Once a year, in a training program for clinicians at The Center for Mindfulness & Psychotherapy, my friend Chris Willard and I join a Zoom meeting to answer questions about sharing mindfulness with children. This year, a new question kept coming up:
Does mindfulness really help kids? We’re hearing that the research says it doesn’t.
It’s a fair question. After decades of small studies with promising results, two large, school-based studies — one involving students aged 11-14 and another aged 9-16 — produced findings that did not demonstrate what the researchers had hoped they would. Ten weekly sessions produced little to no measurable improvement in student mental health and raised concerns about possible negative effects for certain groups of children. Some commentators have taken these results as evidence that mindfulness programs don’t benefit children at all.
The two large-scale studies were conducted by excellent scientists and examined an outstanding UK program with the largest published evidence base in the mindful education field. Earlier research had shown promising results. What happened?
Was the earlier research mistaken, or did something change when the program was brought to scale?
Emphasizing school-based programs that can be scaled up to reach the largest number of students makes sense. Few classroom teachers are meditators, so it’s understandable that funders and researchers focus on interventions that teachers with minimal mindfulness experience can deliver. However, while findings from research studies like these give us valuable insights into program development and implementation, they do not answer the broader question of whether contemplative practices benefit young people in general. Treating findings from a ten-session program taught by teachers with limited meditation experience as proof for or against all mindfulness programs is a category error. Programs like the one studied represent a small piece of a much larger landscape.
Looking Beyond Scale
I hope parents, educators, and clinicians who have seen mindfulness help children in their care do not assume that their experience has been disproven by these studies.
My view is straightforward: when people with meaningful contemplative experience share mindfulness playfully with children over time, it helps. I’ve seen children who have practiced with experienced facilitators pay better attention, calm themselves more easily, and show more kindness to one another across many settings and cultures. I recognize I may have my own confirmation bias — we all do — but genuine changes in a child you know well are not nothing.
The research that interests me most would start there — with what seems to be of benefit. That requires observing meaningful approaches over time closely enough to understand whether they make a difference, and if so, to explore why. Is it the relationship, the practices themselves, the themes being taught, the ways they are applied, or something else? Studies like these would inform which elements to include in programs and whether those elements are scalable.
I write this from personal experience. I’ve been involved in program development for several research studies — two early in my career and one more recently. The findings were mixed: most encouraging, some disappointing. The smaller studies I was part of and the recent large ones that have rightfully received a lot of attention have something in common. None fully answer the clinicians’ question on that Zoom call.
What Is Mindfulness?
A major source of confusion is treating “mindfulness” as a single, clearly defined intervention. It isn’t. What’s called “mindfulness-based” work with young people and adults takes many forms, including activity-based programs, therapeutic approaches, classical contemplative training, and intensive practice. Some consist primarily of brief attention exercises. Others include broader elements — regular meditation practice, universal themes, supportive relationships, and opportunities to apply what is learned in daily life.
Some models reject the term “mindfulness” entirely, seeing secular programs as removed from the wider framework of understanding and ethics that traditionally gives meditation training coherence and depth.
To further muddy the waters, mindfulness with children doesn’t look like mindfulness with adults, where there is a larger body of research. For the most part, adults choose mindfulness classes, but most young people are sent by teachers, parents, or clinicians who hope it will help them. Young people often learn best through brief moments of awareness woven into activities — noticing their breath before speaking, feeling their feet on the ground as they walk across a room, or pausing when emotions run high. These practices are repeated over time and supported by caring adults. The very qualities that make them helpful, such as supervision by experienced practitioners of mindfulness, can make them difficult to scale.
The most reliable understanding often grows where research and lived experience meet. Careful research helps us see patterns. Careful attention helps us see children. We need both.
What’s the Moral of this Story?
There is an old story about a farmer whose horse ran away.
A neighbor came to offer sympathy.
“What bad luck,” she said.
The farmer replied. “We’ll see.”
A few days later, the horse returned, bringing several wild horses with it.
“What good luck,” said the neighbor.
“We’ll see,” said the farmer.
Soon afterward, the farmer’s son tried to ride one of the wild horses, fell, and broke his leg.
“What bad luck.”
“We’ll see.”
Not long after that, soldiers came through the village, drafting young men into the army. Because of his broken leg, the son was passed over.
“What good luck!” said the neighbor.
And what did the farmer say?
“We’ll see.”
Research findings are a bit like that. They tell us something important, but not the whole story. Negative findings can help clarify what not to do. Positive findings can tell us where to double down. Both point us toward better questions and better approaches. But they haven’t yet settled the larger question of whether contemplative practice can support young people’s development.
The clinicians in that Zoom training, asking Chris and me tough questions, were right to take the research seriously. We should all take it seriously. We should also remember that we are still learning what’s helpful, to whom, and under what conditions. Best practices in education, clinical psychology, and parenting don’t emerge quickly. They develop over generations of practice, close assessment of what seems to bring benefit, and honest and sober reckoning with what wasn’t helpful.
Contemplative programs for children have existed for only a few decades. That’s not long enough to call it.
So, does mindfulness help kids?
I think so, but we’ll see.
Resources to Explore Further
The research discussed here is complex, and reasonable people draw different conclusions from it. I encourage readers who work with children — or who are simply curious — to explore the studies and commentary for themselves.
The Studies
• The MYRIAD Trial (UK) (2022) — A large randomized study of school-based mindfulness training with adolescents: pubmed.ncbi.nih.gov
• Plain-language overview from the research team: myriadproject.org
• Denmark School-Based Mindfulness Study — A large study examining mindfulness training in school settings: sciencedirect.com
Voices Close to the Work
Reflections from the Mindfulness in Schools Project:
• What Has the Mindfulness in Schools Project Learned?
• Chris Cullen on the MYRIAD findings
• Richard Burnett on the MYRIAD findings
Skeptical or Critical Perspectives
• On the MYRIAD project: Mindfulness in Schools Doesn’t Improve Mental Health — Here’s Why That’s Positive
• Critical research analysis: Adolescents Do Not Benefit from Universal School-Based Mindfulness Interventions?
Broader Perspectives
• Dr. Mark Greenberg reflects on what’s next for universal school-based mental health interventions: pmc.ncbi.nlm.nig.gov
• Drs. Richard Davidson and Cortland Dahl consider how the Denmark study changed the conversation on mindfulness and kids: dharmalabco.substack.com
