Teach your children the art of stillness

Teach your children the art of stillness (Photo: iStock) It took the stillness of a forest for Joan Mwende, a single mother of one, to learn about silence and what children are quietly losing at home - why silence scares children and how parents can gently teach the lost skill of being still. After days of noise, notifications, deadlines and the constant tug of responsibility, Ngong Forest offered something rare to her - a quiet that did not demand performance. "My steps slowed, my shoulders dropped, and even my thoughts learned to whisper. It felt unfamiliar at first, almost unsettling, then deeply regulating," said Mwende, mother to a 15-year-old girl. She found herself thinking. "Have I raised a girl who only knows how to be entertained, but not how to be alone with herself?" Later that evening, back at home, Mwende watched her daughter reach instinctively for a screen the very moment stillness entered the room. No transition, no pause, no sitting with self, just reflex. Lisa Wanjiro, a family coach and counsellor, says many parents today share a similar worry, though few name it this way, and may make these familiar statements about their children: "My child cannot sleep without YouTube", or "she panics when there's nothing to do", or "he says silence makes his head noisy". "Children are rarely alone, not physically, not mentally, not emotionally, but every gap is filled - with screens, tutors, activities, background television, music streaming, constant supervision, and constant stimulation," says Wanjiro. She explains parents have created homes where boredom is treated like an emergency, yet boredom, silence and unstructured time were once the quiet engineers of childhood. These attributes, she says, built imagination, self-soothing emotional regulation, inner security, focus and creativity. The expert explains that today, many children grow anxious in the very spaces where these strengths used to form. Victor Konsolo, a primary school teacher in Meru, recently shared what he sees daily in his classroom. "Children cannot sit still for five minutes without asking for stimulation, and even during quiet reading, some begin fidgeting, rocking, or whispering. Silence unsettles them," he said. The problem, he explains, is not disobedience. It is a nervous system dependence. Their bodies have learned to expect constant input. When it disappears, discomfort floods in, and discomfort, when unfamiliar, quickly becomes fear. Martin Mburugu, a child psychologist, says screens have become the fastest emotional regulator in many homes. When a child throws tantrums, they are handed over a phone, and if they have had a long day, they are handed a phone, or the TV is switched on to their favourite cartoon. "In the moment, it feels like relief, and sometimes, parents are simply exhausted, but over time, a dangerous trend happens when the child's nervous system forgets how to regulate itself without external stimulus," says the expert. He says a child who never learns to "come down" on their own grows into a teen who escapes into endless scrolling, and gets into adulthood as an uncomfortable adult with solitude, one who fears quiet because quiet exposes the self. The psychologist warns parents about this as it is not a moral failure, but a developmental gap. Catherine Mugendi, a family coach, encourages parents to explain to the children why spending some silent moments is positive for their growth "Being alone is not loneliness, and being alone is a skill, while loneliness is a wound", she says. The expert says when a child learns, gently, to sit with their own thoughts, sensations and emotions, they develop: emotional literacy, inner dialogue, self-trust, boundaries, and the ability to pause instead of react Children who have been mentored this way, she says, grow into adults who do not panic in quiet, do not depend on constant validation, can sit with hard feelings without collapsing, and silence does not empty them; it stabilises them. James Njuguna, father to a ten-year-old son and a seven-year-old daughter, says that before reaching out for expert help, he had a difficult time raising his children. He says his son and daughter would refuse to sleep in quietness unless YouTube played all night softly. "One evening, I tried to switch it off, and the two began to cry, and threw tantrums with my daughter saying silence made her scared, while his brother said silence made his head noisy." Wanjiro says what this situation means is that without constant external sound, Njuguna's son and daughter's inner worlds overwhelm them, and they have not yet learned how to organise it, calm it, or sit with it. "This is not because they are broken, but because no one has yet taught them how," says the expert. She says many of the older generation grew up with: long walks home, sitting on verandas, cloud watching, alone time in fields, and quiet afternoons with nothing scheduled. This means the children were often bored, but this gave them something powerful - inner scaffolding, which made them learn how to be in their own presence. In a world already overwhelmed by speed, pressure and comparison, the ability to be inwardly quiet becomes not just a wellness skill, but a survival one. To Mwende, the forest encounter brought some lessons home. Children need the same remembering. Not through lectures, not through discipline, but through repeated, gentle exposure to silence that is safe. "The goal is not a silent child, but to bring up a child who is not afraid of silence, and the question should centre around whether, as a parent, you have given your child enough space to meet themselves," says Mburugu. Because one day, when the noise falls away, when peers drift, when devices fail, when adulthood stretches wide, the one companion they must always live with is their own self.

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