“Parenting is often the greatest challenge in the ‘full catastrophe’ of daily life. In this elegant training manual, parents learn to strengthen their capacity for mindfulness and compassion regardless of the conditions of their lives, past or present. Essential mindfulness skills are gently woven into group exercises and psychoeducation about parenting and stress. This ‘how to’ program will surely be an important resource for couples and family therapists, and a refuge distressed parents, for many years to come.”
- Christopher Germer, Clinical Instructor, Harvard Medical School, author of The Mindful Path to Self-Compassion
“This book and the program it offers are a pioneering effort to bring mindfulness into the domain of parenting and the mental health care of stressed families, for the benefit of both the children and their parents... The authors and their colleagues have done research in the field of stress and parenting and have conducted a number of studies to validate their clinical program in mindful parenting... Their articulation of this way of being called mindful parenting will be an inspiration to those seeking to adapt this curriculum in their own settings and in their own lives.”
- Jon and Myla Kabat-Zinn, from the Foreword
“Compelling, grounded and utterly human. Susan and Kathleen present the mindful parenting program that has emerged out of their sustained engagement with their mindfulness practice, with their daily lives as parents, and with the lives of the parents who have participated in their classes. The result is a personal, practical and informative description of the program and its background. A parent training program that focuses on enabling participants to parent their children from the place they and their children are in moment-by-moment, rather than striving towards some idea of how things could or should be. What a relief!”
- Rebecca Crane, Director, Centre for Mindfulness Research and Practice, Bangor University, author of Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy, Distinctive Features
“A brilliant book with enormous practical implications for all parents. Written with great skill and clarity, Susan Bögels and Kathleen Restifo bring together insights from the evolution of parenting with the latest psychological science on compassion, attachment, and schemas. But then they go further, giving us a step-by-step guide through their unique and evidence-based mindful parenting program. This book is a must-read for child and family practitioners but it will also be on the shelves of all mindfulness teachers who wish to understand how to recollect and explore their own experience as a parent or a child, and in doing so, to understand more deeply the entanglements of those who come to them for help.”
- Mark Williams, Professor of Clinical Psychology, University of Oxford, author of Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy for Preventing Relapse in Depression
“Grounded in evidence-based mindful parenting practices, this book will enable therapists to help parents bring full awareness to raising their children with joy, selfless love, compassion and wisdom. It presents a program on mindful parenting in an engaging and elegant style that incorporates personal reflections by the authors and parents who have gone through this course, mindfulness practices, and gentle encouragement to adhere to these practices. Those of us who are parents or grandparents intuitively know that children are little Buddhas who come to teach us patience. This book is a fine preparation for this adventure.”
- Nirbhay N. Singh, Editor-in-Chief, Mindfulness
