Improve Parenting and Children’s Psychopathology with Mindful Parenting
By John M. de Castro, Ph.D.
“As parents, perhaps the most precious thing we can give our children is the gift of our full presence, in the moment. This is the deep intention and invitation for parents as they make space for mindfulness practice in their lives. Mindful parenting takes to heart the deep truth that we can only give to our children what we have given first and fundamentally to ourselves.” – Lisa Kring
Raising children, parenting, is very rewarding. But, it can also be challenging. Children test parents frequently. They test the boundaries of their freedom and the depth of parental love. They demand attention and seem to especially when parental attention is needed elsewhere. They don’t always conform to parental dictates or aspirations for their behavior. They are often affected more by peers, for good or evil, than by parents. It is the parents challenge to control themselves, not overreact, and act appropriately in the face of strong emotions. Meeting these challenges becomes more and more important as the youth approaches adolescence, as that is the time of the greatest struggle for independence and the potential for damaging behaviors, particularly, alcohol, drugs, and sexual behavior.
The challenges of parenting require that the parent be able to deal with stress, to regulate their own emotions, and to be sensitive and attentive to their child. These skills are exactly those that are developed in mindfulness training. It improves the psychological and physiological responses to stress. It improves emotion regulation. And it improves the ability to maintain attention and focus in the face of high levels of distraction. Mindful parenting involves having emotional awareness of themselves but also having emotional awareness of and compassion for the child and having the skills to pay full attention to the child in the present moment, to accept parenting non-judgmentally and be emotionally non-reactive to the child.
To date, there has not been a direct determination of the influence of mindfulness on parenting and the behavior of their children over childhood and adolescence. In today’s Research News article “The Association of Parent Mindfulness with Parenting and Youth Psychopathology across Three Developmental Stages.” See summary below or view the full text of the study at:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4520790/
Parent and colleagues recruited parents of children in three age ranges; young childhood (3 to 7 years old), middle childhood (8 to 12 years old), and adolescence (13 to 17 years old). They completed measures of mindfulness, mindful parenting, positive and negative parenting practices, and of their children’s internalizing and externalizing behaviors as indicators of the children’s mental health.
They found that older parents and parents from two parent households were significantly higher in mindful parenting and positive parenting, and that parents with at least a college education were lower in negative parenting. Importantly, they found that the higher the levels of parental mindfulness the higher the levels of mindful parenting and the lower the levels of negative parenting practices and the children’s internalizing and externalizing behaviors. In turn, higher levels of mindful parenting were associated with higher the levels of positive parenting practice and lower the levels of negative parenting practice. In turn, the higher the levels of negative parenting practices the higher the levels of the children’s internalizing and externalizing behaviors. These findings were true regardless of whether the children were in young childhood, middle childhood, or adolescence.
These results show that parental mindfulness is associated with lower psychopathology in the children both directly and indirectly by association with mindful parenting. They show that mindful parenting is also associated with lower psychopathology in the children by being associated with fewer negative parenting practices. Hence the results show that regardless of the age of the children, mindfulness and mindful parenting are associated with better mental health in the children.
This study was correlational and there was no manipulation of the levels of mindfulness. As such, it cannot be determined if there’s a causal relationship between mindfulness in mental health in the children. It is possible that high levels of the children’s internalizing and externalizing behaviors may be responsible for the parents’ levels of mindfulness and mindful parenting. It is important, then, that future research actively train parents in mindfulness to determine if higher levels of mindfulness cause better outcomes with the children. Regardless, these results support the contention that mindfulness and mindful parenting are important for successful outcomes in raising children.
So, improve parenting and children’s psychopathology with mindful parenting.
“The reality is that our childhood impacts our parenting. For a number of reasons, and in a variety of ways, our relationship with our children can trigger memories, emotions, and reaction from our earliest years. Sometimes we realize what’s going on, but more often than not, we don’t. Understanding this dynamic is a powerful first step towards changing some of the unskillful behaviors that may be impacting our experience of parenting and our relationship with our children.” – Carla Naumburg
CMCS – Center for Mindfulness and Contemplative Studies
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Study Summary
Parent, J., McKee, L. G., Mahon, J., & Foreh, R. (2016). The Association of Parent Mindfulness with Parenting and Youth Psychopathology across Three Developmental Stages. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, 44(1), 191–202. http://doi.org/10.1007/s10802-015-9978-x
Abstract
The primary purpose of the current study was to test a model examining the process by which parent dispositional mindfulness relates to youth psychopathology through mindful parenting and parenting practices. The universality of the model across youth at three developmental stages was examined: young childhood (3 – 7 yrs.; n = 210), middle childhood (8 – 12 yrs.; n = 200), and adolescence (13 – 17 yrs.; n = 205). Overall, participants were 615 parents (55 % female) and one of their 3-to-17 year old children (45 % female). Parents reported on their dispositional mindfulness, mindful parenting, positive and negative parenting practices and their child’s or adolescent’s internalizing and externalizing problems. Consistent findings across all three developmental stages indicated that higher levels of parent dispositional mindfulness were indirectly related to lower levels of youth internalizing and externalizing problems through higher levels of mindful parenting and lower levels of negative parenting practices. Replication of these findings across families with children at different developmental stages lends support to the generalizability of the model.