Effectiveness of Mindful Parenting Education on Emotion Regulation and Behavioral Inhibition in Parents with Anxious Children

Anxiety is one of the most common psychological disorders that cause problems in emotion regulation and behavioral inhibition. One way to improve parents’ psychological characteristics with psychological disorders, including anxiety, is mindful parenting education. This study aimed to determine the effectiveness of conscious parenting education on emotion regulation and behavioral inhibition in parents with anxious children.

Present study was semi-experimental with a pretest and post-test design with the control group. The research population was parents with anxious children of Larestan city in the year 2019. Several 40 people were selected by the available sampling method and randomly replaced into two equal groups (each group of 20 people). The experimental group trained eight sessions of 90 minutes with the mindful parenting method, and the control group didn’t receive any education. The research instrument was the Spence & et al. preschool anxiety Scale (PAS), Garnefski & Kraaij emotion regulation questionnaire (ERQ), and Gladstone & Parker behaviorally inhibited temperament style questionnaire (BITSQ). Data were analyzed with statistical tests and appropriate software.

The findings showed that the experimental and control groups didn’t significantly differ in terms of education, age, and the number of children (P>0.05). Also, the groups in the pretest phase didn’t have a significant difference in terms of positive and negative emotion regulation and behavioral inhibition (P>0.05). Still, in the post-test, a phase has a substantial difference in all three variables (P<0.001). In other words, mindful parenting education led to increased positive emotion regulation and decreased negative emotion regulation and behavioral inhibition in parents with anxious children (P<0.001).

The results indicated the effectiveness of mindful parenting education on improving emotion regulation and behavioral inhibition in parents with anxious children. Therefore, using the aware parenting education method and other educational methods suggested improving psychological characteristics, especially emotion regulation and behavioral inhibition in parents with anxious children.