Evaluating the Effectiveness of Mindfulness-Based Family-Centered Game Programs on Emotion Regulation and Instability/Negativity of Children with Behavioral Disorders

 The most critical part of a person's life is childhood, which is spent in the family. Conflicts, violence, poverty, and addiction in the family decrease mental health and create behavioral disorders in children. As a result, emotion regulation disorders increase in children. Because emotional and behavioral problems often do not decrease naturally, much attention has been directed to the prevention and treatment of childhood problems and disorders. One of the newest and, at the same time, the most effective form of intervention is mindfulness. This intervention includes being active or mindful at the moment, which is the opposite of inattention or automatic guidance. Active presence in the moment is defined as a state of aroused attention and awareness of what is happening in the present moment. The results of numerous studies show that mindfulness has been effective and very promising in regulating children's emotions. They have also demonstrated that family–centered interventions improve well–being and mental health. Also, the emotional relationship between parent and child is considered effective in the play process, and with play, parents can be more effective for their children than therapists. Parents trained in this field are good substitutes as therapists for their children, and with education in the form of games, they reach a favorable understanding and acceptance in connection with the child's behavior. It is noteworthy that a family–centered game program based on mindfulness has not ever been designed, and its effectiveness on emotional regulation of 8–12 years old children with behavioral disorders has not been examined. Therefore, the novelty of the research topic emphasizes its necessity. In this regard, this study aims to investigate the effectiveness of a family–centered games program based on mindfulness on emotion regulation and instability/negativity of children with behavioral disorders living in Tehran City, Iran.

 This quasi–experimental study employed a pretest–posttest design with a control group. The statistical population comprised all children with behavioral disorders aged 8 to 12 years living in Tehran City, Iran, in 2019–2020. Using the available sampling method, 30 qualified volunteer children and their families were included in the study and randomly assigned to the experimental and control groups. The inclusion criteria were lacking acute and chronic physical diseases, not participating in other treatment programs, and not receiving individual counseling or pharmacotherapy. The exclusion criteria were as follows: absence of more than two sessions from the therapy, not being satisfied with the sessions, and not answering the questionnaires.
The research was done in two stages. First, the program of family–centered games based on mindfulness was compiled using theoretical literature and research backgrounds, and experts confirmed its content validity. Then, the experimental group participants received ten sessions of the compiled program. The Children Behavioral Checklist (Achenbach, 1979), the Emotion Regulation Checklist, the child and adolescent form (Shields and Cicchiti, 1998) were used to collect data. The obtained data were analyzed using the analysis of covariance in SPSS18 at a significance level of 0.05.

 The mindfulness–based family–centered games program significantly affected the experimental group in emotion regulation and instability/negativity (p<0.001). The effect on excitement regulation and instability/negativity variables was obtained as 0.556 and 0.385, respectively.

 The implementation of family–centered games based on mindfulness has been effective in emotion regulation and instability/negativity of children with behavioral disorders.