11 ms·

Schools in England Introduce a New Subject: Mindfulness

108 points by donum 8y ago

mapcars 8y ago
>“Children will start to be introduced gradually to issues around mental health, well-being and happiness right from the start of primary school,” he added. Why wouldn't adults just solve their mental problems instead of introducing them to children? Children have no problems with happiness or well-being. It's us who should learn from them. big facepalm
- fiala__ 8y ago
  > Children have no problems with happiness or well-being. Have you ever met a child IRL?
  - mapcars 8y ago
    In my experience kids, until a certain age, run around, scream, shout, full of excitement, happiness, and life. But once they start looking at adults - all they see only dark, gloomy, lifeless serious faces and so they start becoming the same. If adults want to do something about it - we should teach happiness ourselves first. Kids will follow automagically.
    - dTal 8y ago
      Are you suggesting we shouldn't teach mindfulness to children? That it's not a useful skill? That the time would be wasted? >“It’s not just to make them feel better in the short-term,” Dr. Deighton said, “but to better equip them for later in life.”
      - mapcars 8y ago
        I think if needed it can be learned later, I don't see any problem with that. I started being interested in meditation around 23 when I was on the very bottom of my emotional state. But I see that most people around me never experienced this and for them, meditation and yoga is an exotic exercise. One thing which I really don't like here is instead of giving kids free time to experience life themselves they will add one more boring official class.
        mercer 8y ago
        > One thing which I really don't like here is instead of giving kids free time to experience life themselves they will add one more boring official class. Being perpetually 'busy' and treating life as a collection of planned activities, like homework, classes, courses, workshops, appointments, etc. is something that runs deep in our entire (Western?) society, whether school-going or working age. Mindfulness as yet another one of those activities feels uncomfortably like a band-aid solution that is dangerous precisely because it works. It's a bit like taking aspirin to deal with headaches when really you should just stop drinking so much coffee and working so much. I do think mindfulness can be more than that. I've experienced how beneficial it can be to make it part of life rather than just (or only) another planned activity, especially when it's a part or underpinning of a larger 'framework' (in my case I lean towards Zen Buddhism).
      - michaelt 8y ago
        Mindfulness is branded wrong. Sceptics see it as (a) Some yoga-style mystic silliness reasonable people have been ignoring for decades, and (b) A 2014 self-help book, a fad-prone genre with relatively little credibility. If the common sense ideas underlying mindfulness were given a different coat of paint, they might be more readily accepted.
    - fiala__ 8y ago
      If you've never seen a depressed child then I beg you to pay attention. Children have incredibly complex, fascinating and perceptive minds, they aren't just happy food processing automata until they reach puberty. It's exactly this kind of reductionism which leads parents to ignore their children's psychological needs, which leads to schools having to take action.
      - mapcars 8y ago
        >just happy food processing automata until they reach puberty I did not say that. As I don't think that imposing complexity of mental bullshit from adult's minds on children makes things any better.
    - arethuza 8y ago
      "But once they start looking at adults" I suspect one of the biggest sources of misery for a lot of kids are other kids.
      - zimpenfish 8y ago
        Certainly for me it was, compounded by adults not taking this seriously (and a certain amount of screwy brain chemistry.) If your parent is a teacher at the same school, your school life is going to be A+ miserable.
        arethuza 8y ago
        I don't think its just adults not taking it seriously in some quarters its surprisingly common for adults to use the "man up" or "stiff upper lip" approaches for physical or mental pain.
  - yoz-y 8y ago
    I don't think that children who have problems with happiness or well-being will be helped by teaching them mindfulness. I was a lucky kid, but those around me who had problems had them because they were excluded from groups, got parents divorced, were bullied or were simply spoiled by their parents and were unhappy if anything didn't go their way. Telling them to be mindful is straight out of Voltaire's Candide.
    - icebraining 8y ago
      News articles don't stop at the title. The classes involve more than just "telling them to be mindful".
    - fiala__ 8y ago
      I'm no mental health expert but isn't mindfulness a proven method for improving one's mental health? Schools can't fix dysfunctional families. All they can do is give kids some tools to cope with such challenges. Even if it doesn't help a particular child, why would it be wrong to at least try?
    - rsynnott 8y ago
      The major application of mindfulness for which there is actually evidence is stress/anxiety reduction. This would obviously be useful for kids who are bullied and/or have bad home environments.
- austincheney 8y ago
  > Why wouldn't adults just solve their mental problems instead of introducing them to children? Because people live in an artificial world. In the absence of real problems everything is emotionally traumatic, first world problems. As I sit next to a war on a military deployment I await people to prove me right with the sadness of their downvotes.
  - icebraining 8y ago
    My teenage brother just lost his father to cancer. But that's surely just a first-world problem.
    - austincheney 8y ago
      That is a tragic event. Healthy people bounce back from trauma after a healing period. Healthy people aren't the ones in need of institutional self-awareness. Conversely, do you have chronic income insecurity? Are you dodging bullets and bombs daily as some people do? Were you ever a victim of child slavery in a third-world nation? I suspect if you have internet access you probably have reliable shelter and don't stress over food insecurity. Those are real problems, and yet the people who live through those stressors typically aren't the ones needing mindfulness. The difference is a matter of perspective from perseverance. The lack of perseverance in normal childhood development is certainly a first-world problem.
      - icebraining 8y ago
        Yes, I was forced to leave my home and sleep on friend's houses multiple times during my childhood; once, we were forced to leave by threat of force in the evening, and spend three months living on a floor mattress in another city. For a couple of years, I often struggled to fall asleep due to fear, not just for me but also for my younger brother - my chest would compress at every loud noise. Randomly crying when alone (particularly in the shower) was common during that time. But no, I was never dodging bullets. I lived in a Western country and the assailant used other weapons and wasn't part of a paramilitarized group, so I guess it doesn't count.
- hvidgaard 8y ago
  Have it ever occurred to you that adults have mental problems because they didn't learn to manage it as children and young adults? Besides, depression and anxiety is surprisingly common among children.
  - mapcars 8y ago
    >Besides, depression and anxiety is surprisingly common among children. Whom do you think they learned this from? Trees or cats?
    - icebraining 8y ago
      Even assuming depression must be "learned", what does it matter? School can't make sure they're never around depressed people. But it can help them protect themselves from it.
      - mapcars 8y ago
        You will meet all kinds of people that's true, but it worth decreasing the amount.
        icebraining 8y ago
        How do you suggest the schools help with that?
    - ionised 8y ago
      You are asserting that depression is a learned behaviour?
      - fiala__ 8y ago
        They're probably also the kind of person who tells depressed people to "cheer up, life's not all that bad after all!"
        8y ago
- aurbano 8y ago
