Emotional Mindful Parenting Intervention (EMPI): The Impact of Mindful Parenting on Preschoolers' Emotion Regulation and Its Mechanism

This study investigated how mindful parenting influences preschoolers’ emotion regulation outcomes, with a particular focus on the indirect effect role of the three parenting processes in the Tripartite Model. Additionally, we evaluated the effectiveness of a newly developed program called the Emotional Mindful Parenting Intervention (EMPI) on both parents’ and children’s outcomes.

In Study 1, 485 Chinese parents of preschoolers (77 fathers; M_age = 35.25, SD = 4.62) completed questionnaires assessing mindful parenting, children’s emotion regulation, and three parenting processes, including parents’ emotion regulation, parents’ supportive responses, and the family emotional climate. A parallel mediation analysis was used to delineate the relations among these variables. In Study 2, we evaluated the effectiveness of an 8-week Emotional Mindful Parenting Intervention on both parents’ and children’s outcomes. We conducted a randomized controlled trial to divide 97 parents (7 fathers, M_age = 35.45, SD = 3.98) of 3–6-year-old children (44 girls, M_age = 4.98, SD = 1.20) into the EMPI group (n = 48) and the control group.

The results showed that mindful parenting was positively related to children’s emotion regulation, with the three parenting processes variables as indirect effects. Additionally, the EMPI significantly enhanced children’s emotion regulation through improvements in parents’ mindful parenting and supportive responses.

The study elucidated the mechanism by which mindful parenting affects children’s emotion regulation. Furthermore, we evaluated an effective emotional mindful parenting curriculum that had achieved significant intervention effects in Chinese families.

This study was not preregistered.