What is Mindful Parenting?
Before we dive into how to become a mindful parent, let’s first talk about what mindful parenting even is. Mindful parenting is intentional, thought out interaction between parents and their children. In the book Raising Good Humans: A Mindfulness Guide to Breaking the Cycle of Reactive Parenting and Raising Kind, Confident Kids by Hunter Clarke-Fields, Hunter describes mindful parenting as “Paying attention on purpose” (pg 16). Sounds simple enough right? Well, most of us parents know that’s not always the case. As much as we all give our children plenty of care and attention, if you really look at those interactions you’ll probably see you’re commonly distracted. Not to say that you don’t listen to your kids, or purposefully interact with them, but if you start to pay attention to every detail of your interactions you’ll notice you miss things a lot.
Mindful parenting is a parenting approach that focuses on being present fully in those interactions with your kids on a regular basis. It also emphasizes the importance of learning to recognize what’s going on with your children at any given time, and letting them know that you’re always there for them. It can help build and strengthen your relationship in the best way imaginable if you just give it a shot.
This post contains affiliate links. Check out our disclaimer for more information.
How I Learned About Mindful Parenting:
Just to note: I talk about a few books and articles I read during my research and I’ll link them all for you to read if interested. I don’t know any of these authors and have no connection to them, I’m just sharing my honest thoughts and opinions and what I learned from each.
Blog Post by Chicken Scratch Diaries
I originally learned about mindful parenting when I came across a blog post about intentional parenting. I’ll link that post here. I was incredibly interested in intentional parenting, but when I looked more into it I came to find that most of the resources about intentional parenting had a connection to religion and intentionally raising your children to have a relationship with God. I think that’s so amazing, but I wasn’t necessarily looking for more information on that, so I ended up stumbling into the term “mindful parenting”. Mindful parenting seemed exactly like what I was looking for! It was a form of parenting that discussed the parent-child interaction that I wanted to pursue of intentionally showing up and being present for your children. You’ll notice I will probably use the terms intentional parenting and mindful parenting semi-interchangeably, but I’m talking about the same thing! The parenting style of being present for your children.
The mom who wrote the post that originally introduced me to intentional parenting was incredibly inspirational. She shared her journey to becoming a more intentional mom and it was heartwarming! When trying to let her kids lead the way in activities for the week, all they wanted was her time. She pointed out that being the kind of mom who took the time to recognize what her kids wanted instead of guiding them to do what she thought was best, she was actually teaching them how to grow into adults that treated others that way as well. After reading that I knew I wanted to be that kind of mom too, so I began my research into intentional parenting.
Intentional Parenting by Mandy Smith
This book was the next thing I read relating to intentional parenting. I hadn’t yet made the connection between intentional parenting and Christianity, so I wasn’t expecting this to be about connecting your children to God, but it wasn’t an unpleasant surprise! If you are a Christian mom trying to grow your children’s faith this is a great book for you! It’s an interactive book that will help you look at what you are actively doing to bring your children down the path you hope for them to follow. For moms that aren’t looking for that, I’d probably skip this one as it is mainly about ways to incorporate your faith in your family’s life. Even if you’re not Christian though, there are many lessons to take from this book. Mandy Smith does an amazing job getting you to think about exactly what messages you’re giving your children through the lifestyle you live. The main takeaway I got was that if you want to create a certain type of person in your kids, you have to be that person first.
A Model of Mindful Parenting: Implications for Parent–Child Relationships and Prevention Research
This is a research article about mindful parenting and some studies surrounding it. The gist of this is basically that there isn’t actually a ton of research on what mindfulness looks like when it comes to parenting. That being said, other studies on mindfulness have shown that mindfulness can greatly benefit interpersonal relationships, as well as benefit the individual practicing mindfulness in many other ways. We can extrapolate from this and other studies done on parenting that there would be numerous benefits to practicing mindfulness in parenting. The article itself is a long read, but if you’re interested in a lot of information regarding mindfulness and the benefits it could bring into your parenting journey I’ll link it here so you can check it out.
Raising Good Humans: A Mindfulness Guide to Breaking the Cycle of Reactive Parenting and Raising Kind, Confident Kids by Hunter Clarke-Fields.
This book starts off so relatable, with the author talking about sobbing from one moment that she considered a “parenting fail”. While I can’t relate to the specific instance that triggered her tears, I can relate to sobbing over feeling like I’m doing a bad job as a mom. We all have mom guilt! I’ll be honest, that definitely has not gone away completely since I started practicing mindful parenting. That being said, it’s decreased A LOT. I am now significantly more confident that what I do on a day to day basis is what’s best for my kid. And I can feel confident in that because I’ve learned how to listen to my kid better, and to understand what my actions and choices do to his perception of the world. This book is AMAZING, and my honest recommendation would be for anybody looking to create a mindful relationship between themselves and their children (or anyone really) to give it a shot. I’ll link the book here if you want to look at it.
