Mindful Parenting

Children of parents in the military have higher rates of mental health problems compared to children whose parents are not in the military (Huebner, et al., 2019) such as emotional regulation issues, difficulty concentrating, poor school performance or low self-esteem (Rossiter, 2022) which are magnified in military families that have experienced multiple deployments, prolonged deployments, deployments to known combat areas or awareness that the parent does high risk activities (Ormeno et al, 2020). However, these children can also be more resilient than children within civilian families.

For servicemembers family connection with children can be strained because of uncertainty about their role in the home, no longer feeling needed, and when deployed service members return, children must rebuild their emotional connection to the parent and if the parent has been injured physically or psychologically can bring additional barriers such as emotional numbing.

The good news is, that the single most effective factor in a child having resilience is having a stable, committed relationship with an adult – someone they can confide in, feel safe with, and who they trust (Brown, 2019). This type of relationship can be cultivated through connection (Masten & Barnes, 2018; Keder, 2022).

You and your children are not a statistic, and this class is not designed to make you feel like one nor is it to teach you how to be a parent. Rather this interactive experience is designed to aid navigating the waters between chaos and rigidity to find flow, deep connection and play.

The concepts developed come from various fields and proven exercises from top researchers and tailored for Special Forces families, building upon understanding the compounding effects of military service including deployment, brain injury, sleep needs, family role changes, and post-traumatic stress.

​

Mindful Parenting  is a 6-week interactive and experiential course that combines empirically based practices that will foster growth within yourself and empower your skills for parenting your children.

• Practice responding wisely to personal feelings such as threat, worry, overwhelm, self-criticism

• Understand and model adaptive self-regulation and co-regulation with your child.

• Recognize and manage personal parenting stress patterns.

• Use mindfulness techniques to stay mentally present with family and stretch personal edges without leading to overwhelm in quiet environments and busy spontaneously planned activities in various environments.

• Utilize compassion practice with yourself and your children, leading to more positive and supportive relationships.