  You were a very lucky child then :) Edit: Apologies for the sarcastic response, couldn't help it. Children can and do feel unhappy, some more than others. This feels like an amazing step in the right direction because many people (myself included) don't learn early on that feeling sad or overwhelmed is normal and ok. We strive to "feel good" and stress about it, without tools to cope. Most adults either ignore this or go to therapy, but maybe from now on people will be more prepared.
  - mapcars 8y ago
    >many people (myself included) don't learn early on that feeling sad or overwhelmed is normal and ok Until someone told you what is normal and what is not you have no problems doing something. So it's not about being sad is ok, it's about not judging at all.
    - icebraining 8y ago
      Yes, in an utopia, this class may be useless.
      - mapcars 8y ago
        There are still many places on a planet where kids are not burdened by depression and sadness. It happens to them as well, of course, but not in any extraordinary amounts.
        icebraining 8y ago
        Most kids in the UK don't need to know multiplication to get their basics fulfilled either. Most of schooling is about preparing them for the future, not for the present. But some will benefit sooner, and you can't always tell which ones.
    - aurbano 8y ago
      I think this topic is too complicated to discuss over text like this. I agree with you, I’m sure we think similarly, and it seems like talking to children about mindfulness could be amazing. I fear that many schools/teachers won’t do a good job at it, judging exclusively from my own experience back in school... but that’s a different issue.
- dTal 8y ago
  >The initiative comes months after a survey commissioned by the National Health Service found that one in eight children in England between the ages of 5 and 19 suffered from at least one mental disorder at the time of their assessment in 2017. >The survey, which was published in November, also indicated a slight increase in mental disorders in five to 15-year-olds, which rose to 11.2 percent in 2017 from 9.7 percent in 1999. Disorders like anxiety and depression were the most common, affecting one in 12 children and early adolescents in 2017, and appeared more often in girls.
- 076ae80a-3c97-4 8y ago
  You're gatekeeping metal health problems.
  - mapcars 8y ago
    In my experience most things which people call "mental problems" are caused by themselves. And the solution is to stop causing them, not to learn how to "manage" with them.
    - DanBC 8y ago
      "I don't know anything about zoology, biology, geology, geography, marine biology, crypto zoology, evolutionary theory, evolutionary biology, meteorology, liminology, history, herpatology, paleontology, or archeology, but I think ..." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FzOv14fA-BI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FzOv14fA-BI
      - mapcars 8y ago
        This is a subject where you don't need to know (intellectually), the experience is more important. Do you "know" joy better by experiencing it or by learning from a textbook or a school class?
- kitd 8y ago
  I suggest you RTFA before facepalming. It is as much about being literate in the issues as it is about solving them.
  - mapcars 8y ago
    By being literate I will only learn from other people's experience. But I can only truly rely on my own experience.
    - kitd 8y ago
      That's so mixed up, I'm not sure where to start. Should we learn Maths or English from experience? Without the literacy, we don't have the tools and terms to understand our experience. The early years are exactly the time to introduce them, since that is where our experiences have the most profound and long-lasting effect.
- andyjohnson0 8y ago
  > Children have no problems with happiness or well-being. This seems rather naive to me. Unhappiness is far from absent from the lives of many children and young people, and social media is making it worse. See yesterday's yougov survey results that indicate that "18% of young people in UK do not think life is worth living" [1]. This new curriculum subject is about helping children to understand and navigate their own feelings and deal with stresses so that they are less likely to turn into messed-up teenagers and adults. As a parent of school-age children I think this is an entirely good thing. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/feb/05/youth-unhappiness-uk-doubles-in-past-10-years https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/feb/05/youth-unhapp...
  - baybal2 8y ago
    I spent most of my early childhood in a grimiest, gloomiest, dying city on Russian/Chinese border. From the age of 12 or so, I lived with one goal - get out of there. I had no time for stupid psychologising, nor could've imagined anybody living in glitzy cities of the West to be so dumb to waste time on that. There were times I almost worshipped that imaginary version of Western culture I had with it being all about action, forward movement and unending progress. Once I finally got myself out of Russia, I was up for a big, big surprise... West had idleness as its second nature...
    - andyjohnson0 8y ago
      > West had idleness as its second nature... I'm sorry that you had to deal with those things as a child, but I'm not sure what you're saying here. That children in the west are soft due to insufficient adversity? Mental health is not something that's "so dumb to waste time on". Maybe you are tough enough to take what life throws at you, or maybe you just think you are. But I've been around long enough to know that people can be broken-down by events in even an ordinary life - and children need kindness and support just as much as they need challenge and the opportunity to learn from mistakes. If I've misunderstood then please feel free to explain more.
      - baybal2 8y ago
- afarrell 8y ago
  > Children have no problems with happiness or well-being I'm happy for your past self, but your experience is not universal. Many people as children and teenagers have problems with these things. Its hard to take action to work on these without having a mental framework to organise your thoughts and communicate about them.
  - mapcars 8y ago
    >Many people as children and teenagers have problems with these things So there will be an experience of some "negative" states of mind and emotion, but to become a problem it needs support. Removing this support is what I'm talking about. In a form that adults should be a live example that "negative" things happen but do not grow into problems.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- gls2ro 8y ago
  I think your hypothesis here is that the mental health issues, unhappiness and issues with well-being can be fixed completly from the society. I disagree with it. I prefer to look at them somehow like I see bugs: they cannot be - in general - eliminated completely. They come with the process of people building products. So I don't think we can solve those completely. This is why I think we should start educating children about how to think about live. Maybe an inspiration from philosophy stage from Ancient time which originally I think was concerned (at least some of them) with how a life should be lived, what happiness means, what does it mean to be a homo sapiens ... I think we should approach this as a society and start offering children tools about how to approach this.
- DanBC 8y ago
  > Children have no problems with happiness or well-being How about children who are repeatedly raped by their parent? Are they happy? How about children who's parent has died? Are they happy? What about the children who are grappling with gender indentity or sexuality (and maybe with parents who are not supportive)? Are they happy? What about children living with disability and who are being bullied because of it? Are they happy?
  - mapcars 8y ago
    The problems you mentioned, while being a completely different matter, will not (and should not) be solved by mindfulness anyway. You are exactly approving my point that it's the adults who need to solve their problems (on different levels) first.
- rsynnott 8y ago
  > Children have no problems with happiness or well-being. Either you had a fairly idyllic life as a child of (more likely) you are looking at the past through rose tinted glasses (many people do this). Kids have problems.
