The U.S Surgeon General just issued an advisory on well-being and mental health for parents. Between the constant pressures from society, financial stressors, time restraints, and the isolation parents face today, this advisory is very aptly timed.
Nearly 70% of parents agree that parenting is harder now than it was 20 years ago. While a myriad of factors contribute to these attitudes on parenting, the rise of social media and technology use were the top two cited reasons. But what can parents do when working hours have increased, expectations have skyrocketed, and isolation is at an all time high?
While there are many strategies the Surgeon General advisory outlined, one coping strategy that is far less talked about is meditation. Meditation, or the practice of focusing attention, has positive correlations to better mental health and less stress and anxiety, for parents and for kids.
According to recent research, 41% of parents say that their stress levels interfere with their daily functioning. For parents of children with special needs, more than twice as many reported “fair or poor mental health” than parents of children without special needs. Financial stability, healthcare, work, children’s safety and success are among the most commonly cited stressors.
When so many factors are out of individual control, it can feel overwhelming, and scary, for parents and caregivers. This is where meditation can come into play. At its core, meditation is about training your focus and attention without judgment. The “without judgment” component simply means allowing yourself to be fully present and accept all feelings without evaluation.
Stress and anxiety responses begin by an influx of hormones that trigger physiological changes. Unfortunately, these “fight or flight” responses aren’t exclusive to critical danger and can often be triggered by non-critical dangers, like parental stress.
Fortunately, research shows that meditation can reduce stress and anxiety. In the brain, meditation works through several systems responsible for feelings of stress, including the hippocampus and amygdala. Meditation has also been found to lower cortisol, the body’s stress hormone.
While meditation works subconsciously in the brain, the practice can help on a conscious level too. Similar to Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), which helps you recognize and shift negative thoughts, meditation helps you stay in the moment by training your focus. Meditation helps you consciously shift anxious thoughts about the future by shifting thoughts to the present moment, through various techniques.
Over the past few decades, expectations placed on parents have increased. For example, the average amount of time parents spend both at work and caring for their children has increased. The rise of social media has also created new and unrealistic expectations for parents to meet in their already busy lives. These societal expectations put a lot of pressure on parents and can increase rates of burnout, guilt, stress, and shame.
Guilt and shame are often used interchangeably, but are somewhat different. Guilt refers to the feeling of remorse for a past action. In parenting, this often looks like feeling guilty about leaving a child in daycare to go to work or being too busy to play when your child asks you to. Shame is similar, it’s a feeling of embarrassment, often stemming from the feeling of doing something “improper.” In parenting, shame might look like embarrassment from working multiple jobs to support your family or feeling judged about the type of lunch your child has at school.
Both shame and guilt work together to cause discomfort to parents. In his advisory, U.S Surgeon General Dr. Murthy said, “I have found guilt and shame have become pervasive, often leading them to hide their struggles, which perpetuates a vicious cycle where stress leads to guilt which leads to more stress.”
In an era where parents are more isolated than ever before, these feelings of shame and guilt can be hard to escape. While meditation is often cited for its ability to reduce stress and anxiety, it can also help reduce guilt and shame. Like stress and anxiety, guilt and shame are often felt in the body. Meditation practices like body scans, loving-kindness, and self-compassion meditations can help you become aware of these feelings and help you heal from them.
Meditation can also reduce guilt and shame because of a key tenant of meditation called “no judgment.” This “no judgment” refers to cultivating an uncritical awareness of the present moment. For parents dealing with unrealistic expectations and high levels of stress, applying these principles learned in meditation can reduce feelings of shame and guilt.
Parents report higher levels of isolation and loneliness than non-parents, another risk factor that can contribute to poorer parental mental health. Meditation is a practice that, while often practiced individually, can help parents foster a sense of connection and support emotional well-being.
