Mindful Moments Blog
Mindful Moments Blog
Unlocking Potential: The Power of Child-Led Play in Artistic Expression
by Ashley Martin
Learn how child-led art and play unlock your child's full potential, boost creativity, and support emotional growth in a fun, pressure-free way.
Mindful Moments Blog
When Your Kids Are Not Listening: From Yelling To Connection
by Ashley Patek
When your kids are not listening it can feel like your only tool is to yell. Here are some tips on how to shift from yelling to connection during times of misbehavior.
Mindful Moments Blog
by Jessica Zodicoff
As a seven-year-old girl, I remember my grandpa coming over for the holidays and juggling whatever fruit he could find in our kitchen. He taught me to juggle using not lemons, but just three tissues. The fruit was too big for my little-girl hands, but like a set of training wheels, I practiced with those tissues until...
Mindful Moments Blog
You Are My Reason: A Mother's Poem For Her Daughter
by Guest Author
"Even though you are the reason I wake through the night, you are the reason I wake in the morning." A sleep-deprived mother's poem to her baby girl.
Mindful Moments Blog
Creating a Calming Corner for Small Spaces
by Ashley Patek
Calming Corners of all sizes and styles are celebrated because what matters is that you opened the box. Here is how to make a calming space for small spaces.
Mindful Moments Blog
by Suzanne Tucker
For the mamas out there whose hearts know the sharp sting and then the long deep ache of miscarriage, I see you. I feel your heart and I want you to know that you are not alone. Here is my life's story - our joys, our sadness and, most of all, our waiting.
Mindful Moments Blog
15 Ways To Make This Mother’s Day A Day To Remember
by Ashley Patek
With families staying home due to social distancing, we created a list of 15 unique ways to bring connection to this year's Mother's Day.
Mindful Moments Blog
What Teachers Are Thinking and Feeling About Returning To School This Year
by Ashley Patek
With fall approaching, parents and educators are looking to the next school year and wondering what’s best for everyone involved.
Mindful Moments Blog
St. Louis Post-Dispatch: A Card Game to Boost Your Child's Emotional Intelligence
by Alex Petrou
When I coerced my family to play a new card game designed to nurture our empathy, the first question was: How do you win? “Oh my god, it’s not that kind of game,” I said. We’re a competitive bunch. Let’s just say I’ve been uninvited from some family game[...] Read More
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Generation Mindful creates tools, toys, and programs that nurture emotional intelligence through play and positive discipline. Join us and receive joy in your inbox each week.
Mindful Moments Blog
Six Benefits of Using Child-Led Learning
by Alex Petrou
Child-led learning. The thought of it can seem downright scary. Here are six benefits of using child-led learning with your young children...
Mindful Moments Blog
by Ashley Patek
Am I doing enough for my kids? Am I dropping the ball at work?How do I date my husband, spend time with myself, and keep the house afloat? Will my friends understand? I haven’t responded to their texts in days. These questions all lead back to one limiting belief that has followed me around like my own shadow for most of my life ... and it sounds like this in my head: "I am falling short, messing up... and not enough."
Nothing will cause us to look in the mirror at all parts of ourselves more than becoming a parent. And that’s exactly what my two sons have done - reflected back to me this limiting belief that says I have to be exemplary or I am failing.
The trickle-down effect was palpable as I watched my four-year-old son throw his red crayon across the room after coloring out of the lines in his Paw Patrol coloring book. Tears brimming, he wailed, “It is ruined. It’s not the way I wanted to do it. I never want to color again.”
After comforting my son and stumbling across my words, because clearly, I lacked the skills I wanted to teach, I settled in to relate to his pain. I got it. I really did. Because I have spent most of my life there.
I realized that if I didn’t learn tools to help my son embrace his mistakes, then tears over a scribbled picture would turn into tears about striking out at baseball, getting a B on a paper … and an overwhelming urgency to have all things go his way.
I began reading all the tips and tricks that experts suggested in helping my child overcome his fixed mindset, and with all of my short-hand sticky notes framing my computer, it felt more like putting a band-aid over a deeper wound. The pulse was coming from me. Because while my son was early in his brain development, I was also emotionally immature.
It was time to stop shaming myself for my mistakes and learn to befriend them … to acknowledge them as the teachers they are.
Here are five things I did to help positively reinforce a growth mindset:
1. Get to the root
Carol Dweck, psychologist and the author of Mindset who coined the term growth mindset, says, “Parents think they can hand children permanent confidence - like a gift - by praising their brains and talent. It doesn’t work, and in fact, has the opposite effect. It makes children doubt themselves as soon as anything is hard or anything goes wrong.”
I felt like she wrote this specifically for my child-self. Reflecting back to my youth, my parents, with the best of intentions and full of heart, assured me that I was the best - When I colored a picture, I was the best artist … When I won the track race, I was the best athlete that day … When I graduated from college, I was the best. In being told I was “perfect”, I began to fear being “not perfect”. Would they still love me if I fell short of the best? This single question followed me through all future relationships, including motherhood.