weavie 8y ago
My daughters homework for each day this week is : 1. Talk about your feelings. 2. Do something you are good at. 3. Keep yourself hydrated. 4. Eat well. 5. Keep active in mind and body. 6. Take a break. 7. Stay connected to those you care about. 8. Ask for help. 9. Be proud of your very being. 10. Actively care for others. She has a chart she needs to tick once she has achieved each item. I get that they are all good things to do and perhaps it provides a talking point in families where these things aren't considered, but it seems a bit much to throw it all in at once. Next week she will probably be back to learning her 3 times tables..
- mapcars 8y ago
  I would argue that most of those things should come naturally, they should not be homework. Maybe on one day, you need less food, maybe another day your body needs rest. Being proud is beyond everything :D
- sridca 8y ago
  How do they teach your daughter to translate these principles to practical actions? For example how does your daugher understand "Eat well" to mean in terms of actual food she happens to crave (cookies, ice cream, plants, meat, etc.)? If they are going EAT-Lancet style on her you should probably be concerned.
  - weavie 8y ago
    I will be asking her what they are teaching her over the week. I am struggling to find any coherent solid information about what the EAT-Lancet diet actually is, or why it is bad. It looks like a load of politically motivated mumbo jumbo! Would you be able to summarise?
    - sridca 8y ago
      It is a vegan-inspired/ anti-meat diet (similar to Canada's New Food Guide), backed by the processed food industry, but with plenty of issues which are neatly summarized by Georgia Ede here: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/diagnosis-diet/201901/eat-lancets-plant-based-planet-10-things-you-need-know https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/diagnosis-diet/20190...
emmelaich 8y ago
Not unrelatedly - another story on the front page today: The Decline of Historical Thinking Mindfulness is not new, it's just the word that is new.
stiangrindvoll 8y ago
I think this makes perfect sense. Good one from the Buddhists this one. It's all about making the children stronger, tougher and more aware of them self and people around them. How they affect the world and how the world affects them. If the world is mean, harsh or tough, they are already capable to handle them self. One can also as an adult start practicing this. Can be quite exhilarating. Here is a good book on the subject https://www.amazon.co.uk/Miracle-Mindfulness-Gift-classic-revered/dp/1846044820/ref=sr_1_1_twi_har_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1549448492&sr=8-1&keywords=9781846044823 https://www.amazon.co.uk/Miracle-Mindfulness-Gift-classic-re...
FrankyHollywood 8y ago
I'm always puzzled with the fact that people search for surrogate solutions instead of pursuing the real issue. If you don't feel well there is so much you can do. Make serious effort in making friends, join a sports club or something else you like, solve long running conflicts with other people, don't over- or under achieve on a level which doesn't fit you (school/work), be proud with the things you accomplish instead of never being satisfied, etc... Perhaps it just seems easier to buy another self-help book, and take a mindfulness class.
- samdoidge 8y ago
  I agree problems need to be tackled at the source, but some self-help books may help you deal with the problem. 12 Rules for Life is one such book.
  - FrankyHollywood 8y ago
    yes you're right, some books can really be insightful, I've read some myself :) Unfortunately I see people around me who drown in the therapy/self-help circuit. A lot of money is involved, and they keep running in circles. It seems to become a self fulfilling prophecy. If you spend to much time reflecting on your life, it becomes part of your life which prevents you from really living. Before saying anymore clichés I'll stop, and go do something :)
  - faceplanted 8y ago
    12 Rules for life is a complete mess of strangely used bible quotes, misattributed and misquoted philosophers, at one point blatant rape apology, and an obvious lack of empathy from the author throughout. But one thing is does do well that I wish people would focus on over the obvious shortcomings of the author and why nothing has really replaced it yet is that it tells you in no uncertain terms that if you want to go anywhere or have any confidence in yourself you have to acknowledge that you live in a system that isn't always fair and try to make it work for you, paralysis will get you nowhere.
    - samdoidge 8y ago
fooblat 8y ago
I really struggle with the term "mindfulness" as it seems it can mean anything and everything, depending on who you ask. We had some Mindfulness workshops at a previous employer and it was so full of woo and magical thinking that it really turned me off and felt like a huge waste of time. My current company also recently introduced a Mindfulness workshop only this time it was really a basic meditation workshop which I enjoyed. At this point, I don't even know how to react when something related to Mindfulness is announced.
- spuz 8y ago
  Sounds like you had a bad workshop the first time round. Mindfulness should be rational, scientific and entirely free of woo or magical thinking.
  - fooblat 8y ago
    I can only agree with you 100%. However, it seems this is not a universal view.
    - yoz-y 8y ago
      Recently I have been bombarded by ads for some mindfulness app on youtube. All of their ads talk about ancient aliens and crystals, whereas the application presents itself as a yoga and meditation thing. The content has both. I guess that for some reason the target audiences overlap enough that bundling the woo and meditation makes some economical sense.
  - collyw 8y ago
    These days the word is used so frequently that it seems to include everything and is almost meaningless.
- lm28469 8y ago
  > My current company also recently introduced a Mindfulness workshop only this time it was really a basic meditation workshop which I enjoyed. I find it extremely weird for companies to offer these things. The only reason they'd do it is to boost their own productivity / margin / whatever. As in "be healthy because we need your ass on that chair and your brain working on our problems". There is already a thin enough line between personal and professional life. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jan/31/mindfulness-work-employers-meditation https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jan/31/mindfu...
bencollier49 8y ago
My five year-old son now talks about his mind in the third person as a result of this. I'm having to retrain him with responsibility for his own actions. Lovely idea and all but having untrained people teaching psychological practices to reception-grade children seems rather foolhardy to me.
- icebraining 8y ago
  That's a fair point; while mental health wasn't a class in my country, I've also found that these "extra" classes often suffered from giving them to random teachers. Just because they have some experience (and possibly a minor degree) in pedagogy doesn't mean they can teach every subject. Many here can barely teach their specialty.
- carlsborg 8y ago
  Why is that a bad thing? If they can evaluate their thought process at such a young age, I would think that's a win.
  - Cthulhu_ 8y ago
    Are they evaluating their thought processes, or are they parroting what they were taught while still being, you know, five years old?
    - therein 8y ago
      I would be more worried if they begin absolving themselves of guilt due to this when they do something genuinely harmful to someone else out of childish behavior.
- anextomp 8y ago
  That seems like a fairly healthy thing to learn, no? Sometimes we need to acknowledge that our brain can cause us to do things we don't want to, and not beat ourselves up for it. Obviously that can go too far, and you need to anticipate the consequences of your actions, owning your conscious decisions.
wawhal 8y ago
