Does Mothers’ Self-Reported Mindful Parenting Relate to the Observed Quality of Parenting Behavior and Mother-Child Interaction?

Objectives Growing academic interest in mindful parenting (MP) requires a reliable and valid measure for use in research and clinical setting. Because MP concerns the way parents relate to, and nurture, their children, it is important to evaluate the associations between self-reported MP and observed parenting and parent-child interaction measures. Methods Seventy-three mothers who experience difficulties with their young children aged 0–48 months admitted for a Mindful with your baby/toddler training (63% in a mental health care and 27% in a preventative context) were included. Mothers completed the Interpersonal Mindfulness in Parenting scale (IM-P) and video-observations of parent-child interactions were coded for maternal sensitivity, acceptance, mind-mindedness, and emotional communication (EC). Results The IM-P total score was positively associated only with mothers’ gaze to the child (EC). IM-P subscale Listening with Full Attention negatively predicted non-attuned mind-mindedness, Compassion with the Child positively predicted maternal sensitivity and positive facial expression (EC), and Emotional Awareness of Self positively predicted mothers’ gaze to the child (EC) and dyadic synchrony of positive affect (EC). Conclusions The current study provides support for the hypothesis that the IM-P total score is predictive of maternal actual attention for the child during a face-to-face interaction. When the IM-P is administered with the aim to gain understanding of different aspects of parenting behavior and the parent-child interaction, it is important not only to employ the IM-P total score but also to incorporate the individual IM-P subscales, as meaningful associations between IM-P subscales and observed parenting and parent-child interactions were found

Mind matters:On mothers’ and fathers’ mentalizing about their child

The fact that we try to make sense of our own and others’ behavior in terms of thoughts and feelings is unique to us as humans. This capacity is termed mentalizing, or theory of mind, and has proven to be a hugely influential construct for understanding individual differences in development across the life span. Over the last two decades, mentalizing has become embedded in theories that attempt to explain child-parent attachment security as well as children’s socioemotional functioning. This dissertation aimed to a) review the existing literature on parents’ and children’s mentalizing in relation to child-parent attachment security, b) extend the existing research on parents’ mentalization by investigating whether mothers’ and fathers’ mentalizing (i.e., mind-mindedness) predicts variation in children’s emotion regulation and behavioral functioning, and c) investigate whether parents’ mentalizing is changeable through intervention

Fathers’ and Mothers’ Early Mind-Mindedness Predicts Social Competence and Behavior Problems in Childhood

Parental mind-mindedness, the parent’s propensity to treat the child as an intentional agent, has repeatedly shown to promote children’s development of social understanding and secure attachment. Less is known about whether the impact of maternal and paternal mind-mindedness extends to children’s social and behavior problems. We investigated the combined effect of mothers’ and fathers’ (N = 104) mind-mindedness at 4, 12, and 30 months on children’s social competence and externalizing and internalizing behavior problems at 4.5 years. Besides, we examined the stability, continuity, parental concordance, and inter-parental differences in the use of mind-related comments. Appropriate mind-mindedness (i.e., correct interpretations of the child’s mental states) and nonattuned mind-mindedness (i.e., misinterpretations of the child’s mental states) were observed during parent-child free-play interactions. Social competence, internalizing and externalizing behavior problems were assessed using both parents’ reports. Hierarchical multiple regression analyses showed that, at 12 months, infrequent use of appropriate mind-related comments of both parents predicted children’s externalizing problems, while their frequent use of nonattuned comments predicted children’s low social competence. Furthermore, mothers’ frequent use of nonattuned comments at 12 and 30 months and fathers’ nonattuned comments at 30 months predicted children’s externalizing behavior. The findings suggest that both parents’ low use of mind-related comments, and frequent misinterpretations of their child’s mind, may act as risk factors for later social and behavior problems of their child

Remediating child attachment insecurity:Evaluating the Basic Trust Intervention in adoptive families

Purpose: This study evaluated the video-feedback intervention Basic Trust in families with internationally adoptive children aged 2–12 years. The intervention aims to reduce child attachment insecurity and behavior problems by enhancing mothers’ and fathers’ sensitivity and mind-mindedness (parents’ capacity to hold in mind the mind of their child). Method: Fifty-three adoptive families participated in a pretest, posttest, and 6-month follow-up assessment. Questionnaires on parenting stress, child attachment insecurity, and behavior problems were administered. Parents’ sensitivity was assessed from free-play observations at home, and mind-mindedness was measured with a describe-your-child interview. Results: Parents reported less child behavior problems, insecure and disorganized attachment, and parenting stress at posttest and follow-up. Parents’ mind-mindedness increased from pre- to post-test but not from pretest to follow-up. Parents’ sensitivity showed an improvement at follow-up. Conclusions: Future studies should investigate whether the present study’s positive results can be replicated under conditions of strict experimental control

Does attachment security predict children’s thinking-about-thinking and thinking-about-feeling? A meta-analytic review

Previous research presents no clear picture of the association between caregiver–child attachment and the two hallmarks of children’s mentalizing abilities: false-belief understanding (FBU) and emotion understanding (EU). The present meta-analytic study investigated four questions: (a) what is the pooled correlation between attachment and children’s mentalizing abilities, as indicated by FBU and EU?; (b) are there differences in the magnitude of correlations between attachment and FBU on the one hand, and attachment and EU on the other hand?; (c) does children’s verbal ability mediate the relation between attachment and children’s FBU and EU?; (d) is the relation between attachment and children’s mentalization moderated by the attachment assessment approach (behavioral vs. representational) and/or instrument? A total of 64 effect sizes (N = 1734 children) were subjected to multilevel analyses. The results showed that the association between attachment and EU, r = 0.31, was significantly larger than the association between attachment and FBU, r = 19. Language ability partially mediated the association between attachment and FBU, but not attachment and EU. Studies using behavioral measures of attachment reported lower correlations compared to studies using representational measures. The findings suggest that the association between attachment and FBU is indirect, and that methodological differences between the different attachment measures may partially explain the significant relations between attachment and children’s mentalizing abilities