Comparing the Effects of Mindful Parenting and Positive Parenting Training on Emotion Regulation in the Parents of Anxious Children

Anxiety is among the most prevalent psychological disorders that play an essential role in declining health and the quality of life. The parents of anxious children encounter more issues than the parents of children without psychological disorders. In this regard, one of their problems is the lack of Emotion Regulation (ER). ER indicates implementing appropriate cognitive and behavioral strategies to modify the timing or severity of emotions. Mindful parenting and positive parenting training methods are effective in improving mental conditions in individuals. Mindful parenting training is among the most novel approaches to use mindfulness in the field of mental health. Furthermore, positive parenting training is a behavioral intervention program based on social learning in family interactions. Therefore, the present study aimed to compare the effects of mindful parenting and positive parenting training on ER in the parents of anxious children.

This was a quasi–experimental study with a pretest–posttest and a control group design. The research population included the parents of anxious children of Larestan County, Iran, in 2019. In total, 60 individuals who met the study inclusion criteria were selected by convenience sampling method. Then, they were randomly assigned into three groups, including mindful parenting training, positive parenting training, and control (n=20/group). The research inclusion criteria included having anxious children diagnosed based on the Preschool Child Anxiety Scale (Spencer et al., 2001), having a 5– to 6–year–old child, literacy, living with the child, no history of parenting education, and no history of stressful events, such as divorce and the death of relatives in the past three months. The study exclusion criteria for the parents was discontinuing cooperation with the study and absence from more than one session. The experimental groups received training for 8 sessions of 90 minutes (one session a week) per the methods of Bogels and Restifochr('39')s mindful parenting (2014) and Sanderschr('39') positive parenting (2005), respectively. However, the control group remained on the waiting list for training. The research instrument consisted of the Anxiety Preschoolers Scale (Spence et al., 2001) and ER Questionnaire (Garnefski & Kraaij, 2006). The obtained data were analyzed by Multivariate Analysis of Covariance (MANCOVA) and Bonferroni posthoc test in SPSS at the significance level of 0.05.

The present research findings suggested that the mean±SD age of the mindful parenting training, positive parenting training, and control groups were 28.34±3.15, 29.18±3.02, and 28.70±3.69 years, respectively. Moreover, 60% of the mindful parenting training group members had one child; the same rate in the positive parenting training and control groups equaled 70%. The Wilkes’ Lambda test data demonstrated a significant difference between the research groups at least in terms of one variable of adaptive ER and maladaptive ER approaches (F=38.78, p<0.001). The MANCOVA results indicated a significant difference in the variables of adaptive ER and maladaptive ER between the study groups (p<0.001); based on the effect size, it could be concluded that 77% of the variance of adaptive ER and 71% of the variance of maladaptive ER were due to the training methods. The Bonferroni posthoc test findings revealed that the mindful parenting and positive parenting training groups, in comparison to the control group, presented increased adaptive ER and decreased maladaptive ER strategies (p<0.001); however, there was no significant difference between the provided intervention methods in adaptive ER (p=0.095) and maladaptive ER strategies (p=0.582).

The current study results highlighted the effectiveness of mindful parenting and positive parenting training approaches on ER in the parents of anxious children. Therefore, planning to apply these methods could significantly improve adaptive ER and decrease maladaptive ER strategies in this population.