Exploring the Feasibility of a Concurrent Mindful Awareness Program, M3, for Children in a Community Setting
Abstract
This study explored the feasibility of the Making Mindfulness Matter (M3) program for children. M3 is a universal eight-week, concurrent parent and child mindfulness program implemented in a community setting. The M3 curriculum includes mindful awareness concepts, social emotional learning, neuroscience and positive psychology. Ninety-seven children between the ages of 3-10-years and their parents participated in the M3 program. Children completed a mindfulness knowledge questionnaire pre and post-intervention and their responses to prompting questions related to using the skills at home were recorded. Parents completed the Behaviour Rating Inventory of Executive Functioning pre and post-intervention to investigate the efficacy of the program in terms of changes in children’s self-regulation. An inductive content analysis was completed to evaluate children’s responses, along with linear mixed models to evaluate pre-post intervention data. Results demonstrate that the M3 program is feasible from the child perspective and from parent report of child’s self-regulatory behavior.