Mindfulness Activities for Kids Who Don’t Want to Sit Still
Updated: Oct 14
Have you ever invited your child to try a mindfulness activity…only to watch them wiggle, talk, roll around, or ask how much longer they have to sit there?
It can be easy to assume mindfulness just isn’t a good fit.
But mindfulness doesn’t have to mean sitting perfectly still, closing your eyes, or becoming calm.
At its core, mindfulness involves bringing attention to what is happening right now. For children, that can happen while sitting quietly—but it can also happen while walking, playing, listening, or moving their bodies. Child Mind Institute, for example, encourages families to practice mindfulness through sensory noticing and everyday activities such as walking or eating together (Child Mind Institute, n.d.).
Sometimes the question isn’t:
How do I get my child to sit still and be mindful?
It might be:
How can we practice noticing in a way that fits this child?
Mindfulness Activities for Kids
Can Include Movement and Play
Mindfulness activities give kids opportunities to notice what is happening around them and inside them.
That might include noticing:
Something they can hear
How their feet feel against the ground
Whether their breathing is fast or slow
Something they hadn’t noticed before
What their body feels like while moving
A thought that pops into their mind
None of those require a child to sit perfectly still.
Here is one simple way to experiment with that idea.
Try a Moving Noticing Hunt
Choose a place where you can move around together.
It might be your backyard, a park, your living room, or even a walk through the neighborhood.
Instead of asking your child to sit and focus, invite them to find things while they move.
You might look for:
Something tiny
Something moving
Something rough or smooth
A sound nearby
A sound farther away
Something you hadn’t noticed before
You can participate too.
“I hear a bird somewhere behind us.”
“I noticed this rock feels really smooth.”
“I never noticed that little crack in the sidewalk before.”
You don’t need a worksheet or a set number of things to find.
The point is simply to experiment with bringing attention to what is happening right now.
What If My Child Changes the Activity?
Frankly, they probably will. 😂
Maybe your child decides finding one tiny thing isn’t enough and starts looking for ten.
Maybe walking turns into hopping.
Maybe they become fascinated by a bug and completely forget your list.
Before redirecting them back to the “right” way to do the activity, it can be useful to notice what is happening.
Are they still paying attention?
Are they noticing details?
Are they engaged with something happening right now?
If so, the activity may have changed while the underlying practice continues.
We don’t necessarily need children to practice mindfulness exactly as we pictured it.
We can experiment with different ways of practicing and notice how your child responds.
The Goal Isn’t to Perform Calm
This distinction matters.
A mindfulness activity doesn’t have to end with a calm child to have been worthwhile.
Your child might notice that their heart is beating quickly after hopping.
They might notice that they feel excited.
They might notice frustration when something doesn’t work.
They might tell you that they don’t like a particular activity at all.
That is information too.
Research on mindfulness programs for children and adolescents has found promising effects, but the overall picture is more modest than some popular claims suggest. A 2022 meta-analysis of 66 randomized controlled trials involving more than 20,000 young people found small improvements in some areas. However, when researchers compared mindfulness programs with active control groups, significant benefits were limited to mindfulness and anxiety/stress, and the effects were small. The researchers concluded that enthusiasm for youth mindfulness programs has sometimes outpaced the evidence (Dunning et al., 2022).
So why practice mindfulness with kids at all?
Because becoming calm is only one possible outcome—and it isn’t the only reason noticing can be useful.
Research with younger children continues to show benefits in areas including attention and emotional and behavioral regulation, while research on mindfulness within families highlights emotional awareness, attentive listening, self-regulation, and the parent-child relationship (Duncan et al., 2009; Kander et al., 2024).
In everyday family life, practicing mindfulness together can give children opportunities to:
Build awareness of thoughts, feelings, body sensations, and what is happening around them
Build language for talking about what they notice
Practice attention by intentionally bringing their focus to something happening right now
Learn about themselves by noticing that different activities, sensations, and experiences affect them differently
Connect with a parent or caregiver through shared attention, curiosity, and practice
These are worthwhile skills even when a child finishes the activity just as energetic, worried, frustrated, or excited as when they started.
They're also additional reasons I prefer thinking about mindfulness as something we can practice and explore, rather than something we need children to master—or something that has to make a difficult feeling disappear.
Looking for More Mindfulness Activities
to Practice Together?
The Moving Noticing Hunt is one way to experiment with mindfulness through movement.
My Steady Steps Cards: Gentle Phrases for Big Feelings – Expanded Pack includes other playful practices parents and children can explore together, including:
Freeze Dance
Children can move, stop, and notice what is happening in their bodies.
Slow Motion Moves
Ordinary movements become an opportunity to experiment with slowing down and paying attention.
Cloud Walking
Movement and imagination come together in a playful mindfulness activity.
Steady Tower
Building becomes an opportunity to practice noticing and responding to what happens along the way.
The 26-page resource also includes breathing practices, everyday routines, activities for big-feeling moments, group activities, reflection pages, and other opportunities to practice together.
The idea isn’t to find the one technique that will make every difficult feeling disappear.
Instead, you can practice different ideas together, notice how your child uses them, and learn what might be worth trying again later.
Steady Steps Cards: Gentle Phrases for Big Feelings — Expanded Pack — $12.99
A Small Practice Can Still Count
Your child doesn’t have to look perfectly mindful.
They don’t have to sit perfectly still.
And they certainly don’t have to become perfectly calm.
Sometimes mindfulness might look like a quiet breath.
At other times, it might look like carefully stacking a block.
Or sometimes it might look like a child hopping down the sidewalk, then suddenly stopping to tell you about a sound they hadn’t noticed before.
The practice is noticing.
There are lots of ways to get there.
One steady step at a time. 🐾
Michael Kiel, MA, LPC
Licensed Professional Counselor
Founder, Mindful Living Resources™
References
Child Mind Institute. (n.d.). Mindfulness.https://childmind.org/resources/mental-health-fitness/mindfulness/
Duncan, L. G., Coatsworth, J. D., & Greenberg, M. T. (2009). A model of mindful parenting: Implications for parent–child relationships and prevention research. Clinical Child and Family Psychology Review, 12(3), 255–270. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10567-009-0046-3
Dunning, D., Tudor, K., Radley, L., Dalrymple, N., Funk, J., Vainre, M., Ford, T., Montero-Marin, J., Kuyken, W., & Dalgleish, T. (2022). Do mindfulness-based programmes improve the cognitive skills, behaviour and mental health of children and adolescents? An updated meta-analysis of randomised controlled trials. Evidence-Based Mental Health, 25(3), 135–142. https://doi.org/10.1136/ebmental-2022-300464
Kander, T. N., Lawrence, D., Fox, A., Houghton, S., & Becerra, R. (2024). Mindfulness-based interventions for preadolescent children: A comprehensive meta-analysis. Journal of School Psychology, 102, 101261. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jsp.2023.101261
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