By: Sue Hutton

Mindful Parents resource booklets

As we finish up the holidays and start the new year,  self-care can be a helpful friend.  If you had passed by the board room at 20 Spadina on a Wednesday night, this past fall you may have been surprised to see a room with dimmed lights, people sitting together with their eyes closed, bellies relaxed, and breathing together in a guided meditation.

This is a Mindfulness program, for parents and caregivers of people with an intellectual disability or autism.  These parents were learning techniques to  improve their wellbeing, reduce their risk of depression and anxiety, lower their blood pressure and generally find calm in the challenging moments.  While learning these mindfulness techniques, parents shared a few laughs, good company, and the odd chocolate truffle.

Community Living Toronto has offered a 6 week Mindful Parents group twice, and each time the feedback was very positive.  Parents shared with us that the simple act of taking the time to care for themselves and learn a new skill to was extremely  powerful. Parents told us that it is rare to actually take a break to nurture themselves, as so much of the time they are overwhelmed with keeping up with the ongoing care, system coordination, and advocacy that is part of life looking after a child with an intellectual disability. Of course, there is joy and good things that need to be celebrated too – it’s not all pure stress.

Mindful Parenting at Community Living Toronto is a 6 week stress reduction program that has been designed specifically for parents of someone with an intellectual disability/autism. It is a program that was customized for parents of someone with an intellectual disability directly from the popular Jon Kabat-Zinn program called  Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR). MBSR is an 8 week health care program    using simple meditation techniques that are taught in class, with daily home practices that come with online links to meditations to do at home. Parents have       reported that it’s challenging to carve out the amount of time that standard MBSR asks for (45-50 minutes). The Mindful Parents program that we offer is modified to make it accessible for busy parents. Plus, having     parents connect with each other in a shared space is therapeutic in and of itself. There’s a lovely bonding that you don’t see happen in standard MBSR  programs.

The development of the program came through research at CAMH. Dr. Yona Lunsky was launching a Mindful Parents research study around the same time I had just completed the MBSR professional training. CAMH psychologists Anna Palucka and Margaret Reid  also got involved and we researched and  developed this program for parents and caregivers of someone with an ID. Our findings were published in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders.

If you’re interested in learning more about Mindful Parenting contact Sue Hutton:

at shutton@cltoronto.ca

For more information on Mindfulness and Parenting visit these resources:

Video on Mindfulness from 2013 by Sue Hutton:

https://connectability.ca/2013/12/06/mindfulness/

Mindful Parenting in Huffington Post:

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/lisa-kring/the-5-main-tenets-of-mindful-parenting_b_4086080.html