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The Eline Snel Method · Rooted in awareness
Attention Works!
A practical mindfulness method that helps children notice what is happening inside them, make sense of what they are experiencing and discover that they have a choice in how they respond. Developed by Eline Snel and shaped by decades of work with children, parents and professionals.
Attention Works!, originally developed as 'Aandacht Werkt!', grew from Eline Snel’s work as a therapist and mindfulness trainer. The method was shaped through practice with children, with one question always at its heart: how do you make mindfulness something a child can actually understand, experience and use?
The answer is a method that stays close to children’s everyday world. Concrete, compassionate and practical, with the body, breath, senses, stories and experiences as its starting point.
The foundation
Attention takes root.
Children are often told to concentrate, calm down or think before they act. Attention Works! teaches them how. It starts with noticing what is happening right now. In the body, in thoughts and feelings, and in the world around them. From there, children gradually learn to recognise emotions, create space before reacting and make more conscious choices.
It starts with experience
Before children need words for what is happening, they can feel it. The breath, feet on the floor, a tight belly or a busy head make attention concrete and accessible.
It speaks a child’s language
A busy head. Butterflies in your stomach. Sitting still like a frog. The method translates mindfulness into images and experiences children recognise and remember.
It is practised, not just explained
Attention is a skill. Children develop it by practising, again and again, in small moments that gradually become useful in everyday life.
Where it came from
From one question to a method used around the world
Eline Snel developed the method from decades of experience as a therapist and mindfulness trainer, together with what she learned from children themselves. One question from her daughter captured the challenge perfectly: “My teacher tells me to concentrate. But how do I do that?” The frog became one of the method’s best-known images: still without being sleepy, alert without being tense, noticing what is happening before deciding whether to move.
About Eline Snel →Learn to pass it on.
Attention Works! was developed for children, but it is carried by the adults around them. Our trainings teach professionals not only how to use the exercises, but how to create the safe, attentive environment in which children can practise them.