I'd start around the age of seven, and make it fun: begin by choosing themes for them that interest them, and ask them to tell you what they thought about while they were meditating. Especially if you're homeschooling, you can make it a part of the ordinary learning process -- they're reading chapter 3 of such-and-such a book this week, great, have 'em choose seven themes from that chapter, meditate on those, and write out an account of what they got.
One caution, though: don't try to teach your children to meditate unless you meditate daily. There's a spiritual equivalent of Munchausen Syndrome By Proxy, in which parents push their kids to do the spiritual work that the parents don't want to do, and in every case I've witnessed, the one consistent result was to give the kids a lifelong aversion to whatever form of spirituality was being pushed on them. Kids are acutely sensitive to hypocrisy; they know when you're shoveling smoke, and back behind those beady little eyes, they're passing judgment.
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branchandroot
Re: Meditation for kids
Date: 2018-08-13 04:29 pm (UTC)One caution, though: don't try to teach your children to meditate unless you meditate daily. There's a spiritual equivalent of Munchausen Syndrome By Proxy, in which parents push their kids to do the spiritual work that the parents don't want to do, and in every case I've witnessed, the one consistent result was to give the kids a lifelong aversion to whatever form of spirituality was being pushed on them. Kids are acutely sensitive to hypocrisy; they know when you're shoveling smoke, and back behind those beady little eyes, they're passing judgment.