Bögels, Lehtonen, & Restifo (2010). Mindful parenting in mental health care.” – Article summary

Mindful parenting refers to paying attention to your child and parenting in a particular way; intentionally, here and now and non-judgementally. Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT) targets the patterns of thinking activated by dysphoria (i.e. the association between low mood and negative repetitive thinking). MBCT appears effective in doing this and reduces the likelihood of developing another depressive episode. Mindfulness-based approaches appear effective in the treatment of disorders where rumination plays a central role.

It is possible that attentional processes are the key mechanism underlying change in mindfulness. However, it is not clear how mindfulness affects attention. It has been shown to improve executive attention in general. Meditation experience is negatively associated with emotional interference (i.e. disengaging attention from emotional stimuli). The ability to disengage from unexpected and emotional stimuli and attention conflict monitoring improve as a result of meditation practice.

Mindfulness-based parenting interventions may exert their effects by targeting six domains:

1. Parenting stress
   This strongly affects parenting skills (e.g. parents become more rejecting under stress). This may be the case because parents may fall back in a fight/flight/freeze response when under stress. Besides that, parents with mental disorders or with children with mental disorders are more likely to be exposed to stress. Parental stress also negatively affects marital quality which, in turn, influences parenting. Mindfulness training may reduce parental stress and thus improve parenting skills.
2. Parental preoccupation
   Negative, repetitive, preoccupied thinking (i.e. depression thinking) may take up a parent’s attention which leads to them having less attention to allocate to the child during interaction, which makes the interaction less synchronized. Parental preoccupation with negative thinking may also bias the attention of the parent on the child (e.g. focusing on the negative aspects). It is possible that mindfulness improves parenting by reducing parental preoccupation and negative bias. Mindfulness may lead the focus from the inner rumination to the child and be more non-judgemental. Parents’ preoccupied attention resulting from parents’ own mental disorder or child’s mental disorder may negatively affect parenting. Mindfulness parenting involves open and unbiased attention to the child which may improve parenting and child development.
3. Parental executive functioning (i.e. reduce parental reactivity)
   Mindfulness may improve parenting through improving parental executive function and thus reducing parental reactivity. Parents of children with executive function disorders (e.g. ADHD) have poorer executive functioning themselves. Poorer executive function may lead to more impulsivity and impulsivity in the child may elicit more impulsivity in the parents. This leads to a vicious cycle of negative reactivity. Mindfulness could reduce impulsivity in parents and thus resolve this negative reactivity cycle.
4. Intergenerational transmission of parenting
   Parents may repeat dysfunctional parenting patterns they have been exposed to as a child. These dysfunctional parenting patterns may be transmitted through cognitive schemas. These are activated by emotions during parenting (e.g. emotions that resemble past experience in parents’ childhood). Parents are more likely to activate these schemas under stress. This can be prevented by using mindfulness.
5. Self-nourishing attention
   Mindfulness may improve parenting through improving self-nourishing attention (i.e. self-compassion). This attention may be particularly important for parents who suffer from mental disorders as they might not be able to provide positive attention to themselves due to growing up in an environment without positive attention. Parents of children with mental disorders also have problems with self-nourishing attention due to the increased demands and stresses of raising a child with a mental disorder. Mindfulness could teach people to adopt a more accepting, non-judgemental and compassionate stance toward themselves, improving self-nourishing attention.
6. Marital functioning and co-parenting
   
   1. Marital conflict
      Mindfulness may reduce interparental conflict by lowering partners’ emotional reactivity to each other. This may improve communication and lower impulsive, negative reactions.
   2. Marital satisfaction
      Mindfulness may improve open-mindedness and reduce criticism and rigidity. This might improve marital satisfaction.
   3. Co-parenting
      This refers to the ability of parents to support and not disqualify the partner in the presence of the child. This is especially relevant for divorced couples. Single parents and divorced parents may have low co-parenting support which leads to more stress. Mindfulness may improve co-parenting.

Automized transactional procedures refers to a child demonstrating problem behaviour which biases the parents’ attention to the problem behaviour which then leads to the parents being more judgmental, which, in turn, leads to more problem behaviour in the child. A parental bias for child negativity coming from a child mental disorder may, in turn, instil a negative attentional bias in the child, causing intergenerational transmission of negative attentional biases.

Self-compassion consists of being kind (1), being understanding toward oneself (2) and holding painful thoughts and feelings in mindful awareness rather than overidentifying with them (3).