Meditation, Boys and Anxiety
It’s normal for children to feel worried from time to time, especially when they are trying something new, transitioning to a new school or home, or when they are facing a particularly challenging life event. However for children with Anxiety, feelings of worry or fear can have a huge affect on their thoughts and behaviour, and interfere with their everyday lives. Kate Bartram-Brown, founder of Mini Me Yoga, found that just 15 minutes of kids yoga, meditation and mindfulness a day, can help improve children’s mental and emotional health and wellbeing.
This week, our guest blogger Heather McCrae talks to us about the link between boys and anxiety, and how meditation and other alternative healing modalities can help.
It’s so true that boys have a lot written about them, but very few people actually get to the core of what causes misbehaviour in boys. I have been as guilty as anyone, even with my MEd in Special Education, of looking down upon a little boy “acting out” and rolling my eyes and saying “here we go again” under my breath as I sought to “control” the “behaviour”. I was wrong.
Countless numbers of young boys are being medicated and diagnosed to suit the comfort levels of Educators and Parents who are simply fed up and tired of “dealing with it”.
I want to reassure you that I was one of those Educators, jumping on the Meds Bandwagon because, as someone with ADHD, it was what I knew. I understood that when I was medicated, my Life worked better than when I wasn’t. #MagickBullet would be the tagline on a blog post if was going to. But I am off medication for depression and ADHD as a result of the tools I use daily.
So here’s what I’ve learned over the past 10 years:
- There is no magick bullet
- Sometimes medication is an answer to stabilize an adult or child who is self-harming, but it is certainly not ever to be lifestyle
- There is a Better Way than medication, and it’s a lot of Work
What I am about to share with you is 100% effective in helping change aggressive behaviour in boys-100%. However-there are certain conditions that must be met, so I will share my personal success story with some edits. To protect my family’s privacy, I will use initials instead of names. My name is the only name I will reveal.
My partner is a Saint-she is. She had absolutely everything a woman of 40 could want! She had the big penthouse in downtown Toronto, the huge corporate salary, had traveled the world, had/has an amazing wardrobe. The only thing she lacked was a family. She was single. She wanted kids-so she did what every fabulous woman with an IQ of 132 and two Masters Degrees does-she adopted two orphans.
J researched, she started with a daughter. I was adopted at 18 months. It was a happy childhood and a huge learning curve for my partner, who knew nothing about babies, except that she wanted one! However, she was smart! She built a team around her to make sure she was successful! She bought a lovely home, got a therapist who’s an expert in adopted children and trauma, found a Nanny, and took a leave of absence for quite a while from work to stay at home and learn how to be a Mom. She and Baby I were happy and the baby was well-adjusted, but something/someone was missing.
Because she was an only child and didn’t want I to suffer a similar fate, she adopted a little boy, K. He was 3, had been put in an orphanage at 18 months, had been abused, had addicts for parents (possibly worse), and the only constant in his life before “the baby home” was his grandmother, who became too ill to care for him.
K is a resilient, amazing little boy who has survived things most children will never have to consider.
When I first met J and I and K, he was violent, angry, and mostly frightened. J had some stability with Nannies, but still a revolving door.
I spent 6 months building a foundation of Trust with my family. J and I built a communication rapport second to none! We own our mistakes and we really listen to each other, and we had to work at it! We misunderstood each other a lot at the beginning. We had to teach each other how to talk and listen.
With K. I showed up, I told the Truth (as I knew it) and kept loving-even as I was being hit, punched, kicked, sworn at, lied to, spit on-you name it.
I thought I was a compassionate person. I wasn’t until I met him. He and his sister and their mother, taught me to see his behaviours from a completely different perspective, so that instead of constantly reacting, I was understanding what he was doing.
100% of the time, when K is aggressive, he is frightened and threatened. He is never a bully, or a coward, he is frightened. So now, whenever he shows signs of anxiety, I don’t stare at him in judgement, I ask him to talk to me about what’s making him feel anxious.
These are the steps I took to turn his behaviour around- He is 100% a different boy than he was when I first met him, and we still have a long way to go. What gives me hope is that I have documented evidence and witnesses to prove he is healing.
- Life Activation-I am a Professional Certified Life Activation Practitioner. A Life Activation brings in more Light and a deeper connection to God. This little boy was drowning in darkness and his Faith had been destroyed. He and his sister both received their Life Activations after I’d known them about 3 months.
- The Max Meditation System TM-I am a trained Max Meditation System TM Facilitator. I meditate with him every single night. Every one. When I can’t be home, I record meditations for him. I did, however, have to wait 6 months until we had spent enough time together that he could trust me-even just a little bit.
- I Life Activated his mother. I am so lucky that my partner trusted me enough to just go with it. She told me at the beginning that she was open because I was her last resort-nothing else had worked. Every single medication that was tried for him had an opposite reaction.
- We have very strict boundaries around media, ipads, TV etc. Weekends only, and it is tied to school behaviours-no hitting or threats
As a result of these steps, I can report the following:
- He has gone from daily meltdowns with huge drama, broken objects, slammed doors, to daily verbal expressions of discomfort and an occasional stomping of feet and an occasional threat.
- He went from being sent home on average of 4 times per month from school because of violent behaviour, to occasional phone calls home with coaching from both me and his school Principal
- He still has days when he will hit a teacher-however, this is not very often and is usually tied to his anxiety about his mother’s work travel. We track all behaviour with a calendar to try to understand
- He is off medication for ADHD successfully and is being weaned off his other Medication for aggression.
The Meditation Class that is taught in Mini Me Yoga is part of the Max Meditation Lineage. It is derived from it. Therefore I know it works. I am a Mini Me Yoga Ambassador and endorse our classes because they work on all children of all ages and backgrounds.
What I can guarantee you is that if you do exactly as I did, you will see results. However, the length of time for the changes to occur will depend on your family, and how much work you are willing to do to change and create deeper Peace within yourself and your Home. It always begins within.
Things to consider:
- Initiation in the Lineage of King Solomon- At our house, we live in what is known as “A Magick Circle” we are surrounded by Light and our children have seen me do my Rituals. I am a Light Worker-literally. This amplifies and supports the meditation and Life Activation experience. I hold the Light for our family. We are supported by The Hierarchy of Light-God, Jesus, the Angels, etc. I was initiated 10 years ago. I have a LOT of practice at Holding the Light. Initiation is accomplished through the “Empower Thyself” Workshop. Guides are worldwide.
- Life Activation-get the Light reboot-it will help both you and your child. Get tune-ups every few months. Practitioners are all over the world. If you want one, you will find one
- Change the atmosphere in your home- keep music and media positive. Keep your relationships clean-show up, tell the truth, work together, make amends when you’re wrong
- Have a clear but compassionate Behaviour Plan for your child/ren
I take the Healing Work I do with families very seriously. I want every single child living fully and fearlessly. I want all of them in school learning how to create a better world.
About Heather McCrae, MEd
Heather McCrae:
· is the Lead Ambassador to Canada for Mini Me Yoga
· has an MEd in Exceptional Student Education from Saint Leo University and 7 ½ years experience as a classroom educator working with poverty-level African American and Hispanic children in Georgia USA
· is in an Okuden-level Jikiden Reiki Practitioner through The Jikiden Reiki Institute in Japan
· is a Certified Professional Life Activation Practitioner
· is a Certified Healer
· Is a Certified Max Meditation TM Facilitator
· Is The Anxiety Whisperer and works with families, children and adults to remove anxiety from the family equation
For more information email: Heathermccrae7@gmail.com or visit: https://heathermccrae.com