Mindful Parenting: Perspectives on the Heart of the Matter
Introduction: When we were writing our book, Everyday blessings: The inner work of mindful parenting (Kabat-Zinn & Kabat-Zinn 1997/2014), an alternative title we very much had in mind was Mindful parenting: Nurturing our children, growing ourselves. The “growing ourselves” element, although it was surrendered in favor of the first title and subtitle, was, is, and always will be an essential element of the entire endeavor. This theme and evidence in support of it can be found throughout this Special Issue. Mindful parenting is not a project to create “better” or “optimal” children (whatever that might mean), or to be “better” or “optimal” parents, but to embrace in moment-to-moment awareness as best we might the entire enterprise of parenting our children in a mutuality of love and discovery and not-knowing. We were saying as clearly and as invitingly as we could that such an intentional approach to family and relationality has the potential to catalyze a natural flowering of everybody’s capacity to grow into our full range of possibilities in the sheltering embrace of family—however it is defined and constrained in the actuality of our specific and singular situations.