• Mind-mindedness is the ability of parents to accurately read and label their children’s thoughts, feelings, and wishes.
• Both mothers’ and fathers’ mind-mindedness in the first years of children’s lives play an important role in children developing the ability to regulate their emotions and behaviors.
• Parents can cultivate mind-mindedness by paying close attention to their children’s behavior and taking time to reflect on and label their children’s thoughts, wishes, and emotions.

What is mind-mindedness?

I have vivid memories of the first weeks of motherhood, feeling anxious and confused about why my baby was crying. I wondered: Why is she crying? How is she feeling? Does she want something other than food? Maybe she just wants to be cuddled? As time passed, I began to understand my baby’s wishes and emotions more clearly. Talking to other new parents, I realized that parents differ in how much they can understand their children’s minds.

This ability of parents to think about their children as individuals with their own thoughts, feelings, and wishes, and to label these experiences in their interactions with them is called mind-mindedness. Parents with this ability accurately read their babies’ minds and label their mental states. This might involve reflecting on a child’s emotional experiences or verbalizing their wishes.

Photo: Egidijus Bielskis. Unsplash.

For example, when a child starts crying after their toy broke, a mind-minded parent might say, “You seem upset that your toy broke. You wanted to play with this toy.” In contrast, parents who misinterpret their children’s mental states (e.g., assuming the child is crying because they are tired and do not want to play anymore) demonstrate non-attuned mind-mindedness.

How does mind-mindedness help children?

Parental mind-mindedness plays an important role in the development of children’s self-regulation. Self-regulation is a critical skill that enables children to manage their emotions and behaviors in response to what a situation demands (Eisenberg, 2000; Kochanska, 1993). As children reach the age of four or five and begin school, the demands for self-regulation increase. Starting a these ages, children need to stay focused, pay attention to learning goals, and actively participate in learning in the classroom so self-regulation becomes especially important (e.g., Nota et al., 2004).

Boosting self-regulation

Self-regulation in preschool is not only important for later academic achievement – accumulating evidence suggests that it is also essential for children’s social adjustment and mental health. Preschool-age children who can adequately regulate their emotions and behaviors have more successful relationships with others, are more socially competent, have healthier life habits, and are at a lower risk for developing mental disorders (Robson et al., 2020).

The ability of parents to think about their children as individuals with their own thoughts, feelings, and wishes, and to label these experiences in their interactions with them is called mind-mindedness.

Several studies have examined the role of parental mind-mindedness in the development of self-regulation in infants and toddlers. They have shown that mothers’ and fathers’ mind-mindedness is associated with emerging self-regulation abilities in infancy and toddlerhood (Cheng et al., 2018; Gagné et al., 2018; Senehi et al., 2018; Zeegers et al., 2019). However, it remains unclear whether parental mind-mindedness at these ages plays an important role for self-regulation in preschoolers. This is especially important to determine since self-regulation at preschool age predicts various life outcomes.

The connection between parental mind-mindedness and preschoolers’ self-regulation

My colleagues and I set out to address this question. In our recent study (Nikolić et al., 2022), we investigated whether mothers’ and fathers’ mind-mindedness in the first three years of a child’s life predicts the development of self-regulation at four and a half years.

We predicted that appropriate mind-mindedness in parents would help children develop good self-regulation because children would learn about their inner states from parents who accurately reflect on and label their mental states (e.g., when a child is sad and the parents reflect on the child’s sadness, the child becomes aware of the feeling and starts to understand it). In contrast, non-attuned mind-mindedness in parents would hinder the development of self-regulation because children whose parents misinterpret their thoughts, wishes, and feelings may feel misunderstood and would not learn to understand their mental states from their parents.

Photo: Karolina Grabowska. Pexels.

We assessed mothers’ and fathers’ mind-mindedness in the first three years on multiple occasions by observing their interactions and conversations with their children during playtime. We then measured preschoolers’ self-regulation at the age of 4.5 in several ways. First, we asked parents about their perception of their children’s effortful control, or their capacity to voluntarily focus attention and suppress an inappropriate response or activate an appropriate response to adjust to a situation (Eisenberg, 2005). For example, the ability to prioritize sitting quietly and listening to the teacher over playing with a friend is an aspect of effortful control.

Second, the children completed behavioral tasks in the lab, where we asked them to keep their hands placed on a mat on the table while choosing a prize from a box filled with small toys or a box filled with candies (Kochanska et al., 1997). This task required children to follow instructions and inhibit a dominant response (i.e., touching or pointing to a toy or candy). Finally, we measured children’s heart rate variability during rest – a bodily response related to physiological regulation (Porges, 1997).

Mind-mindedness in the first three years of a child’s life

Both mothers’ and fathers’ mind-mindedness in the first three years of their children’s lives contributed significantly to their preschoolers’ self-regulation. Fathers who were more mind-minded with their babies and toddlers had children who were better at self-regulation when they started school. In contrast, mothers and fathers who were more non-attuned and often misinterpreted their children’s mental states had children who were less able to self-regulate when they started school.

Fathers who were more mind-minded with their babies and toddlers had children who were better at self-regulation when they started school.

