About this item
A playful approach for cultivating mindfulness in kids, with sixty simple games to develop attention and focus, and identify and regulate emotions--by the author of The Mindful Child. Playing games is a great way for kids to develop their focusing and attention skills and to become more mindful. Susan Kaiser Greenland has had a lot of success bringing mindfulness to the classroom, and in this book she shares her experience, showing how parents, caregivers, and teachers can cultivate these qualities at home or in a school setting. She includes fifty mindfulness games that develop what Greenland calls the "new A, B, C's" for learning and for a happy and successful life: Attention, Balance, and Compassion. In a playful way, the games introduce kids to breathing practices and techniques for developing focus, concentration, and sensory awareness, and identifying and self-regulating emotions, among others skills. They include "anchor" games that develop concentration; visualization games that encourage kindness and focus; analytical games that cultivate clear thinking; and awareness games that develop all of these qualities and give greater insight into ourselves, others, and relationships. Greenland contextualizes each game and offers guidance for the parents/caregivers throughout. Even though the games are written for kids, they can be just as fun and transformative for adults. Greenland encourages parents and caregivers to develop their own attention, balance, and compassion and explore the universal concepts that she presents. She points out that as caregivers, our own mindfulness has a powerful effect on everyone in our lives, especially our children. They notice when we're calmer, more composed, and more joyful, and learn by our example.
About the Author
Susan Kaiser Greenland is a mindfulness and meditation teacher. She has studied meditation with teachers from the Tibetan Buddhist tradition since 1997.
Susan worked as a corporate lawyer from 1988 to 2005. During that time she developed the Inner Kids program while volunteering in public schools teaching secular mindfulness. Inner Kids is a hybrid of classical mindfulness and meditation practices that have been adapted for children, and one of the first mindfulness programs in education. Susan and her husband, the author Seth Greenland, founded The Inner Kids Foundation, a not-for-profit organization that taught secular mindfulness in schools and community-based programs in the greater Los Angeles area from 2001 through 2009. She eventually left her law practice to work with children, teachers, and parents full-time.
Susan was on the clinical team of the Pediatric Pain Clinic at UCLA Mattel Children's Hospital, co-investigator on a UCLA research study on the impact of mindfulness in education, and a collaborator on an investigation of mindful eating for children and caregivers. Research on the Inner Kids elementary school program has been published in the Journal of Applied School Psychology.
Quoted in numerous magazines and newspapers, including The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Chicago Tribune, The Washington Post, USA Today, Real Simple, and Parents Magazine, Susan has also written for the Huffington Post and other publications. She currently works in the United States and abroad as an author, public speaker, and educator on the subject of sharing secular mindfulness and meditation with children and families.
Susan and her husband live in Los Angeles, California, and have two grown children.