About time for mindfulness to actually be a thing. Waiting for a time where people are at least exposed to the idea of mindfulness, whether they continue to practice it, is their choice. A subject in school is the best way to achieve this. For adults, if one thinks that they are already super happy and self-realised, it still makes sense to try out the techniques of mindfulness just with a consideration that they "could" be even more so. They "could" be missing an entirely different dimension. Personal experience: Up till the age of 21, I was enjoying my life, doing well, fooling myself that I am the happiest I can be. That's when I took this course in IIT Madras called Self Awareness [1]. I had taken it because people said they always give good grades. The course caused a massive self-discovery for me. It was all and all about mindfulness. The teachings were mainly from the books: `Siddhartha` [2], `The power of now` [3] and `Stop sleep walking through life` [4]. They introduced us to relaxing exercises, meditation and breathing techniques along with some ideas to watch yourself while you are getting emotionally vulnerable. Briefly, the course was about being conscious of your existence, about feeling one with the present and about figuring yourself out for real. It has been 4 years since and I can clearly see that I am a different person, I have much less fights, I am rarely depressed, I handle criticism much better, I am much more productive in my work and most important of all, I have the clarity about who I am. Sucks to think that I wouldn't have known (never mind achieved) all this if it weren't for a mindfulness course. Props to the schools in England for this initiative. [1] https://courses.iitm.ac.in/course/info.php?id=849 https://courses.iitm.ac.in/course/info.php?id=849 [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siddhartha_(novel) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siddhartha_(novel) [3] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6708.The_Power_of_Now https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6708.The_Power_of_Now [4] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/258519.Stop_Sleep_Walking_Through_Life_ https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/258519.Stop_Sleep_Walkin...
- LunaSea 8y ago
  Making it a subject removes that "choice" you talk about and makes it mandatory.
stared 8y ago
I think schools should teach one more thing: non-violent communication and related things: not-neediness, how to communicate feelings and needs, how to avoid shaming and guilt-tripping, how to ask and be fine with rejections, how to understand that other people may have different goals and motivations, etc. - Marshall B. Rosenberg, "Non-Violent Communication" https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/560861.Non_Violent_Communication https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/560861.Non_Violent_Commu... Moreover, it may change the society (so its benefits don't stop at an individual level) - as a lot of problems stem from conflicts that escalate step by step.
- dvfjsdhgfv 8y ago
  If we start the "what else" branch, it's almost infinite. For example, the ways to manipulate people and how to protect oneself (e.g. according to Cialdini's classification, but not necessarily). How to develop critical thinking in a world where most communication is aimed at influencing you in one way or another. How to develop elasticity and the skill to adapt to ever-changing circumstances (hint: the world they will be living in will be very different from the one they're taught about at school, I think we all experienced it at some point). How to understand the conditioning of the society and the culture we're living in (e.g. the roles of the husband/wife, parent/child, family member, colleague, boss) and learn to live with them without getting too serious about them (and save a few bucks on psychotherapy later). How to save money. Only those few who care about you will teach you how to save money, everyone else wants you to spend your money. Etc. etc.
pmden 8y ago
Ah, it sounds like a rebranded "Personal Development Education". Having being introduced to it from secondary school onwards, it was always a pleasure to have a double period of PDE at the end of the day. Zero study involved. No real homework. If we were lucky they'd roll out the big telly and an old tape about bullying or hormones. Even when they put it before the first bell, it worked out well as a place to do your maths homework. Probably for the best they're starting younger these days. They might find real buy-in from actual children.
setquk 8y ago
I've had a lot of experience with schools and mental health issues. I have a daughter under an EHCP due to a genetic problem that causes learning difficulties and the competence is simply not there to handle even basic care in this aspect. This isn't budgetary or process related, but individual human competence is beyond terrible. This spans three "Ofsted outstanding" rated schools and two local authorities. It has got to the point that there are actually specialist charities set up to whack the schools back into place legally when they screw up over and over again. And we're trusting them with handling general mental health? What could possibly go wrong? Mindfulness is such a vague concept that it detatches the responsibility from mental health as well.
fdggdfsvscvsd 8y ago
"children and teenagers struggling to get to grips with how they fit into the increasingly complex modern world" Isn't that basically the job of children, and has always been? Not to denounce the efforts to improve their mental health. Just saying some struggle seems normal and unavoidable, probably even necessary.
- DanBC 8y ago
  Mindfullness doesn't aim to eliminate struggle. Children still have to sit exams; they still have chances to enter competition. And mindfulness won't, for example, remove a child from poverty. What it might do is stop children killing themselves as a result of adversity. Rates of death by suicide in the UK have been declining recently, but not for young people. We also know that rates of self-harm for young people are increasing, and self harm is a significant predictor of death by suicide.
  - fdggdfsvscvsd 8y ago
    I must admit, I don't see how positive thinking could possibly help? Assuming suicides are usually a result of violence (bullying by peers, pressure by parents and teachers...). Wouldn't it be better to show practical ways out of it? Saying "I'm so great and thankful" while bullies pounce on you might feel rather hollow quickly? Don't get me wrong, this seems to be set up as an experiment, which seems like a good thing. Maybe they'll find it will actually help. Your argument sounds like "something has to be done, because..." - but something is not always the right thing.
sgt101 8y ago
My child is doing this; I've seen two situations where it was a help. - I took a chunk out of myself with an axe (idiot, tired, low blood sugar tomfoolery); I got coached to calm down, and "this is a good opportunity to practice mindfulness" was quoted at me. It was surprisingly helpful actually :) - We stayed with some friends and one of their children had a typical 10yrld meltdown (over xbox); my child took themselves off to another room and practiced mindfulness to avoid getting upset. So, it appears to be rubbish, but in practice seems to give tools that work, at least a bit!
altras 8y ago
Awesome! disclaimer: I've been involved in https://www.rulerapproach.org/ https://www.rulerapproach.org/ (as part of the development team from www.camplight.net) It's interesting that the news release from gov.uk[1] focuses that they are doing one of the largest studies in the world with 370 schools... Looking today at our RULER statistics we now have almost ~900 enlisted USA schools. Combining those will definitely become one of the largest, unless there's something similar in other parts of the world :O Have anybody heard something like this in other countries? I hope all these initiatives lead to less bullying and aggressive behavior :)) [1] https://www.gov.uk/government/news/one-of-the-largest-mental-health-trials-launches-in-schools https://www.gov.uk/government/news/one-of-the-largest-mental...
justanegg 8y ago
1984 much
branchless 8y ago
If this works, who will run all the money laundering? http://spiderswebfilm.com/ http://spiderswebfilm.com/
stuaxo 8y ago
Great, except that we have gone so test crazy 5 year olds are getting homework in the UK and being trained for exams.