These findings provide the first evidence that both mothers’ and fathers’ mind-mindedness in the early years matters for children’s self-regulation in preschool. They also emphasize the role of fathers’ attunement to their children’s mental states in early years for the development of self-regulation at preschool age.

How can parents cultivate mind-mindedness?

What does this mean for parents? While it may not be surprising that a strong parent-child bond has positive effects on a child’s socioemotional development, our study’s findings highlight the unique importance of both mothers and fathers in being mindful of their children’s internal experiences to promote self-regulation early in life.

Parents can pay close attention to their children’s behavior and cues, and take time to reflect on and label their children’s thoughts, wishes, and emotions. By doing so, parents can help their children develop an understanding of their own inner life, making self-regulation easier. And the best part? It is never too early to start this practice – even talking about mental states with your child before they can speak can help them develop this important life skill.

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Both the mother’s and father’s mind-mindedness when a baby is four months and 12 months old influence the way the baby manages emotions at 12 months.

A new study has found that how well a baby manages emotions is influenced not only by the quality of parenting but even more so by the mother’s and father’s “mind-mindedness” – the ability to manage the physical and emotional states of their baby – during the first year.

In the early years, children are hugely dependent on their parents’ ability to help them manage their emotions. Mind-mindedness is assessed by observing whether parents respond appropriately or inappropriately to their child’s emotions during free-play interactions. A key question is how a parent names different emotions that the child experiences, enabling the child to recognise and manage them better. For example, when a child becomes overstimulated in a game –turning away from the caregiver, tuning out or having frantic moments – a mind-minded parent accurately understands the signal and responds appropriately by pausing the game and enabling the child to recover. When such responses are repeated many times, children learn from their parents how to manage their own emotions.

Earlier research has found that mind-mindedness is linked to secure parent-child attachment, which is in turn linked to children’s ability to depend on parents’ responding appropriately to emotional cues. So, for example, if a child becomes angry or fearful, this emotion becomes associated with a parent’s helpful response. The child can learn to trust that arousal with the parent present will not lead to disruption that goes beyond his or her ability to cope.

The researchers, led by Moniek Zeegers at the Research Institute of Child Development and Education in the Netherlands,  measured emotion regulation via “high-frequency heart rate variation” (HRV) – the variation in duration between subsequent heartbeats. Previous research has shown two things. First, a higher baseline HRV in toddlers is related to better regulation of emotions, as well as a more general alertness and responsiveness to the environment. Second, in a socially stressful situation, such as meeting a stranger or encountering a non-responsive face, HRV goes down; a larger drop is associated with stronger coping with the challenging situation.

The researchers found that mind-mindedness in both mothers and fathers is linked to improved emotion regulation in 12-month-old babies. But they also found differences between mothers and fathers in how mind-mindedness influences children.

For mothers, stronger mind-mindedness when the baby was 4 months old predicted more positive HRV in the baby at 12 months (higher baseline, more decline in a situation with a stranger). For fathers, there was no such link, but there was a link between a father’s mind-mindedness later, at 12 months, and HRV (both measures) at 12 months. This may reflect the fact that mothers tend to be more involved in caring for infants earlier on, so the mother’s influence displays itself earlier, on average.

The researchers found that the baby’s heart rate variation at four months did not predict a parent’s mind-mindedness at 12 months. Judging by other research, the child’s temperament would be expected to influence parenting, but perhaps in the case of a child’s ability to regulate emotions, this influence takes more than one year to exhibit itself.

The researchers found that measures of mind-mindedness and measures of parenting quality at 12 months correlated for fathers, but not for mothers. They were not able to explain this finding; they suggest that the problem might be the rather coarse measure of parenting quality used in the research.

Zeegers and her team recommend looking further at the longer-term influence of parental mind-mindedness on child cognitive and social development. Other research projects have started to show links between parental mind-mindedness and a child’s ability to interpret other people’s behavior. Maternal mind-mindedness predicts a child’s better working memory at 18 months and better management of conflict and impulses at 26 months. Paternal mind-mindedness predicts a child’s ability to control impulses at 18 months.

Another aspect that needs further work is how mothers’ and fathers’ mind-mindedness interact with each other during coparenting. In coparenting, one parent can strengthen or compensate for the other, so their influences become mixed.

This study took place in the Netherlands and involved 116 mothers and fathers, with measurements at four months and 12 months. The data were drawn from a larger, longer-term longitudinal program. The research is unusual in that it measures both mothers and fathers.

Mind-mindedness was measured at four months by recording a five-minute parent-child free play session. At 12 months, the session lasted 10 minutes. All the comments by the parents were classified as either being directed at the child’s mental state or not. If so, the statements were categorized as cognitions (e.g., “you remembered this from the zoo”), likes and dislikes (e.g. “you don’t like this rattle”) or emotions (e.g., “you’re all excited to play with these toys”). After this, each comment was coded as ‘appropriate’ or ‘non-attuned’ to the child’s mental state.

The heart rate variation was measured at baseline and then in a stranger situation – an unfamiliar man approaches the baby when sitting in front of the mother, talks to the baby for 30 seconds, and then picks the baby up for 30 seconds.

Parental quality was measured at 12 months by observing the play session and scoring for parental responsiveness, intrusiveness, warmth and negativity.

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