The idea behind this book is learning how to become the kind of parent you dream of being. It’s to limit the out of control reaction you have, and to learn how to empathize with your kids. Hunter Clarke- Fields takes you on her parenting journey and what she learned from it, all while teaching you about mindfulness and what it looks like to parent mindfully. The book includes activities and resources for you to look through while learning, and is a relatable story that gives you a realistic look at what the journey to being a different kind of parent looks like.
How To Become An Intentional Parent:
Now that we’ve talked about how I learned about intentional/mindful parenting, let’s talk about how to actually become one. The links I’ve provided to my resources are amazing tools, but let’s be real, moms don’t always have time to read entire book and lengthy research articles. So, in an effort to save time for us all, here are the main steps to becoming a mindful parent, and some resources to help your journey.
Have the Desire to Be Present:
I know this sounds stupid. Of COURSE you want to be present. But the thing is, especially in this era of social media, it’s so much easier to just be on our phones. If you have a moment where you don’t urgently have to cook, or clean, or run errands, or change diapers, or go to work… would you rather be present with your children or sit on your phone? Not to say you can’t enjoy a little of both, but it’s way too easy to scroll through Tik Tok or Pinterest for extended periods of time while letting our kids practice some independence. Again, that’s great! They should be practicing independence! But part of what I took from the blog post from Chicken Scratch Diaries is that it’s important to recognize when your kids wants to be independent and when they’d enjoy a playmate. So step one to being a mindful mama: want to be present. And more than that, enjoy it. Savor all the moments that you get to be there and be present with your little ones. One day, being present with them isn’t going to look the same and you’re going to miss where you’re at now.
Practice Mindfulness:
Being mindful in parenting is the goal, but how can you accomplish this if you don’t know how to practice mindfulness to begin with? An incredibly important step to becoming a mindful parent is to learn how to be mindful in life. There’s sooo many benefits to this as well. As said in the mindful parenting article, mindfulness can create a “more enduring sense of well-being found through simply being with whatever is happening in the present moment, with a recognition that it will pass and be replaced by a new experience in the next moment”.
Being mindful allows for you to have control over your actions in a way you didn’t before. It also can help avoid maladaptive parenting behaviors. By this I mean things such as dissociating in order to get through harder parenting moments, ignoring certain things that need to get done, parenting in ways you don’t intend to, or interacting negatively with your kids among many other things. Practicing mindfulness can help you work through all these things! Here are some ways you can start working on being mindful:
Meditation:
Meditation is the best place to start. It helps you get in touch with yourself and what you’re feeling at any given time. It also teaches you how to pay attention. There are plenty of free meditation videos or guides that you can follow along online. Your other option is to find an app or website that has guided meditations where they walk you through each step.
There’s a really great website called Live and Dare. The guy who runs it has a blog where you can read all about meditation (he even talks about the benefits of meditation for kids) and he also has various meditation programs! You can grab his Calm and Free program for only nine dollars (instead of the usual $47) using this link, or check out his program geared towards beginners here. He also offers private coaching if you think you need a little more help getting embedded into the life of mindfulness. Check that out here! If that’s not your style I’ve also checked out this really awesome mindfulness toolkit from Mindfulness Exercises that you can use to guide yourself through mindfulness practices .
Yoga:
Yoga is another great tool for practicing mindfulness. I find a lot of yoga practices also incorporate meditation, but it’s sort of like meditation for your body. You’re moving your body and connecting to it while also feeling grounded through meditation. Yoga definitely isn’t for everyone, but it IS a great form of exercise and meditation for everyone interested. There’s tons of yoga places all over if you want to go in person, but there’s also tons of options online. If you’re looking for a good online program I’d recommend checking out YogaDownload.com or AloMoves.com.
Pause Before Reacting:
The goal of this is to offer no judgment. By learning to pause before you react you learn to have control over your reactions. This helps you shape yourself into the person you’re trying to become. A lot of our outbursts and things that we wish we didn’t say are driven by emotion. Even taking a few extra seconds before reacting can help us respond in a calmer way. In the foreword of the Raising Good Humans book it said “I learned to get curious about what I noticed.” This shows how just taking the time to watch instead of react to everything that comes our way allows us to learn so much more about what’s going on around us.
Listen:
Being willing to listen to our children allows them to feel safe. It shows them that they have our protection, since we always know what’s going on with them and are taking the time to demonstrate that we are always there for them. This also helps us determine the child’s needs. Youd be surprised by the little things we miss when we aren’t ACTIVELY listening. You can practice listening by focusing on making eye contact to limit distractions, thinking about what the other person is saying before responding, and asking questions back. Listening is an amazing skill to have not only with our kids, but with everyone we meet!