108 points by donum 8y ago

>“Children will start to be introduced gradually to issues around mental health, well-being and happiness right from the start of primary school,” he added. Why wouldn't adults just solve their mental problems instead of introducing them to children? Children have no problems with happiness or well-being. It's us who should learn from them. big facepalm

fiala__ 8y ago
> Children have no problems with happiness or well-being. Have you ever met a child IRL?
- mapcars 8y ago
  In my experience kids, until a certain age, run around, scream, shout, full of excitement, happiness, and life. But once they start looking at adults - all they see only dark, gloomy, lifeless serious faces and so they start becoming the same. If adults want to do something about it - we should teach happiness ourselves first. Kids will follow automagically.
  - dTal 8y ago
    Are you suggesting we shouldn't teach mindfulness to children? That it's not a useful skill? That the time would be wasted? >“It’s not just to make them feel better in the short-term,” Dr. Deighton said, “but to better equip them for later in life.”
    - mapcars 8y ago
      I think if needed it can be learned later, I don't see any problem with that. I started being interested in meditation around 23 when I was on the very bottom of my emotional state. But I see that most people around me never experienced this and for them, meditation and yoga is an exotic exercise. One thing which I really don't like here is instead of giving kids free time to experience life themselves they will add one more boring official class.
      - mercer 8y ago
        > One thing which I really don't like here is instead of giving kids free time to experience life themselves they will add one more boring official class. Being perpetually 'busy' and treating life as a collection of planned activities, like homework, classes, courses, workshops, appointments, etc. is something that runs deep in our entire (Western?) society, whether school-going or working age. Mindfulness as yet another one of those activities feels uncomfortably like a band-aid solution that is dangerous precisely because it works. It's a bit like taking aspirin to deal with headaches when really you should just stop drinking so much coffee and working so much. I do think mindfulness can be more than that. I've experienced how beneficial it can be to make it part of life rather than just (or only) another planned activity, especially when it's a part or underpinning of a larger 'framework' (in my case I lean towards Zen Buddhism).
    - michaelt 8y ago
      Mindfulness is branded wrong. Sceptics see it as (a) Some yoga-style mystic silliness reasonable people have been ignoring for decades, and (b) A 2014 self-help book, a fad-prone genre with relatively little credibility. If the common sense ideas underlying mindfulness were given a different coat of paint, they might be more readily accepted.
  - fiala__ 8y ago
    If you've never seen a depressed child then I beg you to pay attention. Children have incredibly complex, fascinating and perceptive minds, they aren't just happy food processing automata until they reach puberty. It's exactly this kind of reductionism which leads parents to ignore their children's psychological needs, which leads to schools having to take action.
    - mapcars 8y ago
      >just happy food processing automata until they reach puberty I did not say that. As I don't think that imposing complexity of mental bullshit from adult's minds on children makes things any better.
  - arethuza 8y ago
    "But once they start looking at adults" I suspect one of the biggest sources of misery for a lot of kids are other kids.
    - zimpenfish 8y ago
      Certainly for me it was, compounded by adults not taking this seriously (and a certain amount of screwy brain chemistry.) If your parent is a teacher at the same school, your school life is going to be A+ miserable.
      - arethuza 8y ago
        I don't think its just adults not taking it seriously in some quarters its surprisingly common for adults to use the "man up" or "stiff upper lip" approaches for physical or mental pain.
- yoz-y 8y ago
  I don't think that children who have problems with happiness or well-being will be helped by teaching them mindfulness. I was a lucky kid, but those around me who had problems had them because they were excluded from groups, got parents divorced, were bullied or were simply spoiled by their parents and were unhappy if anything didn't go their way. Telling them to be mindful is straight out of Voltaire's Candide.
  - icebraining 8y ago
    News articles don't stop at the title. The classes involve more than just "telling them to be mindful".
  - fiala__ 8y ago
    I'm no mental health expert but isn't mindfulness a proven method for improving one's mental health? Schools can't fix dysfunctional families. All they can do is give kids some tools to cope with such challenges. Even if it doesn't help a particular child, why would it be wrong to at least try?
  - rsynnott 8y ago
    The major application of mindfulness for which there is actually evidence is stress/anxiety reduction. This would obviously be useful for kids who are bullied and/or have bad home environments.
austincheney 8y ago
> Why wouldn't adults just solve their mental problems instead of introducing them to children? Because people live in an artificial world. In the absence of real problems everything is emotionally traumatic, first world problems. As I sit next to a war on a military deployment I await people to prove me right with the sadness of their downvotes.
- icebraining 8y ago
  My teenage brother just lost his father to cancer. But that's surely just a first-world problem.
  - austincheney 8y ago
    That is a tragic event. Healthy people bounce back from trauma after a healing period. Healthy people aren't the ones in need of institutional self-awareness. Conversely, do you have chronic income insecurity? Are you dodging bullets and bombs daily as some people do? Were you ever a victim of child slavery in a third-world nation? I suspect if you have internet access you probably have reliable shelter and don't stress over food insecurity. Those are real problems, and yet the people who live through those stressors typically aren't the ones needing mindfulness. The difference is a matter of perspective from perseverance. The lack of perseverance in normal childhood development is certainly a first-world problem.
    - icebraining 8y ago
      Yes, I was forced to leave my home and sleep on friend's houses multiple times during my childhood; once, we were forced to leave by threat of force in the evening, and spend three months living on a floor mattress in another city. For a couple of years, I often struggled to fall asleep due to fear, not just for me but also for my younger brother - my chest would compress at every loud noise. Randomly crying when alone (particularly in the shower) was common during that time. But no, I was never dodging bullets. I lived in a Western country and the assailant used other weapons and wasn't part of a paramilitarized group, so I guess it doesn't count.
hvidgaard 8y ago
Have it ever occurred to you that adults have mental problems because they didn't learn to manage it as children and young adults? Besides, depression and anxiety is surprisingly common among children.
- mapcars 8y ago
  >Besides, depression and anxiety is surprisingly common among children. Whom do you think they learned this from? Trees or cats?
  - icebraining 8y ago
    Even assuming depression must be "learned", what does it matter? School can't make sure they're never around depressed people. But it can help them protect themselves from it.
    - mapcars 8y ago
      You will meet all kinds of people that's true, but it worth decreasing the amount.
      - icebraining 8y ago
        How do you suggest the schools help with that?
  - ionised 8y ago
    You are asserting that depression is a learned behaviour?
    - fiala__ 8y ago
      They're probably also the kind of person who tells depressed people to "cheer up, life's not all that bad after all!"
      - 8y ago
aurbano 8y ago
