Kids may notice their kindness towards you and your partner when they use thoughtful and sweet language. If they need a hint in the right direction, remind them of a time when they experienced thankfulness or paid you a genuine compliment.
4. Kindness for their siblings– Older siblings may support or encourage their younger siblings in small ways, which can help younger siblings observe what kindness looks and feels like. Older siblings may watch they siblings develop kindness over time, such as when they begin to learn new things from their younger siblings or empathize with their experiences.
5. Kindness for themselves– Kids may identify kindness in themselves by feeling proud for themselves and their accomplishments or recovering quickly from tricky moments by encouraging themselves. Family mindfulness practices for holidays can help reinforce this positive self-acknowledgment.

Mindfulness activities for kids

Meditate as a family. Try meditating together at night time as you are putting your kids to bed or devote a specific five to fifteen minute window each weekend to your family’s new meditation habit. When you and your family have an established routine of mediation, you will all be ready to face stressors with the key strategies that you’ve discovered in your meditation habit. Our Building Resilience through Mindfulness class helps kids to get through hard feelings or moments with a sense of self-compassion. These family mindfulness practices for holidays can bring your loved ones closer together.

“Name it to tame it” from Empathy Activities for Kind and Not Bored Kids is an activity created by Dr. Dan Seigel in which you express the actual thoughts and feelings that you’re going through in order to process and work through them. Having tools like this with memorable names helps you to teach kids kindness and compassion techniques that they can use wherever they go! Compassionate parenting tips for the holiday season can integrate such tools effectively.

Emotional I-spy[1] is a great way to practice mindful parenting during holidays as it teaches kids to identify emotions. In this skill, simply point out your perception of the emotions that others seem to demonstrate in their behaviors or facial expressions. This skill helps kids to start to master the meditative skill of using the mind to understand the body. When kids see body cues of different emotions in other people, such as blushing cheeks or avoidance of eye contact when someone is embarrassed, they’ll start to see the attributes of different emotions in themself. Teaching kindness to children during Christmas is an opportunity to pair emotional intelligence with festive family activities.

Parenting tips for holidays: helpful resources for teaching kids compassion and kindness

Choose gifts that foster a sense of compassion. The books that your kids read in their childhood will help them to create a sense of self, understanding of the importance of diverse perspectives, and long lasting moral compass. These are all essential traits in helping kids to be kind and compassionate, so choose books that are representative of a range of lived experiences and teach kindness.

Little kids will love:

• Luli and the Language of Tea by Andrea Wang
• The Rabbit Listened by Cori Doerrfeld
• The Last Stop on Market Street by Matt de la Peña

Mid-Elementary age kids will thoroughly enjoy:

• Moo by Sharon Creech
• The Goldfish Boy by Lisa Thompson

And tweens will have a great time with:

• When the Stars are Scattered by Victoria Jamieson and Omar Mohamed
• Wonder by R.J. Palacio

Use graphics to build understanding. Sometimes, it can be hard to visualize empathy and emotional success, so visual aids like graphics on social media or posters in your child’s room can make a big difference in your child’s understanding of the concept of empathy or compassion. Follow our Instagram page for a range of beautiful and important visual reminders, like this graphic about kindness.

If you’re interested in mindful parenting, you can read “7 Ways to Teach Kids Emotional Regulation with Meditation“

Use graphics to build understanding. Sometimes, it can be hard to visualize empathy and emotional success, so visual aids like graphics on social media or posters in your child’s room can make a big difference in your child’s understanding of the concept of empathy or compassion. Follow our Instagram page for a range of beautiful and important visual reminders, like this graphic about kindness.

5 ways to model and promote kindness and compassion this season

1. Practice small acts of kindness at home and in your community. The holidays are a reminder to all of us that we can do good in this world and uplift each other. While this may feel intuitive for you as an adult, your kids may benefit from a little push towards compassion that you can model with small acts of kindness. Genuinely compliment someone’s outfit, hold the door open for people with heavy bags, or put your shopping cart away. Mindful parenting during holidays is easier when kindness is demonstrated consistently.
2. Demonstrate self-compassion by vocalizing your inner thoughts and explaining how you are getting through difficult situations. Your kids may see you for the strength you always have but can’t always tap into, so it’s important to show them that you are taking care of yourself even when things are hard. Minimize negative self talk. Instead if negative thoughts arise, try explaining how you are already good and the ways that you are working to be even better. Teaching kindness to children during Christmas can include these valuable lessons about self-compassion.
3. A wonderful way to practice mindful parenting during holidays is to demonstrate gratitude with reflection. Try the simple exercise of expressing gratitude at the dinner table and encourage all of your loved ones to express genuine thankfulness when receiving gifts.
4. Compassion often centers around sharing. During the gift giving season, kids must negotiate gift sharing and taking turns. A Parenting tip for holidays is to encourage compassion by reminding cousins and siblings to respectfully share new toys. Remind kids how they would feel if others didn’t share with them. Family mindfulness practices for holidays make these moments of sharing feel rewarding.
5. Being patient is an essential part of being compassionate. Around the holidays there can be a lot of moving parts and things going on. At the grocery store with long lines for check-out? Remind your kids that everyone needs to wait their turn and we all want the same thing. Family members taking a long time opening and expressing gratitude for gifts? Let your kids know that everyone can’t wait for it to be their turn.

This article explains essential tips for mindful parenting during holidays. It considers what kindness and compassion mean to kids by providing simple definitions as well as examples of how children can observe these traits in themselves and in others. Next, it provides specific activities, objects, and practices that help with teaching kids kindness and compassion, focusing on providing insights as to how each of these elements demonstrate and model kindness and compassion. Mindfulness activities for kids during holidays help to create lasting memories and habits of kindness.

Siddha Meditate app provides carefully curated kids meditations that use Psychological research and proven kid friendly techniques to help your kids develop their sense of empathy for themselves and others. We make a habit of meditation possible for the whole family, letting each family member select the meditations that work best for them and their schedule. Mindful parenting during holidays is possible with Siddha Meditate and your efforts to build habit of meditation.

FAQ about Mindful Parenting During Holidays

[1] “Empathy Activities for Kind and Not-Bored Kids”