The Kids Are Not Alright: Why This Colorado Company Is Teaching Children How To Meditate

Imagine you’re in a boat floating down the river.
Your boat isn’t just any boat and the river isn’t just any river.
Your boat is a crispy waffle cone. The river is melted vanilla ice cream.
What a delicious place to be.

So begins Vanilla Float, a six-minute, guided meditation. If the reflection feels a little whimsical, that’s because it’s supposed to be. The library of original meditations found on Highlands Ranch–based Wee Meditate’s website isn’t for finance bros feeling the pressure of Q4 or working moms battling burnout; this collection is designed specifically for kids ages three to eight.

Janis Gioia, a former elementary school teacher with a master’s in special education, started the company in 2023 alongside her daughter, Elise. Gioia has been meditating for years, and she found relaxation techniques, such as breathwork or body scans, helped her young students calm down and focus.

“Meditation changes lives, but it isn’t written about—or really even talked about—for kids,” she says. Implementing a meditation practice has been shown to have a slew of health benefits for adults, including reducing stress and anxiety and improving sleep and concentration.

The research is more limited for little ones, but there is growing evidence that teaching children mind-body therapies can improve school performance, sleep, attention span, and physical health, as well as reduce behavior issues. And in the midst of what the surgeon general is calling a “mental health crisis among young people,” meditation may be part of the solution.

“It can help us change—not just by slowing down our body…but by being able to decrease anxiety, regulate how we’re feeling in our bodies…and sit with challenging emotions and know that whatever challenging emotions are happening, it’s not our whole self,” says Michele Turek, associate clinical manager in Children’s Hospital Colorado’s Integrative and Creative Care Division.

Wee Meditate’s offerings are based in a storybook world—Dragon’s world, specifically—where calm and relaxation come by way of stories and language that are familiar to kids. Characters are at the heart, with a particular focus on children living with mental illness and disabilities: Bunny lives with ADHD and likes moving meditations, for example, while Fox deals with anxiety and prefers calm meditations that help her sleep.

“I wanted children to see themselves in the characters,” says Gioia, who writes all the content. “Our stories are written so that the child is basically learning the meditation technique along with the character. Kind of like they’re meditating with a friend.”

Those friends are brought to life visually by Brazilian artist Maycon Prasniewski and accompanied by original music, which can be toggled on or off. Some meditations are captioned or include signed content so children with hearing loss can access them, too.

“It was important for me to create a platform that not only makes meditation accessible, but one that also makes meditation comfortable for everyone,” Gioia says. Wee Meditate operates on a subscription model ($49.99 per year) but if you want to test out some of Gioia’s kid-friendly reflections, subscribe to her free newsletter, Dragon’s Meditation Club.

Since launching, Wee Meditate has gained subscribers from Mexico to New Zealand. In January, the company announced a partnership with Bumbleance, an Ireland-based children’s ambulance service, so kids can listen to meditations as they are shuttled to the hospital or medical appointments.

While Wee Meditate’s programming makes meditation more accessible and relatable to kids, Gioia emphasizes that it still takes practice. “Many parents try to meditate with their child once, the child either doesn’t like it, gets silly, etc., and the parent thinks, My kid can’t do that. That isn’t true,” she says. “They will see the benefits, and their kids will feel the benefits, but they need to give it time.”

5 Tips for Teaching Kids How to Meditate

1. Start small. Notice your breath going in and out. Take three deep breaths with one hand on your heart, one on your belly. Put a drop of vanilla or lavender on a favorite teddy bear and have them smell it for a few seconds. On a walk, ask your kid to pick something up, like a rock, and describe how it feels.
2. Consider practicing as a family. Not only can you set an example, but it’s quality time together. Come up with a cue that anyone in the family can say to instigate a moment of Zen.
3. Be age appropriate. “Mirror their own attention spans,” Turek says. Take 30 seconds and ask your child to name things they see around them or a feeling they’re experiencing. And use relevant language, like taking a “big belly dragon breath.”
4. Be creative. Meditation or mindfulness doesn’t have to be quiet and still. It can involve some yoga movements or dance or be set to the sound of drums. Consider your child and their interests to find the best fit.
5. Don’t aim for perfection. Gioia calls it a dance—a trial-and-error process of finding the right type of meditation, the right place, and what props to use. But whatever you land on, be consistent in offering the practice, she says. Turek agrees that patience is key: “If it doesn’t work one day, that’s OK. Try it again tomorrow or another day.”

Read More: This New App Uses the Characters from Inside Out to Help Little Coloradans Understand Their Biggest Feelings