You were a very lucky child then :) Edit: Apologies for the sarcastic response, couldn't help it. Children can and do feel unhappy, some more than others. This feels like an amazing step in the right direction because many people (myself included) don't learn early on that feeling sad or overwhelmed is normal and ok. We strive to "feel good" and stress about it, without tools to cope. Most adults either ignore this or go to therapy, but maybe from now on people will be more prepared.
- mapcars 8y ago
  >many people (myself included) don't learn early on that feeling sad or overwhelmed is normal and ok Until someone told you what is normal and what is not you have no problems doing something. So it's not about being sad is ok, it's about not judging at all.
  - icebraining 8y ago
    Yes, in an utopia, this class may be useless.
    - mapcars 8y ago
      There are still many places on a planet where kids are not burdened by depression and sadness. It happens to them as well, of course, but not in any extraordinary amounts.
      - icebraining 8y ago
        Most kids in the UK don't need to know multiplication to get their basics fulfilled either. Most of schooling is about preparing them for the future, not for the present. But some will benefit sooner, and you can't always tell which ones.
  - aurbano 8y ago
    I think this topic is too complicated to discuss over text like this. I agree with you, I’m sure we think similarly, and it seems like talking to children about mindfulness could be amazing. I fear that many schools/teachers won’t do a good job at it, judging exclusively from my own experience back in school... but that’s a different issue.
dTal 8y ago
>The initiative comes months after a survey commissioned by the National Health Service found that one in eight children in England between the ages of 5 and 19 suffered from at least one mental disorder at the time of their assessment in 2017. >The survey, which was published in November, also indicated a slight increase in mental disorders in five to 15-year-olds, which rose to 11.2 percent in 2017 from 9.7 percent in 1999. Disorders like anxiety and depression were the most common, affecting one in 12 children and early adolescents in 2017, and appeared more often in girls.
076ae80a-3c97-4 8y ago
You're gatekeeping metal health problems.
- mapcars 8y ago
  In my experience most things which people call "mental problems" are caused by themselves. And the solution is to stop causing them, not to learn how to "manage" with them.
  - DanBC 8y ago
    "I don't know anything about zoology, biology, geology, geography, marine biology, crypto zoology, evolutionary theory, evolutionary biology, meteorology, liminology, history, herpatology, paleontology, or archeology, but I think ..." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FzOv14fA-BI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FzOv14fA-BI
    - mapcars 8y ago
      This is a subject where you don't need to know (intellectually), the experience is more important. Do you "know" joy better by experiencing it or by learning from a textbook or a school class?
kitd 8y ago
I suggest you RTFA before facepalming. It is as much about being literate in the issues as it is about solving them.
- mapcars 8y ago
  By being literate I will only learn from other people's experience. But I can only truly rely on my own experience.
  - kitd 8y ago
    That's so mixed up, I'm not sure where to start. Should we learn Maths or English from experience? Without the literacy, we don't have the tools and terms to understand our experience. The early years are exactly the time to introduce them, since that is where our experiences have the most profound and long-lasting effect.
andyjohnson0 8y ago
> Children have no problems with happiness or well-being. This seems rather naive to me. Unhappiness is far from absent from the lives of many children and young people, and social media is making it worse. See yesterday's yougov survey results that indicate that "18% of young people in UK do not think life is worth living" [1]. This new curriculum subject is about helping children to understand and navigate their own feelings and deal with stresses so that they are less likely to turn into messed-up teenagers and adults. As a parent of school-age children I think this is an entirely good thing. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/feb/05/youth-unhappiness-uk-doubles-in-past-10-years https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/feb/05/youth-unhapp...
- baybal2 8y ago
  I spent most of my early childhood in a grimiest, gloomiest, dying city on Russian/Chinese border. From the age of 12 or so, I lived with one goal - get out of there. I had no time for stupid psychologising, nor could've imagined anybody living in glitzy cities of the West to be so dumb to waste time on that. There were times I almost worshipped that imaginary version of Western culture I had with it being all about action, forward movement and unending progress. Once I finally got myself out of Russia, I was up for a big, big surprise... West had idleness as its second nature...
  - andyjohnson0 8y ago
    > West had idleness as its second nature... I'm sorry that you had to deal with those things as a child, but I'm not sure what you're saying here. That children in the west are soft due to insufficient adversity? Mental health is not something that's "so dumb to waste time on". Maybe you are tough enough to take what life throws at you, or maybe you just think you are. But I've been around long enough to know that people can be broken-down by events in even an ordinary life - and children need kindness and support just as much as they need challenge and the opportunity to learn from mistakes. If I've misunderstood then please feel free to explain more.
    - baybal2 8y ago
afarrell 8y ago
> Children have no problems with happiness or well-being I'm happy for your past self, but your experience is not universal. Many people as children and teenagers have problems with these things. Its hard to take action to work on these without having a mental framework to organise your thoughts and communicate about them.
- mapcars 8y ago
  >Many people as children and teenagers have problems with these things So there will be an experience of some "negative" states of mind and emotion, but to become a problem it needs support. Removing this support is what I'm talking about. In a form that adults should be a live example that "negative" things happen but do not grow into problems.
deleted 8y ago
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gls2ro 8y ago
I think your hypothesis here is that the mental health issues, unhappiness and issues with well-being can be fixed completly from the society. I disagree with it. I prefer to look at them somehow like I see bugs: they cannot be - in general - eliminated completely. They come with the process of people building products. So I don't think we can solve those completely. This is why I think we should start educating children about how to think about live. Maybe an inspiration from philosophy stage from Ancient time which originally I think was concerned (at least some of them) with how a life should be lived, what happiness means, what does it mean to be a homo sapiens ... I think we should approach this as a society and start offering children tools about how to approach this.
DanBC 8y ago
> Children have no problems with happiness or well-being How about children who are repeatedly raped by their parent? Are they happy? How about children who's parent has died? Are they happy? What about the children who are grappling with gender indentity or sexuality (and maybe with parents who are not supportive)? Are they happy? What about children living with disability and who are being bullied because of it? Are they happy?
- mapcars 8y ago
  The problems you mentioned, while being a completely different matter, will not (and should not) be solved by mindfulness anyway. You are exactly approving my point that it's the adults who need to solve their problems (on different levels) first.
rsynnott 8y ago
> Children have no problems with happiness or well-being. Either you had a fairly idyllic life as a child of (more likely) you are looking at the past through rose tinted glasses (many people do this). Kids have problems.