And there it was, the root of my perfectionism stemmed from fear. At least now I knew what I was really dealing with.
2. Learn to release
“True self-confidence is the courage to be open - to welcome change and new ideas regardless of their source. It is not reflected in a title, an expensive suit, a fancy car, or a series of acquisitions. It is reflected in your mindset: your readiness to grow,” says Dweck.
So the new question became, how do I become courageously me?
I wrote down everything that I felt like I was failing. And then I tore the page in half. And then, tore it again. I threw the shredded papers in the recycle bin where they could be transmuted to something useful because my guilt sure wasn’t helping anyone.
3. Adopt a new perspective
Brené Brown, professor, lecturer, and author says that healthy striving is self-focused, asking ourselves, “How can I improve?” whereas perfectionism is other-focused, causing us to ask, “What will they think?”
I realized that being the best was a narrow concept. Instead, I could focus on being my best, and that was fluid minute to minute. Sometimes my best is locking myself in the bathroom for five deep breaths before re-entering the chaos of raising small children, and sometimes the bar is much higher. When I put the power back into myself, to ask what I want and need, I can overcome life’s disruptions with much more resilience.
4. Create a mantra
I knew I needed some sort of mantra to repeat to myself as I was likely to fall back into old habits, at least initially. So I created this practice: Place one hand on your heart, and one hand on your belly. Breathe in: I am love. Breathe out: I am enough. Rinse and repeat all day long.
5. Practiced acceptance
For my children to embrace their mistakes, they had to become safe for me, too. When I did mess up, I noticed my self-talk and focused on shifting from I can’t believe I did this to My mistakes help me learn and grow. With practice, mistakes became allowed, and even welcomed, in our household.
I also circled back to the beginning, my child-self who was a slave to praise. I gave her permission to be loved, flaws and all. Shifting into motherhood, I began to notice and celebrate my boys’ efforts over their outcomes so that they have the freedom to meet challenges head-on without the trepidation of a what if I fail mentality?
My boys and I are learning to do the lionhearted work of being ourselves together.
So, you ask, how did I help my sons develop a growth mindset? I started with me.
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Generation Mindful creates educational tools, toys, and programs that nurture emotional intelligence through play and positive discipline. Join us and receive parenting inspiration and support in your inbox each week.
Mindful Moments Blog
Not Perfect Parenting and Mindfulness
by Alex Petrou
By: Alex Petrou"When I started my journey in motherhood, my greatest struggle was perfection. Wanting to reach high. Having these high, I would say unattainable, goals. And though I was doing all the crunchy mama wonderful things - babywearing, nursing, making my foods and you know, all these wonderful things, it was never enough. You know that feeling of being a hamster on a wheel? I was very present to that sort of not enough-ness in motherhood early on.
I was also very present to the isolation, to feeling alone, and yet I was here in my home town of St. Louis, Missouri where I was raised. I had family around me and every reason to feel supported and yet I struggled with that feeling of isolation and really just wanting to connect in a really authentic way to other moms. And this was 16 years ago so you have to remember, there was no Facebook."
"All of this has brought me to where I am today; to the classes I run for parents and all the products we've created via Generation Mindful. It's about being enough at the root of it all and lowering the bar. If our goals are too high, we can never reach them."
Watch the full video and hear more about:
The difference connecting before you correct your kids can make in their listening.
Practical applications of mindfulness in parenting.
Why awareness is more important than being perfect.
How mantras can inspire mindful parenting.
The toddler years and how the card game PeaceMakers is helping parents to be more patient.
The power of being enough and celebrating the little things.
The power of daily playful rituals for parents, children and kids.
Click here for more on PeaceMakers and follow Generation Mindful on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.
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Generation Mindful creates tools, toys, and programs that nurture emotional intelligence through play and positive discipline. Join us and receive joy in your inbox each week.
Mindful Moments Blog
by Ashley Patek
In the face of COVID-19, Generation Mindful spreads some light-hearted humor with a post for parents that went viral.
Mindful Moments Blog
From Classroom to Home: One Teacher's Journey to Positive Parenting
by Ashley Patek
After maternity leave, I decide to shift from my role as a teacher of an academic classroom to that of teaching our “one and only.” My full momma heart told me that I would nail it. I mean, how hard could it be to teach one child when I had taught so many?
Mindful Moments Blog
Parenting Through Sleep Deprivation
by Ashley Patek
In solidarity, we stand: All of the sleep-deprived parents out there. Fragmented sleep is hard and it makes parenting mindfully feel like an uphill battle. But even in the haze of of it all, this mama has found her voice, and this is what she shares.
Mindful Moments Blog
Celebrating Juneteenth: Honoring History And Taking Action
by Selina Armstrong
Juneteenth is important for the larger narrative around justice and equality. It is not just Black History, it is American History. We can honor the legacy of Juneteenth AND mindfully take action for continued change. Here are seven ways.
