Attachment Style, Mindfulness Eating, Mother Beliefs with Child Emotional Eating: Mediating Role of Child Emotion Regulation

Objective child eating problems, as one of the important factors that affect the development and performance of the person, is affected by many environmental and relational factors including mother psychological component and child emotion regulation. The main purpose of this study was to develop the modelling of child emotional eating based on attachment style, mindfulness eating, and mother beliefs with mediating role of child emotion regulation.

The participants of this study were 250, 11-12 year students (100 male and 150 female) studding in Urmia schools with their mothers. Mothers completed the attachment style, mindfulness eating and mother beliefs questionnaires and children completed emotional eating and emotion regulation questionnaires.

The results of the data analysis with SPSS and Lisrel revealed that due to attachment style, mindfulness eating, mother beliefs and child emotion regulation can significantly predict child emotional eating. The Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA = 0.016) and the Comparative Fit Index (CFI = 0.95) were optimal.

This model determines that mother and child components affected child emotional eating and these elements should be taken into consideration in dealing with the causes and treating child emotional eating.