Mindfulness in family communication: An overview of mechanisms, recent findings, and applications

As an important aspect of healthy family functioning, positive family communication not only contributes to better family relationships but also plays a pivotal role in facilitating children’s social, emotional, and behavioural development. Mindfulness can facilitate positive family communication. With greater mindfulness, family members have a greater non-judgemental awareness of the present-moment experience and make skilful responses to various challenges in the family setting. This chapter reviews the literature of mindfulness and family dynamics and discusses how they may be applied to everyday family communication. In addition, this chapter provides examples to illustrate how mindfulness may be beneficial to family communication, alongside practical implications and a brief recommendation for future research.