My Mind & Me is a Mindfulness and Emotional Learning Programme for Children – An early intervention, and preventative approach to mental health, wellbeing, and human flourishing.
Overview
At the heart of the My Mind & Me programme is the cultivation of the mental faculty of mindfulness to provide the tools for navigating life.
This programme is about empowering individuals, groups and communities to access their own individual, and unique inner resources to live meaningful lives. The earlier we can teach this to our children the better.
The My Mind & Me programme can be seen as proactive and preventative approach to child mental health, and wellbeing.
This programme has been designed for a variety of groups, including the whole school community (children, parents and teachers), the family community (parents, siblings and carers), and the wider social community (local community groups, outreach and support networks).
The My Mind & Me Me programme is not a ‘quick fix’ approach to mental health, it provides each and every individual with the resources to better understand themselves; their minds, their emotions, their bodies and their relationships with themselves and others through the cultivation, and development of Mindfulness & Awareness. In doing so, cultivating the individual’s autonomy to embrace the opportunities and challenges that life brings, in school, at home, in work, or within the community, as well as providing the building blocks for health and wellbeing in later life.
This programme is both experiential, and psycho-educational. It involves all parties; children, young people, parents, teachers, health professionals and the wider community. It believes that the relational, interdependent approach is the key to sowing the seed for systemic change.
The Mind Mind & Me programme has been specifically developed to engaged executive function processes. The executive function is an umbrella term for the cognitive processes that help us to regulate, control, and mange our thoughts, emotions, and actions. The key components of executive function include: planning, working memory, attention, problem solving, verbal reasoning, inhibition, cognitive flexibility, and initiation of actions and the monitoring of actions.
These cognitive processes enable us to function well and live meaningfully. When these cognitive processes do not function well people can experience a wide variety of difficulty in their lives on a daily basis, for example people who struggle with:
- planning may find it hard to complete multi-step activities like homework, projects, cooking and daily self-care tasks.
- problem solving may find it hard to “get unstuck” in life. They may be unaware that a problem exists or be overcome with feelings of doom and disaster.
- verbal reasoning may find it hard to follow verbal instructions, paraphrase or retell stories.
- working memory may find it hard to multitask, follow multi-step verbal instructions or to perform a task without the aid of written notes.
- attention may find it hard to concentrate, especially on activities that don’t interest them, and be unable to regulate emotions, control and manage thoughts and actions.
- focus are unable to do one thing at a time, complete what they start or to block out environmental distractions.
- inhibition often fidget, or move about a lot, blurt out thoughts, regardless of appropriateness or have trouble with word or memory retrieval.
- initiation may find it hard to begin homework, work tasks or independent projects, stay organised or keep their surroundings neat and clean.
- monitoring may find it hard to learn new tasks quickly, spot mistakes in their work or perform familiar activities under pressure or when stressed.
- cognitive flexibility may find it hard to cope with change, adapt to new rules, be unable to easily see another person’s point of view or to stop one activity to begin another.
Impaired executive function is common in Autistic Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). It affects each person differently and it doesn’t have an easy solution. It requires the development of a unique set of coping strategies.
The My Mind & Me programme is inclusive to work with all unique, and individual needs.