Abstract
Parental deployment to war poses risks to children's healthy adjustment. The After Deployment Adaptive Parenting Tools (ADAPT) program was developed for post-deployed military families to promote children's well-being through improving effective parenting. ADAPT combines behavior management with emotion socialization skills for parents, using brief mindfulness practices to strengthen emotion regulation. We used a three-wave longitudinal, experimental design to examine whether ADAPT improved parental trait mindfulness (PTM), and whether the effect was moderated by baseline PTM. We also investigated whether improved PTM was associated with behavioral, cognitive, and emotional aspects of parenting such as self-reported parental locus of control (PLOC), self-reported parental emotion socialization (PES), self-reported and observed behavioral parenting skills. We analyzed data from a randomized controlled trial (RCT) of the ADAPT, with a focus on mothers (n = 313) who were either deployed (17.9%) or non-deployed and partnered with a husband who had been recently deployed to Iraq and/or Afghanistan and returned (82.1%). Families identified a 4–13-year-old target child (Mean age = 8.34, SD = 2.48; 54.3% girls) and were randomized into ADAPT (a group-based 14-week program) or a control condition (services as usual). At baseline, 1-year, and 2-year follow-up, PTM, PLOC, PES, and parenting skills were self-reported, whereas home-based family interactions involving parents and the child were video-taped and assessed for observed behavioral parenting skills such as discipline and problem-solving using a theory-based coding system. Results showed that mothers with lower baseline PTM reported higher PTM at 1-year while mothers with higher baseline PTM reported lower PTM at 1-year. PTM at 1-year was associated with improved self-reported parenting skills and supportive PES at 2-year, as well as indirectly associated with improved PLOC and reduced nonsupportive PES at 2-year through PTM at 2-year. No associations between PTM and observed parenting skills were detected. We discuss the implications of these findings for incorporating mindfulness practices into behavioral parenting interventions and for personalized prevention considering parents' pre-existing levels of trait mindfulness as a predictor of intervention responsivity.
Highlights
Since the start of the War on Terror, the lives of more than two million American children have been affected by the deployment of a parent to Iraq and Afghanistan (Department of Defense., 2016)
We report data drawn from a randomized controlled trial (RCT) of a parenting intervention developed for post-deployed military families
Our goal was to understand for whom the intervention might be more or less beneficial depending on baseline levels of parental trait mindfulness (PTM) as well as the mediating relationship between PTM and parenting outcomes
Summary
Since the start of the War on Terror, the lives of more than two million American children have been affected by the deployment of a parent to Iraq and Afghanistan (Department of Defense., 2016). While military children are resilient and do not necessarily show adjustment problems (Meadows et al, 2016), some evidence suggests that children of deployed parents exhibited elevated levels of risk for internalizing and externalizing behaviors (Chartrand et al, 2008; Lester et al, 2010; Pexton et al, 2018), as well as alcohol and drug use problems (Acion et al, 2013). This may be partially due to compromised parenting during stressful times including reintegration following a deployed parent’s return. Using moderation and mediation analyses, we investigated whether less mindful mothers (i.e., those with low baseline trait mindfulness) reported improvements in trait mindfulness following intervention, at 1-year post-baseline, and whether improved trait mindfulness mediated changes in parenting outcomes at 2-years post-baseline
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