Mindful With Your Baby/Toddler: A Single Case Design (SCD) Study

Area of Science:

• Psychology
• Parenting Studies
• Mindfulness Research

Background:

• Motherhood transition intensifies parental stress, reduces self-efficacy, and increases internalizing problems.
• These challenges can negatively impact the crucial mother-child relationship.
• Mindfulness-based interventions show potential for supporting parents experiencing these difficulties.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate the effectiveness of the Mindful with your Baby/Toddler (MwyB/T) intervention.
• To assess MwyB/T's impact on parental stress, self-efficacy, internalizing problems, and mindful parenting.
• To explore the utility of personalized items within the intervention.

Main Methods:

• A single-case design with baseline, intervention, posttest, and follow-up phases was employed.
• Ten mothers participated, completing daily personalized items and validated questionnaires.
• Data analysis included visual analysis, effect size measures for personalized items, and reliable change indices for questionnaires.

Main Results:

• All mothers demonstrated improvement on their personalized intervention items.
• The majority of mothers showed improvement across validated questionnaire measures.
• Significant positive changes were observed in mindfulness, mindful parenting, parental self-efficacy, and reductions in internalizing problems and parental stress.

Conclusions:

• The MwyB/T intervention appears beneficial for mothers experiencing parental stress and internalizing problems.
• The findings suggest MwyB/T can support diverse maternal goals related to well-being and parenting.
• Further research is recommended to understand the role of personalized items in interventions and outcome measurement.