Mindful parenting is an approach to family life that places parents and kids calmly in the present moment. This parenting style uses numerous mindfulness concepts to help parents pause before reacting to kids and life situations with strong, negative emotions. Here, we’ll explore mindful parenting in detail so you can determine if it’s something you want to incorporate into your own parenting for yourself and your family.
What Is Mindful Parenting?
Mindful parenting is living mindfully as the mother or father of your child in this moment, every moment, no matter what that moment involves. It involves applying mindfulness—being centered and fully present in each moment rather than stuck in your thoughts and emotions or tangled in memories of the past or worries about the future—to your role as a parent. Jon Kabat-Zinn, founder of mindfulness-based stress reduction, has described mindfulness as “a way of befriending ourselves and our experience.” MIndful parenting, then, is a way of befriending ourselves and our children and our parenting journey.
Mindful parenting is less a set of steps to take or procedures to do and more of a way of being in your relationship with your child.1 It involves noticing and accepting what is happening in the moment. You’re fully present and aware of your own emotions and your child’s emotions so you can remain both engaged and calm rather than zoning out during those mundane (even boring) moments or swallowed up by heated emotions like anger or impatience.2
Parenting, while rewarding and full of wonderful moments, can be stressful and frustrating. Further, parents face many demands every day that add stress and distraction. It’s natural for parents to feel frazzled, which frequently leads to emotional reactions such as yelling, impulsively setting new rules or bending rules for convenience, or withdrawing and later feeling remorseful or guilty.
Mindful parenting is about breaking this cycle by becoming aware of these stressful situations and unpleasant emotions so you can pause before reacting.3 Essentially, mindful parenting is about presence and pause. It’s about shifting away from reactivity so you can respond thoughtfully in each moment, and it’s about helping your kids do the same.3,4
Key Concepts of Mindful Parenting
Mindful parenting is an attitude and a mindset rather than a structured, systematic approach to parenting. That said, key concepts of mindful parenting serve as tools to guide you in your journey toward a calm and centered, present and peaceful relationship with your child.
At its heart, mindful parenting involves:
Attention and Focus
This type of parenting facilitates presence.3,5 Parents remain focused on the present moment with their child. Employing mindfulness techniques such as slow, deep breathing and using the senses to pay attention on purpose to time with their child, parents can gift their kids with their undivided attention rather than being distant and distracted.
Awareness
Noticing and catching emotions before they grow out of control is key in mindful parenting.1,3,6 This includes being aware of and paying attention to stressful situations and difficult emotions (whether those emotions are the parent’s, the child’s, or both).4 When parents are fully present and aware in the moment, they can more easily notice when their kids (and they themselves) are becoming frustrated or upset. Then, they can help kids recognize their own emotions, name them, and deal with them positively.
Acceptance and Non-Judgement
In mindful parenting, parents learn to be present with and aware of all emotions and situations, accepting them as they are rather than judging them as “bad” and something to avoid, fix, or struggle against.1,4,5 This does not mean that parents accept all behavior. Instead, parents accept the emotion that is driving the behavior so they can help kids through the tough experience. Mindful parenting also means that parents accept their own range of emotions without judging themselves harshly for feeling frustrated, angry, or bored. Acceptance and non-judgement allow parents to be open to what happens in any given moment with their kids, and this openness helps prevent automatic reactions and impulsive words or actions.3
Empathy and Compassion
Rather than berating kids for their words or feelings, parents help kids understand their own emotions and accept themselves fully by approaching themselves and their kids with deep understanding. This involves being attentive and listening to kids as they share their feelings. When parents calmly reflect kids’ feelings back to them (with comments such as, “You are embarrassed because your teacher corrected you in front of the class”), kids feel heard and can begin to understand their complex emotions.3
Empathy also involves openly forgiving them for mistakes.3,4 Parents also admit their parenting mistakes (even parents who practice mindful parenting slip up and yell or otherwise react emotionally sometimes) and ask for forgiveness. In this way, mindful parenting teaches kids that everyone makes mistakes and everyone is still lovable and worthy of forgiveness and respect. This helps kids be compassionate with themselves and others.
Creative Problem Solving
Parents who practice mindful parenting refrain from stepping in to solve kids’ problems for them.4 Rather than rushing in with a solution, they stay present with their kids, expressing empathy and understanding, and guide them in exploring ways they can address problems and stressful situations.3 Remaining open to their kids’ thoughts and ideas, parents might ask open questions or make comments such as, “Can you remember something you did before that worked,” or “I wonder if there’s something you can say to let your friend know how you feel without hurting their feelings.”