weavie 8y ago

My daughters homework for each day this week is : 1. Talk about your feelings. 2. Do something you are good at. 3. Keep yourself hydrated. 4. Eat well. 5. Keep active in mind and body. 6. Take a break. 7. Stay connected to those you care about. 8. Ask for help. 9. Be proud of your very being. 10. Actively care for others. She has a chart she needs to tick once she has achieved each item. I get that they are all good things to do and perhaps it provides a talking point in families where these things aren't considered, but it seems a bit much to throw it all in at once. Next week she will probably be back to learning her 3 times tables..

mapcars 8y ago
I would argue that most of those things should come naturally, they should not be homework. Maybe on one day, you need less food, maybe another day your body needs rest. Being proud is beyond everything :D
sridca 8y ago
How do they teach your daughter to translate these principles to practical actions? For example how does your daugher understand "Eat well" to mean in terms of actual food she happens to crave (cookies, ice cream, plants, meat, etc.)? If they are going EAT-Lancet style on her you should probably be concerned.
- weavie 8y ago
  I will be asking her what they are teaching her over the week. I am struggling to find any coherent solid information about what the EAT-Lancet diet actually is, or why it is bad. It looks like a load of politically motivated mumbo jumbo! Would you be able to summarise?
  - sridca 8y ago
    It is a vegan-inspired/ anti-meat diet (similar to Canada's New Food Guide), backed by the processed food industry, but with plenty of issues which are neatly summarized by Georgia Ede here: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/diagnosis-diet/201901/eat-lancets-plant-based-planet-10-things-you-need-know https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/diagnosis-diet/20190...

emmelaich 8y ago

Not unrelatedly - another story on the front page today: The Decline of Historical Thinking Mindfulness is not new, it's just the word that is new.

stiangrindvoll 8y ago

I think this makes perfect sense. Good one from the Buddhists this one. It's all about making the children stronger, tougher and more aware of them self and people around them. How they affect the world and how the world affects them. If the world is mean, harsh or tough, they are already capable to handle them self. One can also as an adult start practicing this. Can be quite exhilarating. Here is a good book on the subject https://www.amazon.co.uk/Miracle-Mindfulness-Gift-classic-revered/dp/1846044820/ref=sr_1_1_twi_har_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1549448492&sr=8-1&keywords=9781846044823 https://www.amazon.co.uk/Miracle-Mindfulness-Gift-classic-re...

FrankyHollywood 8y ago

I'm always puzzled with the fact that people search for surrogate solutions instead of pursuing the real issue. If you don't feel well there is so much you can do. Make serious effort in making friends, join a sports club or something else you like, solve long running conflicts with other people, don't over- or under achieve on a level which doesn't fit you (school/work), be proud with the things you accomplish instead of never being satisfied, etc... Perhaps it just seems easier to buy another self-help book, and take a mindfulness class.

samdoidge 8y ago
I agree problems need to be tackled at the source, but some self-help books may help you deal with the problem. 12 Rules for Life is one such book.
- FrankyHollywood 8y ago
  yes you're right, some books can really be insightful, I've read some myself :) Unfortunately I see people around me who drown in the therapy/self-help circuit. A lot of money is involved, and they keep running in circles. It seems to become a self fulfilling prophecy. If you spend to much time reflecting on your life, it becomes part of your life which prevents you from really living. Before saying anymore clichés I'll stop, and go do something :)
- faceplanted 8y ago
  12 Rules for life is a complete mess of strangely used bible quotes, misattributed and misquoted philosophers, at one point blatant rape apology, and an obvious lack of empathy from the author throughout. But one thing is does do well that I wish people would focus on over the obvious shortcomings of the author and why nothing has really replaced it yet is that it tells you in no uncertain terms that if you want to go anywhere or have any confidence in yourself you have to acknowledge that you live in a system that isn't always fair and try to make it work for you, paralysis will get you nowhere.
  - samdoidge 8y ago

fooblat 8y ago

I really struggle with the term "mindfulness" as it seems it can mean anything and everything, depending on who you ask. We had some Mindfulness workshops at a previous employer and it was so full of woo and magical thinking that it really turned me off and felt like a huge waste of time. My current company also recently introduced a Mindfulness workshop only this time it was really a basic meditation workshop which I enjoyed. At this point, I don't even know how to react when something related to Mindfulness is announced.

spuz 8y ago
Sounds like you had a bad workshop the first time round. Mindfulness should be rational, scientific and entirely free of woo or magical thinking.
- fooblat 8y ago
  I can only agree with you 100%. However, it seems this is not a universal view.
  - yoz-y 8y ago
    Recently I have been bombarded by ads for some mindfulness app on youtube. All of their ads talk about ancient aliens and crystals, whereas the application presents itself as a yoga and meditation thing. The content has both. I guess that for some reason the target audiences overlap enough that bundling the woo and meditation makes some economical sense.
- collyw 8y ago
  These days the word is used so frequently that it seems to include everything and is almost meaningless.
lm28469 8y ago
> My current company also recently introduced a Mindfulness workshop only this time it was really a basic meditation workshop which I enjoyed. I find it extremely weird for companies to offer these things. The only reason they'd do it is to boost their own productivity / margin / whatever. As in "be healthy because we need your ass on that chair and your brain working on our problems". There is already a thin enough line between personal and professional life. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jan/31/mindfulness-work-employers-meditation https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jan/31/mindfu...

bencollier49 8y ago

My five year-old son now talks about his mind in the third person as a result of this. I'm having to retrain him with responsibility for his own actions. Lovely idea and all but having untrained people teaching psychological practices to reception-grade children seems rather foolhardy to me.

icebraining 8y ago
That's a fair point; while mental health wasn't a class in my country, I've also found that these "extra" classes often suffered from giving them to random teachers. Just because they have some experience (and possibly a minor degree) in pedagogy doesn't mean they can teach every subject. Many here can barely teach their specialty.
carlsborg 8y ago
Why is that a bad thing? If they can evaluate their thought process at such a young age, I would think that's a win.
- Cthulhu_ 8y ago
  Are they evaluating their thought processes, or are they parroting what they were taught while still being, you know, five years old?
  - therein 8y ago
    I would be more worried if they begin absolving themselves of guilt due to this when they do something genuinely harmful to someone else out of childish behavior.
anextomp 8y ago
That seems like a fairly healthy thing to learn, no? Sometimes we need to acknowledge that our brain can cause us to do things we don't want to, and not beat ourselves up for it. Obviously that can go too far, and you need to anticipate the consequences of your actions, owning your conscious decisions.

