The Longitudinal Relationship Between Mindful Parenting and Child Emotional Self-Regulation

The development of socio-emotional competencies is essential for school readiness. Children with behavioural, emotional or social difficulties, upon entering the school, are often at an increased risk of poorer academic and health outcomes. Whilst children largely learn early emotion regulation skills and self-regulation through parental observation and modelling, a known benefit of mindful parenting, an understanding of how mindful parenting and child emotional regulation relate to one another during these important early years of schooling remains limited. This study aimed to determine if there is a bi-directional relationship between mindful parenting and child emotion regulation.

A cross-lagged panel structural equation model (SEM) was used to examine the bi-directional associations with data obtained from a single staged cluster sample drawn from the Minds@Play study cohort. Parents (N = 676, M_age = 35.52 years, SD = 5.40) completed questionnaires including the Affective Reactivity Index (ARI) and the Interpersonal Mindfulness in Parenting (IEM-P) scales at two timepoints.

There was a small significant relationship between levels of mindful parenting at T1 with child's irritability at T2 (β = -0.166, p = 0.023), whilst the relationship between child's irritability at T1 and levels of mindful parenting at T2 were non-significant (β = -0.099, p = 0.160). These findings indicate a unidirectional relationship between mindful parenting and children's emotion regulation, suggesting that a child's ability for emotion regulation does not predict their parents' ability to adopt a mindful parenting approach.

Findings suggest that supporting parents to implement mindful parenting strategies may be a promising approach to supporting a child's long-term emotional regulation and wellbeing.