Why Parents Should Try Mindfulness for Parenting
“Parenting well does not come naturally. What comes naturally is parenting the way we were parented.”
Many parents, including myself, experience strong emotions when interacting with their children. But, unfortunately, feelings get in the way of how we respond to our children. Mindfulness can help guide us through parenting, especially when we are overwhelmed, tested, reactive and feeling stuck.
Mindful parenting is a parenting approach that brings mindful awareness to the parent-child relationship. For instance, mindfulness practice can help you manage your mental and emotional experience when feelings get in the way of how you respond to your children. Importantly, mindful parenting enables you to recognise how you feel and how your child feels.Why Parents Should Try Mindfulness for Parenting
To Cultivate Awareness
Mindfulness helps you become more aware of your thoughts, feelings and bodily sensations and improve your capacity for emotional self-regulation. Moreover, you cultivate awareness around parenting stress and the intergenerational transmission of problematic parenting patterns (Bogels, Hellemans, Deursen, Romer, van der Meulen, 2014).
To Reduce Parental Stress and Parental Reactivity
Whether it's stemming from daily hassles or significant life events, or painful parent-child interactions, parental stress may negatively affect parenting. In other words, when you are stressed, you may be less attentive to your child's needs.
Mindfulness practice teaches you to bring mindful awareness into the interaction with your child. For example, you can take a moment to pause and breathe before responding to the child's behaviour that otherwise would have triggered an impulsive reaction (Bogels et al., 2014).
To Improve Marital Relations and Co-Parenting
Mindfulness-based techniques may help foster better marital and co-parenting relations, especially when parenting stress is high. When parents experience high levels of stress, more dysfunctional parenting is likely to follow. In the same way that mindfulness may reduce emotional reactivity in parent-child interactions, Bogels, Lehtonen, and Restifo (2010) suggested that it may reduce "automatic, reactive responding to stressful, emotional interactions, without withdrawing from the partner emotionally or physically." Therefore, parent-child relationships may benefit from parents becoming more mindful and intentional in their parenting interactions.
To Improve Child's Wellbeing Through the Attachment to Their Parents
Mindful parenting may promote a more secure parent-child relationship and, in turn, have a positive impact on the child's wellbeing (Medeiros, Bouveia, & Canavarro, 2016). In short, mindful parenting is an approach that aims to facilitate sensitive and responsive parenting by improving the quality of parental attention and increasing awareness of parental distress. In turn, this can have implications for a child's emotional and mental wellbeing.
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Bögels, S. M., Lehtonen, A., & Restifo, K. (2010). Mindful parenting in mental health care. Mindfulness, 1(2), 107-120.
Bögels, S. M., Hellemans, J., van Deursen, S., Römer, M., & van der Meulen, R. (2014). Mindful parenting in mental health care: effects on parental and child psychopathology, parental stress, parenting, coparenting, and marital functioning. Mindfulness, 5(5), 536-551.
Medeiros, C., Gouveia, M. J., Canavarro, M. C., & Moreira, H. (2016). The indirect effect of the mindful parenting of mothers and fathers on the child’s perceived well-being through the child’s attachment to parents. Mindfulness, 7(4), 916-927.