Have Compassion:
Having compassion means having self awareness as well as awareness for our child’s emotions. We need to be able to look at the situations and experiences we are having and have compassion for ourselves, and then offer that same attitude to our babies. We’re all human! We all have feelings and we all make mistakes. Let’s stop judging ourselves and our family members so harshly for the things we are experiencing and the mistakes we make because of that. When we stop judging, we allow more room for growth. Having compassion for your kids as a parent has also been shown to lessen suffering in your child since they feel more supported.
Practice Self Regulation:
Practicing self regulation encourages low reactivity and lessens your child’s observation of negative parental reactions. This means when your child watches you they’ll be learning how to regulate their own emotions instead of learning how to have big reactions to things. It might take awhile to learn what helps you regulate, but once you do it’ll be way easier for you to teach your children that skill too. My best advice if you’re struggling with this is to notice when you’re too overwhelmed to react the way you want to and go take a break. Grab some lavender lotion to help relax you or put on some relaxing essential oils and just take a deep breathe and disconnect. Go back to responding to your kids when you feel more calm and regulated. Show them it’s okay to take a minute if they feel overwhelmed!
Create Intentional Time, Space, and Activities as a Family:
A really great way to start putting into practice a lot of the mindfulness skills you’re trying to learn is to create an intentional time, space, and activity for family. For me, I had a really hard time being completely present with my son if I was stressed about all the other things I needed to get done. My solution to this was to take the adventure out of the house! I started practicing intentional parenting at parks, beaches, libraries, on hikes, and at various play groups. Once I started creating these new, helpful habits, it became so much easier to start bringing the mindful parenting back home as well. If you’re looking for some new ideas to do as a family try looking up free events in your area, or check out the family adventure challenge that might be a great addition to your family fun.
Include Your Kids in Your Life:
If you’re feeling exhausted from all the kid oriented things, but don’t want to sacrifice intentional time with your children, try including them in your adult life too! Kids love cleaning stuff with you if you get them their own kids toys you can spend intentional time with them and get yours chores done! Take them with you on a mommy and me date to coffee shops or grocery stores where you let them pick out a treat to make it special. Take them on parent and kid adventures like a walk at your favorite place or out to somewhere you’ve been dying to go. Your kids don’t need everything to be geered towards them, they just need you to want to spend time with them.
Long Term Benefits of Mindful Parenting:
My guess is that if you’re reading this you already know how beneficial mindful parenting can be. But if you’re just curious and are looking for what some benefits of starting this journey could be, here are some of the best benefits of becoming an intentional, mindful parent:
Improved Relationship Between Parents and Children:
Mindful parenting has been shown to have higher rates of secure attachment styles. What this means is your kids have a wonderful and healthy attachment to you! It’s also been seen that when parents practice mindfulness they see more healthy psychosocial development in children. This means that not only are your children creating healthy bonds with you, but that through that healthy bond they are learning how to create healthy bonds with others as well.
Less Anxiety and Depression in Parents and Children:
By creating a parenting style that includes intentional time with your kids and a daily mindful approach you can actually decrease your (and your kids) risk of anxiety and depression. This is seen because parents are more aware and in touch with what’s going on in their kids lives which lowers rates of anxiety. Kids feel less anxious because they feel more supported! Mindfulness as a practice in general has been linked to lower rates of depression, but learning how to have healthy relationships with your children can also contribute! It lowers negative Interactions between parent and child, which helps increase happiness.
Improved Relationship Between Parents:
An added bonus to becoming the kind of parent that you want, is that it can also benefit your relationship with your partner. How many fights have you gotten into with your partner unnecessarily? How many fights have you gotten in over parenting? When you’re actively learning how to communicate, listen, and respect other peoples feelings on a larger scale, you won’t just see changes in your relationship with your kids, but with your partner too! On literally day one of making an effort to be a more mindful parent, I paused before reacting to something my husband said. That pause changed my response from something that definitely would’ve started a fight to something that promoted healthy communication instead! Once you create these habits of being present for your children, they don’t just go away for your other relationships. You’ll notice that ALL of your relationships are improving from the new skills you’re learning.
More Confidence in Parenting Abilities:
Trust me, I know how difficult it can be to know that what you’re doing as a parent is right. Mom guilt is so real. But when you know that every single day you are waking up and starting an active conversation with your kids where you are putting in effort to listen to them and know what they need, you suddenly find you’re a lot more confident in your choices. You’ll know that when you choose to do something, you really thought about all the consequences and know it’s the best thing for everyone.