Mindful awareness works by enabling you to pay closer attention to what is happening within you—your thoughts, feelings, and emotions—so you can better understand what is happening to you. The Mindful Child extends the vast benefits of mindfulness training to children from four to eighteen years old with age-appropriate exercises, songs, games, and fables that Susan Kaiser Greenland has developed over more than a decade of teaching mindful awareness to kids. These fun and friendly techniques build kids’ inner and outer awareness and attention, which positively affects their academic performance as well as their social and emotional skills, such as making friends, being compassionate and kind to others, and playing sports, while also providing tools to manage stress and to overcome specific challenges like insomnia, overeating, ADHD, hyper-perfectionism, anxiety, and chronic pain. When children take a few moments before responding to stressful situations, they allow their own healthy inner compasses to click in and guide them to become more thoughtful, resilient, and empathetic. The step-by-step process of mental training presented in The Mindful Child provides tools from which all children—and all families—will benefit.
Susan Kaiser Greenland, JD is a former corporate attorney who developed the Inner Kids mindful awareness program for children, teens and their families. Research on the Inner Kids elementary school program was conducted at the Mindful Awareness Research Center at UCLA and is published in the Journal of Applied School Psychology.
Susan is author of The Mindful Child: How to Help Your Kid Manage Stress and Become Happier, Kinder, and More Compassionate (Free Press, 2010). She teaches children, parents and professionals around the world and consults with various organizations on teaching mindful awareness in an age-appropriate and secular manner.
Susan was on the clinical team of the Pediatric Pain Clinic at UCLA's Mattel's Children's Hospital for many years, Co-Investigator on a multi-year, multi-site research study at UCLA's Mindful Awareness Research Center/Semel Institute on the impact of mindfulness in education, Collaborator on an investigation of mindful eating for children and their caregivers at UC-SF, served on the Garrison Institute's Initiative on Contemplation and Education Leadership Council, and as advisor to the UCLA Family Commons. In 2006, Kaiser Greenland was named a "Champion of Children" by First 5 LA, the largest and most influential children's advocacy group in Los Angeles. She has spoken at Vanderbilt University, University School in Nashville, UES Seeds Elementary School at UCLA, the Krieger Early Childhood Center at UCLA, the Mind & Life Institute, University of California Los Angeles, University of Massachusetts, University of Kansas, Columbia University, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, the San Diego Children's Hospital, the Spirit Rock Meditation Center in Woodacre California, Bangor University in Wales, National University of Singapore, Mahidol University, Bangkok, Thailand, Casa Tibet in Mexico among many other prestigious institutes in the United States and abroad, she has been quoted in Parenting Magazine, The Chicago Tribune, The Boston Globe, Kiwi Magazine, Time Magazine for Kids, Better Homes and Gardens, and Publico in Gutalajara, Mexico and her writing has appeared in the Huffington Post, Shambhala Sun, The Insight Journal, Intent Blog, and elsewhere.
She and her husband co-founded the Inner Kids Foundation in 2000. InnerKids has been covered by The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, USA Today, National Public Radio, various yoga journals, and the CBS Morning News. InnerKids was profiled in a half-hour news program called Profiles in Caring that is syndicated in about 100 cities in the US and 40 countries on Voice Of America TV.
