How To Become A More Mindful Parent To Support The Development Of Children's Emotional Intelligence

JAKARTA - Mindfulness is a practice designed to help you come entirely today, instead of thinking about the past or worrying about the future.

"This is an active practice to come fully with a person's thoughts and feelings," explains Pete Loper, pediatrician and child psychiatrist, according to Psych Central, Tuesday, May 20.

So, mindful parenting or awareness parenting is the practice of applying mindfulness to daily care. This is a time when you make choices consciously and repeatedly, to pay attention to what is happening today with yourself and your children.

This can help you become more curious, intelligent, kind, and accepting. It can also allow you to be more reflective and regulate emotions in front of your child.

"Hadir means really caring for children," explained Steve Cisneros, a licensed clinical psychologist who specializes in the mental health of family and partners. "For example, paying attention to the various colors in their eyes, how their nails grew since the last time you saw them, [and] witnessed their enthusiasm or feelings of hurt."

There are several main components of awareness parenting:

By practicing this skill, you can learn to release unrealistic expectations against your child, yourself, or difficult situations, and accept what is happening right now. And by doing that, you can live the present better with self-awareness and affection.

When practicing awareness parenting, you can be an example of positive behavior for children, such as:

As well as Loper's explanation, 'supporting the development of children's emotional intelligence.'

In other words, awareness parenting can help your child learn to recognize and regulate their emotions, which can help them:

For example, a 2019 study found that awareness parenting could help support children's social decisions. However, the researchers noted that more research was needed to find out whether the parenting pattern also helped with emotional regulation.

In addition, a 2010 study showed that awareness parenting could strengthen the relationship between parents and children, especially during stressful times, such as adolescence.

An awareness parenting can also help you:

A 2018 study showed that awareness parenting could:

significantly reduces stress in raising children while increasing satisfaction in raising children

What's more, a 2008 study found that awareness parenting can help reduce anxiety in pregnant women during the third trimester.

Caring for awareness requires parents to practice awareness of themselves first. However, it can be difficult to learn when "time for oneself" is difficult to obtain for busy parents.

So, when you are sleep deprived, fussy, or simply "suppressed," you may find it difficult to regulate your own emotions or practice awareness parenting.

Conscious parenting is also not the end of everything for every parenting situation.

Loper explained, "Susceptibility is not appropriate in situations at risk for children, where direct reactions to your feelings are needed to prevent harm or injury."

In general, there are three steps that you can take to become more aware of as parents: