Sentence completion worksheet for children
Integrating family mindfulness activities into your practice can give clients concrete, engaging ways to build shared emotional regulation and connection.
This article provides an overview of mindfulness for families and different family mindfulness activities to suggest to clients.
We’ve included free downloadable mindfulness worksheets for families to save to your electronic health record (EHR) and use in your practice.
What are mindfulness activities for families?
Mindfulness involves cultivating present-moment awareness of internal states and the surrounding environment without judgment.
When adapted for systemic work, family mindfulness activities offer household members shared practices to lower collective stress, build emotional regulation, and reduce automatic reactivity.
By engaging in these exercises together, families can cultivate greater empathy, nonjudgmental awareness, and acceptance within the home.
Examples of family exercises to share with clients
We’ve included a range of activities suitable for children from young to adolescents that can benefit the whole family.
Feelings wheel for kids: This exercise helps kids learn different feelings and increase their emotional vocabulary. The feelings wheel can help them describe how they feel and where they feel the sensation in their body.
Mindful breathing: This activity involves paying attention to the breath as it moves in and out of the body, related sensations, the movement of air, and the rise and fall of the chest.
Body scan: This exercise can be practiced at any time and can be helpful at bedtime or to provide emotional regulation. It involves mindfully checking in with the body, paying attention to scanning different parts of the body, starting with the toes and moving towards the head. Clients may notice feelings, sensations, points of contact, tension, or discomfort.
Gratitude practices: There are several ways families can practice gratitude together, such as gratitude journaling, reflecting on three things they’re grateful for when eating breakfast or dinner together, or keeping a gratitude jar that the family can add gratitude notes to every day or several days a week.
Mindful walking: This exercise could be practiced individually or as a family and involves focusing on the sensations of walking, such as the feeling of their feet on the ground, the sensation of changing pace, and the rhythm of walking.
Mindful eating: This activity involves instructing family members to slow down during meals, using sensory awareness to notice the texture, taste, and aroma of food with their eyes open or closed.
5-4-3-2-1: An active sensory distraction technique to help dysregulated family members reset their nervous system by naming five things they see, four things they can touch, three things they hear, two things they smell, and one thing they taste.
Loving-kindness meditation: A compassion-focused intervention where family members repeat supportive phrases toward themselves and one another (e.g., "May we be happy, healthy, and at peace").
How to use the family mindfulness activities handout
You can download and use the mindfulness worksheets for families in several ways:
Use the worksheet to provide psychoeducation about mindfulness.
Complete the worksheet collaboratively in session and give the family a copy to take home.
Ask the clients to reflect on the worksheet and complete the reflection questions between sessions and report their findings at their next therapy appointment.
Use the mindfulness activities for families in group therapy sessions to encourage clients to share more about themselves with other participants.
Combine this worksheet with other worksheets for children and families, including our stress worksheets for kids, child anxiety worksheets, and boundaries worksheet.
Share the worksheet with coworkers or leave copies in your office.
Use this worksheet to provide training to interns or supervisees on mindfulness.
Sources
Brody, J. L., Scherer, D. G., Turner, C. W., Annett, R. D., & Dalen, J. (2018). A conceptual model and clinical framework for integrating mindfulness into family therapy with adolescents. Family Process.
Coatsworth, J. D., Duncan, L. G., Berrena, E., Bamberger, K. T., Loeschinger, D., Greenberg, M. T., & Nix, R. L. (2014). The mindfulness-enhanced Strengthening Families Program: Integrating brief mindfulness activities and parent training within an evidence-based prevention program. New Directions for Youth Development.
van der Oord, S., Bögels, S. M., & Peijnenburg, D. (2012). The effectiveness of mindfulness training for children with ADHD and mindful parenting for their parents. Journal of Child and Family Studies.
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