Mindfulness has been especially positive for Mason, according to Evans.
“When I was in first grade, I would have horrible tantrums. She would be sweating profusely. He would be screaming, I had to take him out into the hallway,” says the director. “I had to take him outside, and he was screaming and falling to the ground.”
The new lessons on emotions were not taken at first.
“We were doing mindfulness and he was yelling at me, ‘I don’t want to do mindfulness!’” says Evans.
For the next two years, Mason still had fits, but by the end of third grade, the outbursts became less frequent and less aggressive, and she was able to talk about them afterward and reflect on them. Mason began using words he learned during mindfulness lessons to describe what he was feeling. Now that his fourth grade year is over, he’s only had two big breakdowns this year.
“He’s still a little upset, but he’s not trying to commit, [and] he doesn’t scream as much,” says Evans. “I asked him to come to my office. He lowered his head and said, ‘I’m not ready to talk yet, I need to do some mindfulness first.’ I knew that’s what you do: control yourself, admit that I’m not okay, and instead of doing something I’ll regret and get in trouble for, I knew I had to stop. Is that what you want.”
Mason also acknowledges the role the practice of mindfulness has played in her life and growth at Rivermont.
“I just take a deep breath, and if that doesn’t calm me down, I try to keep doing it until I feel better,” Mason says of her new approach to her emotions. “And then when it makes me feel better, I’m fine, and I just put it in the past.”
It’s a big step, but in Evans’ eyes, it’s just the beginning.
“We can’t make children’s lives perfect, we can’t,” she says. “I can’t control what’s going on outside in his life, I can barely control what’s going on inside these four walls, but we’re giving him the tools he needs.”
“Mason would be a student who would very easily have been labeled a ‘problem child’ and probably would have been suspended for life for fighting, because he couldn’t control his anger,” Evans continues. “But he’s remorseful and he’s like, ‘I don’t like to get in trouble, I don’t need to be a bad boy, I don’t want to do this, I didn’t mean to.'”
“We as a collective, what we did for Mason, I really think we changed the trajectory for him.” ⚡