wawhal 8y ago

About time for mindfulness to actually be a thing. Waiting for a time where people are at least exposed to the idea of mindfulness, whether they continue to practice it, is their choice. A subject in school is the best way to achieve this. For adults, if one thinks that they are already super happy and self-realised, it still makes sense to try out the techniques of mindfulness just with a consideration that they "could" be even more so. They "could" be missing an entirely different dimension. Personal experience: Up till the age of 21, I was enjoying my life, doing well, fooling myself that I am the happiest I can be. That's when I took this course in IIT Madras called Self Awareness [1]. I had taken it because people said they always give good grades. The course caused a massive self-discovery for me. It was all and all about mindfulness. The teachings were mainly from the books: `Siddhartha` [2], `The power of now` [3] and `Stop sleep walking through life` [4]. They introduced us to relaxing exercises, meditation and breathing techniques along with some ideas to watch yourself while you are getting emotionally vulnerable. Briefly, the course was about being conscious of your existence, about feeling one with the present and about figuring yourself out for real. It has been 4 years since and I can clearly see that I am a different person, I have much less fights, I am rarely depressed, I handle criticism much better, I am much more productive in my work and most important of all, I have the clarity about who I am. Sucks to think that I wouldn't have known (never mind achieved) all this if it weren't for a mindfulness course. Props to the schools in England for this initiative. [1] https://courses.iitm.ac.in/course/info.php?id=849 https://courses.iitm.ac.in/course/info.php?id=849 [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siddhartha_(novel) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siddhartha_(novel) [3] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6708.The_Power_of_Now https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6708.The_Power_of_Now [4] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/258519.Stop_Sleep_Walking_Through_Life_ https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/258519.Stop_Sleep_Walkin...

LunaSea 8y ago
Making it a subject removes that "choice" you talk about and makes it mandatory.

stared 8y ago

I think schools should teach one more thing: non-violent communication and related things: not-neediness, how to communicate feelings and needs, how to avoid shaming and guilt-tripping, how to ask and be fine with rejections, how to understand that other people may have different goals and motivations, etc. - Marshall B. Rosenberg, "Non-Violent Communication" https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/560861.Non_Violent_Communication https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/560861.Non_Violent_Commu... Moreover, it may change the society (so its benefits don't stop at an individual level) - as a lot of problems stem from conflicts that escalate step by step.

dvfjsdhgfv 8y ago
If we start the "what else" branch, it's almost infinite. For example, the ways to manipulate people and how to protect oneself (e.g. according to Cialdini's classification, but not necessarily). How to develop critical thinking in a world where most communication is aimed at influencing you in one way or another. How to develop elasticity and the skill to adapt to ever-changing circumstances (hint: the world they will be living in will be very different from the one they're taught about at school, I think we all experienced it at some point). How to understand the conditioning of the society and the culture we're living in (e.g. the roles of the husband/wife, parent/child, family member, colleague, boss) and learn to live with them without getting too serious about them (and save a few bucks on psychotherapy later). How to save money. Only those few who care about you will teach you how to save money, everyone else wants you to spend your money. Etc. etc.

pmden 8y ago

Ah, it sounds like a rebranded "Personal Development Education". Having being introduced to it from secondary school onwards, it was always a pleasure to have a double period of PDE at the end of the day. Zero study involved. No real homework. If we were lucky they'd roll out the big telly and an old tape about bullying or hormones. Even when they put it before the first bell, it worked out well as a place to do your maths homework. Probably for the best they're starting younger these days. They might find real buy-in from actual children.

setquk 8y ago

I've had a lot of experience with schools and mental health issues. I have a daughter under an EHCP due to a genetic problem that causes learning difficulties and the competence is simply not there to handle even basic care in this aspect. This isn't budgetary or process related, but individual human competence is beyond terrible. This spans three "Ofsted outstanding" rated schools and two local authorities. It has got to the point that there are actually specialist charities set up to whack the schools back into place legally when they screw up over and over again. And we're trusting them with handling general mental health? What could possibly go wrong? Mindfulness is such a vague concept that it detatches the responsibility from mental health as well.

fdggdfsvscvsd 8y ago

"children and teenagers struggling to get to grips with how they fit into the increasingly complex modern world" Isn't that basically the job of children, and has always been? Not to denounce the efforts to improve their mental health. Just saying some struggle seems normal and unavoidable, probably even necessary.

DanBC 8y ago
Mindfullness doesn't aim to eliminate struggle. Children still have to sit exams; they still have chances to enter competition. And mindfulness won't, for example, remove a child from poverty. What it might do is stop children killing themselves as a result of adversity. Rates of death by suicide in the UK have been declining recently, but not for young people. We also know that rates of self-harm for young people are increasing, and self harm is a significant predictor of death by suicide.
- fdggdfsvscvsd 8y ago
  I must admit, I don't see how positive thinking could possibly help? Assuming suicides are usually a result of violence (bullying by peers, pressure by parents and teachers...). Wouldn't it be better to show practical ways out of it? Saying "I'm so great and thankful" while bullies pounce on you might feel rather hollow quickly? Don't get me wrong, this seems to be set up as an experiment, which seems like a good thing. Maybe they'll find it will actually help. Your argument sounds like "something has to be done, because..." - but something is not always the right thing.

sgt101 8y ago

My child is doing this; I've seen two situations where it was a help. - I took a chunk out of myself with an axe (idiot, tired, low blood sugar tomfoolery); I got coached to calm down, and "this is a good opportunity to practice mindfulness" was quoted at me. It was surprisingly helpful actually :) - We stayed with some friends and one of their children had a typical 10yrld meltdown (over xbox); my child took themselves off to another room and practiced mindfulness to avoid getting upset. So, it appears to be rubbish, but in practice seems to give tools that work, at least a bit!

altras 8y ago

Awesome! disclaimer: I've been involved in https://www.rulerapproach.org/ https://www.rulerapproach.org/ (as part of the development team from www.camplight.net) It's interesting that the news release from gov.uk[1] focuses that they are doing one of the largest studies in the world with 370 schools... Looking today at our RULER statistics we now have almost ~900 enlisted USA schools. Combining those will definitely become one of the largest, unless there's something similar in other parts of the world :O Have anybody heard something like this in other countries? I hope all these initiatives lead to less bullying and aggressive behavior :)) [1] https://www.gov.uk/government/news/one-of-the-largest-mental-health-trials-launches-in-schools https://www.gov.uk/government/news/one-of-the-largest-mental...

justanegg 8y ago

1984 much

branchless 8y ago

If this works, who will run all the money laundering? http://spiderswebfilm.com/ http://spiderswebfilm.com/

stuaxo 8y ago

Great, except that we have gone so test crazy 5 year olds are getting homework in the UK and being trained for exams.