Publication year
2010
Citation Title
Changing parent’s mindfulness, child management skills and relationship quality with their youth: Results from a randomized pilot intervention trial.
Journal Name
Journal of Child and Family Studies
Journal Volume
19
Issue Number
2
Page Numbers
203-217
DOI
10.1007/s10826-009-9304-8
Summary
Mindfulness has emerged as a promising new technique and may be useful in the context of parenting. Changes in parenting outcomes (e.g., child management, parent-child relationship) were compared between groups of mother-child dyads assigned to either an original Strengthening Families Program (SFP) group, a mindfulness-added intervention group, or a wait-list control. Mothers who received mindfulness-added SFP had more mindful parenting and better parent-child relationships post-treatment.
Key Findings
Mothers in the mindfulness-added intervention group, but not the original or control groups, displayed significantly greater levels of post-treatment mindful parenting (e.g., openness, non-judgmental receptivity).
Mothers in both the original and mindfulness-added intervention groups showed similar improvements greater than control group mothers in communicating rules to their children.
Models of intervention change suggested that the increases in mindful parenting which mothers in the mindfulness-added intervention group experienced partially explained those mothers' improvement in their parent-child relationship quality.
Implications for Military Professionals
Attend professional development trainings about the benefits of mindfulness in parenting, including for military parents
Collaborate with parenting programs to disseminate information about the benefits of mindfulness for military parents
Implications for Program Leaders
Offer workshops that aim to improve relationship quality between parents and children by using a mindfulness component
Provide classes that focus on anger in the family relationship by integrating evidence-based mindfulness components
Implications for Policy Makers
Continue to support the use of evidence-based practices, including mindfulness in parenting, with military families
Encourage existing military parenting programs to include education about and practice of mindfulness exercises
Methods
Families in three Pennsylvania school districts were recruited with information distributed via phone, mail, school presentations, newpaper and radio ads, and flyers.
Mother-child dyads were randomly assigned to either the original SFP intervention group, the mindfulness-added intervention group, or the wait-list control group; mothers and youth also completed questionnaires before and after the intervention.
Changes in parenting outcomes (e.g., child management, parent-child relationship) were compared pre- and post-intervention within each group, and the size of changes were also compared between groups.
Participants
Participants included 65 mothers, with an average age of 39.4 years (SD = 7.0), and 65 adolescents, who were 62% male and had an average age of 11.65 years (SD = .75).
Participants primarily identified as White (96%).
The majority of mothers had completed high school (98%) and were employed (82%).
Limitations
Without a follow-up, there is no evidence for long-term effects of adding mindfulness to the Strengthing Families Program.
The small sample size may have limited generalizability to other families and resulted in insufficient power to detect effects, with many analyses having marginally significant results.
Several families failed to complete the pre-treatment (8%) or post-treatment (37%) questionnaires, and differences between participants who did and did not complete measures may have influenced results.
Avenues for Future Research
Conduct a study with follow-up measures to asses the long-term effects of adding mindfulness to the Strengthening Families Program
Investigate whether parent or child characteristics (e.g., age, gender, openness, agreeableness) impact the efficacy of mindfulness in parenting interventions
Examine the efficacy of providing mindfulness training to parents and families through several methods (e.g., online modules, individual or group training, phone applications)
Focus
Civilian
Target Population
Population Focus
Abstract
We evaluated the efficacy of a mindful parenting program for changing parents’ mindfulness, child management practices, and relationships with their early adolescent youth and tested whether changes in parents’ mindfulness mediated changes in other domains. We conducted a pilot randomized trial with 65 families and tested an adapted version of the Strengthening Families Program: For Parent and Youth 10–14 that infused mindfulness principles and practices against the original program and a delayed intervention control group. Results of pre-post analyses of mother and youth-report data showed that the mindful parenting program generally demonstrated comparable effects to the original program on measures of child management practices and stronger effects on measures of mindful parenting and parent–youth relationship qualities. Moreover, mediation analyses indicated that the mindful parenting program operated indirectly on the quality of parent–youth relationships through changes in mindful parenting. Overall, the findings suggest that infusing mindful parenting activities into existing empirically validated parenting programs can enhance their effects on family risk and protection during the transition to adolescence.
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