Maternal Mind-Mindedness Provides a Buffer for Pre-Adolescents at Risk for Disruptive Behavior

Abstract

Maternal mind-mindedness, defined as the propensity to view one’s child as an agent with independent thoughts and feelings, mitigates the impact of low maternal education on conduct problems in young children (Meins et al. 2013), but has been little studied beyond the preschool years. Addressing this gap, we applied a multi-measure and multi-informant approach to assess family adversity and disruptive behavior at age 12 for a socially diverse sample of 116 children for whom ratings of disruptive behavior at age 6 were available. Each mother was asked to describe her child and transcripts of these five-minute speech samples were coded for (i) mind-mindedness (defined by the proportion of child attributes that were mental rather than physical or behavioral) and (ii) positivity (defined by the proportion of child attributes that were positive rather than neutral or negative). Our regression results showed that, independent of associations with prior adjustment, family adversity, child gender and low maternal monitoring, mothers’ mind-mindedness (but not positivity) predicted unique variance in disruptive behavior at age 12. In addition, a trend interaction term provided partial support for the hypothesis that pre-adolescents exposed to family adversity may benefit in particular from maternal mind-mindedness. We discuss the possible mechanisms underpinning these findings and their implications for clinical interventions to reduce disruptive behavior in adolescence.

Maternal Mentalization and Behavior Under Stressful Contexts: The Moderating Roles of Prematurity and Household Chaos

“…In the recent years, maternal mentalization has been linked with various positive aspects of the parent-child relationship, most notably maternal sensitivity (e.g., Ensink et al, 2016;Koren-Karie et al, 2002;Meins et al, 2001;Zeegers et al, 2017) and secure attachment (e.g., Kelly et al, 2005;Oppenheim et al, 2012;Laranjo et al, 2008;Zeegers et al, 2017). Furthermore, maternal mentalization, as measured using online and offline MM scales, has been associated with children's cognitive and socioemotional development (e.g., Bernier et al, 2017;Hughes et al, 2016;Meins et al, 2013). The aim of the present study was to further understand these early processes.…”

“…Online maternal mentalization during infancy has been positively associated with children's language acquisition in toddlerhood (Laranjo & Bernier, ), executive functioning (Bernier, Carlson, Deschênes, & Matte‐Gagné, ), school readiness in preschool (Bernier et al., ), and theory of mind development (e.g., Devine & Hughes, ; Kirk et al., ; Meins et al., ). Furthermore, high prenatal (offline) as well as postnatal (online) maternal mentalization predicts lower levels of internalizing and externalizing behaviors in toddlerhood (Meins, Centifanti, Fernyhough, & Fishburn, ; Smaling, Huijbregts, van der Heijden, van Goozen, & Swaab, ), suggesting that maternal mentalization can buffer against the development of conduct problems (e.g., Hughes, Aldercotte, & Foley, ). Thus, understanding the processes by which online maternal mentalization relates to other positive aspects of mother–infant and mother–father–infant interactions, namely maternal sensitivity and family triadic interaction (e.g., Feldman & Masalha, ; McHale & Rasmussen, ), can help illuminate important precursor of early development.…”

Minding the children: A longitudinal study of mental state talk, theory of mind, and behavioural adjustment from the age of 3 to 10

“…The authors argue that mind-mindedness may act as a protective factor in children's social and behavioural adjustment. A recent study has found a comparable effect of maternal mind-mindedness on social adjustment in 12 year old children (Hughes, Aldercotte, & Foley, 2017). However, to the best of our knowledge, no study has measured the effect of early MST on behavioural adjustment beyond the early years.…”

“…Our third aim was to test the longitudinal relation between early maternal MST and reported child adjustment at age 10. Previous research has addressed this association within the preschool years (Meins, et al, 2013) and cross-sectionally at 12 years old (Hughes et al, 2017) but not examined the longitudinal relationships between these ages. For the current study we hypothesized that early maternal MST at age 3 to 4 would act as a protective factor against externalising and internalising behaviour at age 10.…”

Exposure to a natural disaster during pregnancy and young children’s behaviour: prenatal and postnatal pathways, and the role of maternal mind-mindedness

“…Research supports the facilitative influence of "appropriate" maternal mind-mindedness on a range of child developmental domains, including attachment security , executive function and self-regulation Bernier et al, 2017) and social cognition (Laranjo, Bernier, Meins, & Carlson, 2014;. The few studies that have investigated the relationship between maternal mind-mindedness and child behaviour problems (Easterbrooks et al, 2017;Hughes, Aldercotte, & Foley, 2016) suggest that these associations are complex and may be influenced by contextual factors . For example, maternal mind-mindedness has been demonstrated to predict lower internalising and externalising problems only amongst pre-schoolers from low socio-economic status families .…”