Something I Can Still Do

It's 11pm, but I'm hurriedly doing a once-over on the house because we have friends coming over first thing in the morning. My husband and our 15 year old are pilfering the freezer for ice cream, laughing and talking about the trip we're taking tomorrow. I'm sort of half aware of this, but mostly I wondering where my oldest son is right now. He's been at an all day music festival today, and I'm expecting to hear from him soon. Although 18 now, I think I worry more every time he leaves the house. He's not just shooting baskets in the driveway or riding his bike down the street anymore. These days, when he walks out the door he could be headed pretty much anywhere.

My mom-brain hasn't worked out the right neural pathways to deal with this yet.

As I shove too many dishes into my groaning dishwasher, fill it too full of detergent, and ignore the arched eyebrow of my darling husband, my mind wanders to a discussion I overheard earlier tonight. I only picked up bits and pieces of it, but they were talking about a group of teenagers, reckless driving, a death, and possible jail time.

I silently curse myself for allowing these kinds of things to pop into my brain. The faces of Steven and all his friends, being driven around in a big old van by one of Steven's best friends, drifts through my thoughts. I slam a cabinet shut and start scrubbing countertops.

My phone rings, and I must look like an Olympic track and field gold medalist, hurdling past our slumbering dog to answer it.

"Hey Mom, it's me. So... I'm okay, but... the concert was great! But, so, I fell and I'm hurt and there's a lot of blood..."

Neurons fire. Pathways form. Time for my brain to learn how to deal with 18 year old Steven.

"Okay, Steven, just explain what happened."

And he does. A lot of rambling words about racing his friends back to the van, a curb that appeared out of nowhere like the boogey man, causing him to basically launch forward and slide across the pavement for what his friends estimate was a good ten feet.

I breathe. I grab a countertop. I ask more questions.

"Where are you right now?"

"We're still in Grand Prairie, we haven't left yet, so Ryan's going to drive me up to the front of the arena. There's a first aid center there, and we'll have them check me out. There's a lot of blood. There is just a lot of blood."

Yes, I think, my stomach curling in on itself, I believe you have mentioned the blood several times.

I want to teleport myself there. Grand Prairie is a good 30-45 minute drive from us, and I just want to be there in that van with those kids -- with my kid -- and fix this whole situation right now.

"Ok, man. That sounds like a good plan. Go see First Aid and give me a call as soon as you've talked to them."

"All right, Mom. I love you."

And we hang up. Simple. Easy. The kids-become-adults have got the situation under control. There's an unknown amount of blood pouring out of my son's body, but not to worry. Some kid in a First Aid clinic out in the middle of nowhere can treat him and send him on his way, lickety-split.

I look up at my husband, suddenly aware that he and Daegan have stopped kidding around and are staring at me. I give them a short recap of the conversation. Isaac just shakes his head.

I go back to cleaning, to shuffling things around, the way I used to shuffle these boys around from school to soccer practice to birthday parties and home again, when they were younger. It was so much easier then, when I had the illusion that I was in control of their tiny little worlds. Now their world is huge and open and as wide as they can imagine it to be, and I love that the possibilities in front of them are endless.

And I hate it, just a little bit, too.

A second phone call lets me know that he is fine, although the people at the First Aid center only looked at him, didn't treat him. He has some road rash, a little dehydration -- nothing major.

I breathe. I put the phone back down. I calm my mind. I think again of the teenagers affected by the car accident earlier this week. I don't know how people put the pieces back together after something that tragic. I count my blessings.

By the time he walks in the door I'm waiting, first aid kit in hand, ready to help.

Because for now, that is something I can still do for him.

A Clear Mind

As a follow up to the lesson we did in class Monday, today I talked to my students about having a clear mind. I'd love to take credit for this fabulous visual representation of what happens in our mind when we get all jumbly-bumbly from the stresses around us, but all props must go to Susan Kaiser Greenland, author of The Mindful Child and the Inner Kids program, which teaches mindfulness through games and activities.  Check it out!
But in the meantime, here's Susan using a jar of water and baking soda to show kids how breath awareness can help us calm our minds when life gets crazy.

I did the same activity with my class today, which was especially fitting as we had a science test that they were a little worried about. Before adding the baking soda to the water we talked about how we feel when we are calm, taking time to notice where we feel "calmness" in our body. We also talked about what it feels like when things around us start to bug us. I brought up our hula hoop experience, so we were able to add in a discussion about how it feels when people get in our personal space or when we allow others to start making choices for us. My students impressed me with their ability to define how and where they feel their frustrations -- in their chest, their stomachs, their head, and one student even said in his fist! As we talked about that, I added in baking soda and had them call out all the things that bother them -- the room got louder and louder as the water turned into a thick white cloud.
And then I asked them to take a moment and just breathe. I told them that when I need to get control of myself, I sometimes image that there is a string attached to my head that is pulling my body straight and tall, and then I take a nice, long deep breathe. So we all did that together. One of my kids quietly commented that the water was beginning to clear up.
We talked about how nice it is to have a way to let the frustrations that come into our mind sink away and focus on ourselves instead.
Throughout the day they brought up the jar, which I left sitting on my desk all day. They also wrote about their experience and how they thought they could use picturing the jar in their mind along with taking three deep breaths to help destress. At the end of the day, a few of my students even said they used this technique during our test and were looking forward to trying it at home when their brothers or sisters started bugging them!
Here's one example of their writing today:

I'm excited to check in with them tomorrow to see how it went!