Appreciation and Gratitude
With this type of parenting, the emphasis is on what is right rather than on what is wrong. Parents convey appreciation for their kids’ positive behaviors and openly express gratitude for positive aspects of life.7 These concepts combine to assist parents in being present with their kids in a way that aligns with their own values and visions for their family. Together, they help work toward the ultimate goal of mindful parenting.
What’s the Goal of Mindful Parenting?
The goal of mindful parenting is to provide a pause between emotion and response. In recognizing emotions in themselves and their kids and being fully present in the moment rather than caught up in stressful thoughts about it, parents have the chance to stop their immediate emotional reaction to challenging situations and instead choose a thoughtful, intentional response.1 In using the above-mentioned concepts, parents can avoid power struggles and other emotional battles with their kids.
It’s important to note that mindful parenting is not about eliminating your own parental emotions or never becoming upset. Instead, it’s about noticing your emotions and initial reactions and then using mindfulness concepts to pause, redirect your attention, and reset so you can then choose your response to your children in even stressful situations.8,17
What Can Mindful Parenting Help With?
Mindful parenting helps kids regulate their emotions and behaviors. According to a study reported in 2016, this type of parenting encourages a positive parenting style which in turn leads to fewer behavior problems in kids.1 When parents set clear rules and enforce them consistently, openly show love and affection, and devote time and attention to their kids, their children are less likely to exhibit negative behaviors such as acting out or withdrawing.
With its emphasis on awareness, nonjudgement, and presence, mindful parenting fosters positive communication between family members. Parents and kids alike learn to recognize their feelings and express them calmly and openly, knowing that they’ll be heard and respected even if they don’t always get their way.9
Mindful parenting also helps kids grow and develop into healthy, well-functioning adults. When parents model skills such as staying focused on the present moment, awareness of feelings and thoughts, pausing before reacting impulsively to stressors, and expressing gratitude for what is right, kids emulate mindfulness as a perspective and way of life.10
Similarly, mindful parenting models a healthy attitude toward mistakes and imperfections. When parents are empathic, open, and encourage a trial-and-error approach to creative problem-solving kids learn that it’s okay to make mistakes. And when parents admit mistakes as well as forgive kids for their mistakes, children learn that they are loved unconditionally, a feeling that is necessary for the development of a strong, realistic, healthy self-concept.
Mindful Parenting Examples
Mindful parenting is an attitude and approach to being with your children. It isn’t something that is reserved for a certain age group—it’s neither too sophisticated for young children nor too simplistic for teens. Here’s a look at some mindful parenting examples for different age groups
Mindful Parenting With Infants
Mindful parenting with infants means tuning in to your baby’s needs and being fully responsive and attentive during interactions. Parents avoid multitasking during feeding or diaper changing, for example, and instead focus completely on the time with their infant, engaging in skin-to-skin contact, maintaining eye contact, observing the way their baby moves and how parent and baby respond to each other, and talking directly to them in a calm, quiet, loving voice.11
Mindful Parenting With Young Children
Toddlers and preschoolers feel strong emotions and act on them because they don’t fully understand them. They don’t have words to describe them or concepts to grasp why they feel the way they do. Also, young children haven’t yet developed the ability to pause between feeling or thinking and acting on the feeling or thought (after all, that’s a lifelong skill that mindful parenting helps hone in kids and parents alike). Mindful parenting helps young kids learn to identify their emotions and shift their attention from what’s upsetting them to something different in the moment.10
When a young child has a tantrum because she can’t have her way, for example, their parent doesn’t scold or admonish them but instead accepts that they are reacting in a developmentally appropriate way. Then, the parent can help the child name their emotion, be present with them in a way that helps them calm down (that will look different for each child), and help them shift their attention to something pleasing.
Mindful Parenting With School-Aged Kids
Mindful parenting can help kids ages 8-12 better deal with their increasingly overwhelming life situations as they juggle more responsibilities at home and school with activities and new, more complex relationships with both peers and adults.12 With its emphasis on openness, curiosity, and creative-problem solving, mindful parenting can provide kids a healthy balance between parental support and space to independently develop solutions to their own difficulties.10
When a child has friendship squabbles, for instance, a parent using mindful parenting doesn’t try to avoid the issue, jump in to solve the problem, or try to talk kids out of their strong feelings. If a child has a fight with their best friend and cries, “I hate them! I never want to see them again!” mindful parents don’t say, “You don’t really mean that. You like them!” but instead remain calm, reflect their child’s feelings to help them recognize and understand their emotions, and then remain present as they work through possible ways to deal with the problem.