Certain practices, like mindfulness meditation, have been linked to improving emotion processing and help practitioners stay calm, even when presented with negative emotional stimuli. Other studies have found that meditation can help improve social relationships and social contact. For example, staying in the present moment and having more acceptance are two meditation skills that can improve social connection and reduce loneliness.
Parents, like children, need tools to calmly manage their stress and emotional reactivity. Parents who are better equipped to positively handle stressors related to parenting are often less reactive, more responsive to their children, and more able to see perspectives outside of their own. These positive attributes not only improve the mental health of parents, but can also serve as a protective factor for children. Essentially, better parental mental health correlates to employing positive parenting strategies.
Meditation and mindfulness help families create calmer home environments, teach family members how to be less reactive, encourage kindness to themselves and others, and be more positive. In recent years, researchers have begun studying the impacts of meditation and mindfulness for parents and families.
One preliminary research study has found that mindfulness, an adjacent practice to meditation, can help parents of kids with ADHD significantly reduce stress and overreactivity. Another study recently found initial evidence that a mindful parenting program helped self-regulation and coping skills related to adversary and income-related stress.
With parents and families more stressed than ever, one solution to creating a calmer home is practicing meditation both individually and as a family.
Meditation is often regarded as an individual practice, and while practicing alone is the most popular way to practice, it isn’t the only way. Meditation can be a great family activity with benefits everyone can experience.
Just like there are many ways to practice meditation individually, there are many ways to practice as a family. An easy way to get started is by listening to guided meditations, which are a type of meditations led by a teacher, either via audio or in person sessions. Guided meditations are a great choice for beginners for several reasons ranging from convenience and simplicity to having much-needed structure from trained meditation teachers.
Guided story meditations also let parents choose specific goals and topics, like learning how to turn around a bad day through visualization techniques, or using a scent meditation to foster feelings of calm and positivity.
⭐️ Tip: The next time your family is struggling with a bad day, listen to Dragon’s Magical Movie Theatre and learn how to harness the power of visualization and turn the day around.
Other ways to practice meditation as a family include forest bathing, moving meditation, loving-kindness meditation, and breathwork. Basically, any meditation practice that can be practiced alone, can be practiced in a family setting too. Just remember when meditating with little ones to ensure the practice is easily understandable and engaging.
To get started, choose a goal for your first family meditation practice. Do you want to introduce your family to meditation for the first time? Do you want to work on managing big emotions as a family? Once you have a goal, choose a type of meditation that best suits your goal. Then, find a time to practice and get ready to experience the benefits. Ideally for the first time, this should be when your family is at home and everyone is relatively calm. Like any practice, the more you meditate, the more benefits you and your family will experience.
To enhance family meditation even more, consider making a meditation space, playing calming music, using child-safe essential oils, and incorporating your child’s interests, like a stuffed animal, into the practice.
⭐️ Tip: Curious about practicing meditation as a family? Try Wee Meditate and learn meditation as a family activity within our magical storybook world. From immersive adventures even adults are sure to love, to meditation music and breathing practices, Wee Meditate makes learning meditation easy and effective for families.
Parental mental health doesn’t just affect parents, it affects kids too. Children of parents with poorer mental health are at a greater risk for anxiety, depression, and earlier onset for other mental health conditions. These risks are even greater for children living in poverty, and being exposed to violence and marital conflict.
Fortunately for parents and kids alike, these risks can be reduced by certain protective factors like healthy support systems and positive parenting practices.
Meditation is one way to support parental mental health and boost overall well-being in families. Meditation is also a low-cost practice with virtually zero barriers to entry, making it accessible to all families. When parents have better mental health and well-being, kids feel better too, and vice-versa. Meditation isn’t going to add hours to your day, improve the cost of living, or make societal expectations disappear. Meditation will, on the other hand, give you calmer hours in your day, the tools to better manage parental stress and the ability to cope with stressors with less reactivity.
Wee Meditate has guided meditations, exercises, and stories designed to help children and families feel their very best. Start your plan and discover how your family can benefit from meditation.
