Transforming Parental States of Mind: Clinical Approaches to Helping Parents become Mindful and Reflective

The parental capacity to hold in mind the thoughts, feelings, and intentions that motivate a child’s behavior, and to meet up with the child’s mind in a manner that is contingent and responsive to these states, is a skill that forms the foundation for secure parent-child attachment. This ability to “mentalize” (also referred to as parental reflective functioning) is vital for the development of self-organization and affect regulation in young children. Reflecting on the child’s mind also requires parental capacity for self-reflection and self-regulation. These skills get increasingly difficult with stress in the caregiving role such as when children become dysregulated or there is a lack of parental support, deprivation, trauma, or other risk factors. The Center for Reflective Communities has developed a model program referred to as Reflective and Mindful Parenting. This approach has been designed to engage parents in a process of exploration, curiosity, and imagination, in order to develop or enhance parental mentalization.

This full-day experiential and highly interactive workshop is designed for mental health and early childhood professionals who work with parents and children. Through this workshop, Dr. Grienenberger will teach practitioners to use this unique approach to help parents who are facing challenges to their ability to maintain a reflective stance in the face of their child’s confusing and challenging behaviors. He will also examine parental reflective capacity through review of the Parent Development Interview (PDI), a tool used to identify parental capacity for mentalization, through the use of transcripts and audio/video case material. Experiential exercises-such as role play, will enable learning specific ways of conceptualizing and intervene with parents based on each parent’s unique mentalizing and attachment profiles. By tailoring interventions in this way, participants will learn to identify and intervene in parents’ blind spots or areas of vulnerability while also enhancing parents’ inherent strengths.