Capturing and Cultivating Change: Daily Variability in Parental Attributions and the Role of Mindfulness

Maladaptive parental causal attributions for child misbehavior have been identified as one of the lead culprits that reduce parent engagement in and readiness for behavioral parent training programs. As a result, these attributions are often assessed during clinical intake for child mental health difficulties. Despite their importance in the clinical domain, little research has focused on their day-to-day fluctuations and potential targets for their change that can ultimately have implications for clinical practice with parents. The present study examined daily changes in parental causal attributions using a daily diary method, and the role of parent mindfulness on these daily fluctuations. Participants were Canadian parents ( N = 156; M age = 38.2 years, SD = 5.46, 84.6% mothers) with children aged 3 to 12 years old ( M age = 5.93 years, SD = 2.42; 50.0% girls). Parents completed an initial measure of mindfulness at day one, and 14 further daily assessments of parental attributions. Multilevel modeling was employed for data analysis. Findings showed that parental attributions fluctuated across days, regardless of whether parental mindfulness was high or low. However, higher levels of mindfulness were associated with less maladaptive parental attributions overall. These findings suggest that (a) point-in-time assessments of parental causal attributions for child behavior may not always reflect a complete and accurate portrayal of parents’ cognitions, and (b) mindfulness pre-training before standard care may be effective in reducing overall biased parental attributions in the clinical intake process.