A Mindful Hula Hoop

Last week I spent three days in San Francisco at the 31st Learning and the Brain Conference. I had the privilege of listening to powerful presentations from Dr. Dan Siegel, Susan Kaiser Greenland, and Michael Posner, among several other researchers and authors in the field of neuroscience and education . A common theme throughout the conference centered on attention, self control, and mindfulness. In fact, I had the good fortune to be there at the same time that Jon Kabat-Zinn was speaking at a benefit for Mindful Schools, and enjoyed an evening at Berkeley gleaning a stronger understanding of the need for mindfulness education in our schools.

Seventeen hours packed full of statistics, graphs, anecdotes, research, and practical application is a lot to try to synthesize back into one cohesive framework to take back to the classroom, so last night I was tossing and turning while visions of attentive, well-rounded children danced in my head. I came up with a couple ideas on how to use simple methods to begin teaching my class the benefit of executive function and mindfulness.

First, a quick definition: executive function sounds super fancy, but it is really a simple concept -- think about a game of Simon Says. When playing Simon Says, a child must suppress the urge to perform the action they hear when the speaker leaves out the trigger words "Simon says..." Executive function is all about impulse control, attentiveness, and self-regulation. Mindfulness in a school setting is used to help students learn to focus attention and concentration, build their social-emotional skills, and reduce stress.

My class this year has struggled with self-control, social cues, and boundaries. I wanted desperately to find a way to use all these new tools to help my kiddos learn to bring some balance to their life.

And suddenly, it came to me.

Hula Hoops.

This morning I gave each student in my class a hula hoop. We held our hoops around our bodies and I instructed each of them to drop their hoops. I asked them if they had enough space to sit, stand, hop, do jumping jacks, and numerous other stunts. Laughing, they all agreed they had plenty of room to do just about everything they needed to do, and could still talk to each other without difficulty.

We held our hoops again and held them up above our heads. I told them to look up through the hoop at the sky and imagine that the space around their hoop extended all the way up to the clouds and beyond. This was their space. This was the area that they could control. I asked them if it was possible for them to control anyone else's hoops while they were focused on holding up their own. They decided quickly that they could only focus on their hoop. I demonstrated walking around them without touching their hoops, without overlapping or bumping into anyone and asked if they thought it would be easy or difficult. Naturally, they all replied that it would be easy. So I gave them a few minutes to jump, run, skip, and hop around each other -- but the one rule was that their hoop needed to touch only their hands and not run into anyone else's space. Afterward, we regrouped and they reported back it was as simple as they thought it would be.

Next, I asked them to form a big circle around me with their hoops. Immediately they began telling each other what to do. A loud chorus of, "Hey, you need to move! No, go there!" and many other comments were exchanged. A completely ill-formed shape spread out around me, resembling something more akin to the blob than a circle. I reminded them that they had all agreed earlier that they could only control their own hoops, so to form the circle they needed to focus on just their hoop and let everyone else do the same. Very quickly an almost perfect circle had surrounded me.

"Wow!" I practically shouted, "That was fast! Why do you think it worked so well?"

Everyone was bubbling with answers about how much easier it was to work together when they focused on what they needed to do, rather than telling other people how to do the job. 

So of course, I walked around the circle and removed every other hoop. I asked each hoopless child to step into a hoop with another person. I asked them to do everything they had done before -- still not touching the person next to them. They tried to sit, stand, hop, and even do jumping jacks. They were not happy. I asked them to pick up their shared hoop and walk, run, skip, and hop around the playground. This resulted in at least one group tumbling to the ground and a few arguments. I asked them to come back to make a new, smaller circle. This almost never happened.

I asked what happened. Why did they seem to have so many problems this time?

Unanimously they decided it was much easier to take care of their own needs when they were in complete control of their own space.

We put the hula hoops away, went back to class and talked for a few minutes about what we noticed, and then I asked them to write without stopping for ten minutes about their experience with the hoops, what they thought it meant about self-control, and how they could keep the hula hoop image in their mind to help them think about coming back to their own space and making thoughtful choices.

I was amazed at their insight, the lessons they learned that I hadn't even anticipated, and the way it changed their mindset for the rest of the day.

This is just the first step, the introduction, the tiniest spark to get them rolling in a direction that I hope will serve to set them on a course of mindful awareness that will last their lifetime.

And all it took was a hula hoop.

Not bad for a Monday.