The majority of adolescents with type I diabetes mellitus (TIDM) have suboptimal glycaemic control, which increases the risk of chronic health complications. Quality of life (QoL) is also commonly affected. The authors of the present study aimed to explore mindful parenting (a parenting style associated with attention, non-judgemental acceptance, compassion and emotional regulation) and its associations with glycaemic control and QoL.
The study employed a cross-sectional design and formed part of a larger, national, online survey of people with diabetes (and their parents) who reside in the Netherlands. Participants were recruited via magazine advertisements and via email. To be included in the present study, participants had to be fluent in the Dutch language and to have completed the relevant sections of the online survey, so that sufficient data was available. The sample comprised 129 adolescents (aged 12 -18 years) with TIDM and 215 parents of adolescents with TIDM. There were no exclusion criteria.
Parents completed the Dutch version of the Interpersonal Mindfulness in Parenting scale; a self-report measure of mindful parenting. They were also asked to report their child’s haemoglobin A1c levels (which can be used to assess glycaemic control) and any recent TIDM-related health complications. Data was also collected about QoL, using the adolescent version of the Pediatric Quality of Life Inventory 3.2TM . Parents reported on their children’s QoL using this tool but it was also completed directly by the adolescents in the study. Demographic information was also collected.
Associations between variables were analysed using Pearson correlation coefficients/Spearman’s rho and were explored further with regression analyses. Results showed that mindful parenting was significantly correlated with parent-reported QoL of adolescents, but not with adolescents’ self-reports. Mindful parenting did not correlate with haemoglobin A1c levels, nor with recent TIDM-related medical complications. However, regression analyses suggested a moderating effect of sex on some associations: mindful parenting was significantly related to better glycaemic control in boys and not having been admitted to hospital for ketoacidosis in girls.
In their introduction, the authors reviewed previous research and presented a convincing, theoretical argument for why mindful parenting was worthy of exploration. As this was the first study of its kind, the findings might encourage other researchers to investigate this area, potentially culminating in an intervention that could benefit adolescents with TIDM. A further strength was that the authors highlighted several important limitations of their study (e.g. limitations in the representativeness of participants, the study’s design and the use of self-report measures). A major limitation not discussed was the considerable number of associations they tested for significance. As they accepted an alpha 0.05, there was a 5% chance of making a type I error. However, this chance was inflated considerably due to the large number of associations they examined. The authors could have minimised this risk by applying an appropriate adjustment to the alpha level to account for the number of associations (e.g. a Bonferroni correction). They could also have examined fewer associations and explicitly defined hypotheses about what they expected to find.