Parental Mindfulness and Preschool Children’s Emotion Regulation: the Role of Mindful Parenting and Secure Parent-Child Attachment

Abstract

Dispositional mindfulness has been demonstrated to play a key role in influencing individuals’ psychological functioning. Recently, the effects of dispositional mindfulness have been extended to interpersonal processes within the family context. Research has shown that parents’ dispositional mindfulness also has implications for children’s development. However, the mechanisms through which parental mindfulness contributes to child development outcomes need to be further elucidated. The present study aimed to examine the influence of parents’ dispositional mindfulness on preschool children’s emotion regulation and the role of mindful parenting and parent-child attachment in explaining this association in a Chinese sample. A total of 472 parents (74.4% mothers) of preschoolers aged 3 to 6 years reported on their dispositional mindfulness, mindful parenting, parent-child attachment, and their children’s emotion regulation. Dispositional mindfulness was related to higher levels of mindful parenting (β = .61, p < .001), which in turn facilitated parent-child attachment (β = .59, p < .001), thereby contributing to preschoolers’ lower emotional lability/negativity (β = − .24, p = .005) and higher adaptive emotion regulation (β = .49, p < .001). Bootstrapping indicated that the indirect paths from parental mindfulness to children’s emotional lability/negativity (95% CI = − .30, − .10) and adaptive emotion regulation (95% CI = .27, .50) through mindful parenting and parent-child attachment were significant. The association between parental mindfulness and preschoolers’ emotion regulation was serially explained by mindful parenting and parent-child attachment.