Theoretical Background of Reflective Parenting

A capacity called 'Reflective Function' is unique to human beings and is essential to all healthy psychological functioning. This is an area where much current and exciting research and program development is occurring.

The reflective function includes

• The ability to understand that other people have mental activity (which we cannot observe) such as needs, feelings, intentions, desires and beliefs, which can be used to explain their behavior (what we can observe). Similarly, we expect others to treat us this way as well.
• The ability to empathize with others, i.e., have an inner sense of what others are feeling. In turn we expect others to empathize with us.
• The ability to recognize that what we 'feel' is not necessarily 'fact'. For example because we may feel we are stupid, does not factually make us stupid; because we feel that someone does not like us, does not mean it is a fact that someone does not like us.

We are not born with this ability, we are only born with the potential to develop it. A growing body of research indicates that this ability begins to develop in the first year of life in context of the parent-child relationship. Reflective function continues to mature even into late adolescence and early adulthood.

The research indicates that the very young child needs physical nurturance and reliable emotional sensitivity so that they feel loved, safe and secure. The child also needs for the parent to understand how its mind is developing. Physical care, emotional empathy and reflectivity are all important, and indeed overlapping ways that the parent relates to the child.

For some parents this is a very natural process and develops smoothly such that intervention is ever needed.

But there are other situations where intervention can be beneficial. Even quite well adjusted families can at times have difficulties in managing children's behaviors and in enhancing the parent-child relationship and can benefit from additional support with respect to reflective parenting.

In more serious situations intervention may even be essential. This happens when the parent has difficulty with reflective function, the parent is under a lot of stress such as occurs in socio-economically disadvantaged families which interferes with reflectivity, or the child has certain developmental impairments that make it difficult to develop reflective function.

Reflective Parenting Program was developed for the more serious at risk situations, but can be used to assist in other more stable situations as well.

Reflective Parenting Program

The program utilizes professionally led discussion groups in a ten-week workshop series designed to enhance a more reflective approach to parenting in the context of specific child rearing issues.

Reflective Parenting strengthens the parent-child relationship and helps the child develop emotional and behavioral self-regulation.

Two groups are currently in operation in the Spanish-speaking community.

We plan to expand. The first goal is for our group leaders to set up additional groups in other community settings. The second goal is to train more professional to leaders to run these groups within their community organizations.