Mindful Parenting With Teens
Kids in middle and high school begin to gravitate away from their parents and toward their peers.13 Mindful parenting for this age means accepting this shift and allowing it to happen while remaining a positive presence in the teen’s life.
Set aside time every day to be fully present with your teen and listen to them attentively and nonjudgmentally.10 Mindful parenting with adolescents also involves being aware of your own emotions so you can pause and respond thoughtfully to them without reacting emotionally to their stories or whims.14 This helps teens feel valued and heard. Consequently, they’re more likely to open up and come to you when they need help problem-solving.
Benefits of Mindful Parenting
Mindful parenting offers numerous benefits for parents and kids alike.
Benefits of mindful parenting include the following:
- Helps foster a healthy parent-child relationship with fewer conflicts and stronger connections1,14
- Increases children’s and teens’ adjustment and reduces problematic behaviors, both internalizing (turning problems inward as seen in anxiety,depression, withdrawal, and isolation) and externalizing (turning problems outward, such as acting out, having tantrums, hitting, and exhibiting open defiance1,15
- Improves communication skills between family members1
- Decreases feelings of anxiety and stress for moms, dads and kids alike1
- Keeps parents connected to their parenting goals and visions for their family by helping them be present and pause, thus reducing emotional reactivity5
Is Mindful Parenting Effective?
Studies into mindful parenting continue to indicate that this approach is effective, offering the above benefits and enhancing family peace and the emotional wellbeing of parents and children of all ages.
Researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and George Mason University conducted a study in 2015 in which they examined interactions between 12-14 year-olds and their primary caregivers and analyzed risky behaviors (specifically substance use and sexual activity) of these young adolescents. They found that caregivers using mindful parenting showed fewer negative feelings and were less likely to react emotionally during conflict than those who did not use a mindful approach. Consequently, the parents and teens who experienced mindful parenting shared greater positive emotions during the conflicts, and these teens were less likely to report engaging in risky behaviors.15
In 2016, researchers at the University of Vermont studied the effects of mindful parenting on kids ages 3-7, 8-12, and 13-17. They found that this parenting approach reduces dysfunctional parenting styles such as yelling, criticizing, and using harsh or inconsistent discipline methods; improves children’s and adolescent’s behavior; boosts the relationships between parents and kids; and improves kids’ and teens’ social behaviors and relationships.1
Mindful parenting programs based on mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) and mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT) offer mindful parenting training to parents experiencing mental health challenges such as heightened stress, anxiety, or postpartum depression. In 2017, researchers studied the effectiveness of one such program, called Mindful with Your Baby, and found that the program has the potential to increase people’s ability to engage in conscious parenting, be aware of parental stress and cope with it positively, and improve parent-child relationships.16
How Is Mindful Parenting Different Than Other Parenting Styles?
Mindful parenting is different from other parenting styles by its very nature. It offers a way of being with children rather than a set of rules or procedures for doing certain things. This approach doesn’t exist entirely apart from other parenting styles. Instead, the concepts can be incorporated into any positive parenting style that emphasizes warmth and affection, positive reinforcement rather than punishment, and clear rules with consistent and logical consequences.1 Any parent can use mindful parenting regardless of their unique approach to helping their family function smoothly and healthily.
Mindful parenting is different from negative parenting styles because yelling, punishment, criticism, and impulsive or harsh reactions aren’t part of the approach.1 Mindful parenting is not perfect parenting, however, as no such thing exists. When mindful parents do react negatively and emotionally without pausing to consider a compassionate response or when they find themselves distracted from the present moment, they simply notice it, acknowledge it, accept that it happened, and redirect their attention and emotions to a calm presence in the moment.
In mindful parenting, all family members learn to pause and respond rather than reacting emotionally to stressful situations, thoughts, and feelings. The result is calm compassion, acceptance, and positive problem-solving that carries kids through childhood, adolescence, and into adulthood.
For Further Reading
The following resources are useful in helping you develop or enhance your own mindful parenting practices:
- Zero to Three’s Mindfulness for Parents
- From Mothering: The Home for Inclusive Family Living, 5 Mindful Tips to
Strengthen Your Family - Resources for Mindful Parenting from Consciously There
- The Foundations of Mindful Parenting (Note: This is a course from Mindful Life that requires payment.)
- Best Christian Parenting Books
