Mirror Therapy: Distractions and Children

As I say, it was a little boring for us to do this over and over again, and listening to music helped, though we rarely set it up. This was partly because it was another detail to attend to and partly because, as meditators, we aspired to be able to do it without having to distract ourselves from it. I think we did a good job of meeting that aspiration. If we’d listened to an audio book, I imagine that would have also helped the time pass.

It was especially hard on our four-year-old son when we would “do Dad’s face.” And when he started acting up during a session, that stressed David out and seemed to make the therapy less effective. But we did find good ways to distract our son. One was singing. He was very happy to sit and listen to me sing while I did the sessions. We also got a little case of toys that he was only allowed to play with during the sessions. He called them his “do Dad’s face toys” and for a time he was very excited about playing with them. He would ask us, “is it time to do Dad’s face?” which had the added benefit of reminding and encouraging us.