Promoting Resilience in Military Families: After Deployment, Adaptive Parenting Tools

Abigail Gewirtz, Ph.D., L.P. is director of the Institute for Translational Research in Children’s Mental Health and the John and Nancy Lindahl Leadership Professor in the Department of Family Social Science and Institute of Child Development at the University of Minnesota. Her research focuses on the development, effectiveness testing and implementation of targeted prevention programs that promote child resilience among highly-stressed families – including those affected by military deployment and war.

The After Deployment, Adaptive Parenting Tools (ADAPT) program is the first of its kind focused on post-deployment parenting practices in military families. Developed in response to the effects of a parent’s deployment on children, the ADAPT program incorporates emotion socialization techniques including yoga, mindfulness meditation and emotion coaching. In this lecture, Dr. Gewirtz will share the rationale for incorporating mindfulness approaches into a parenting program, walk through the goals and content of the ADAPT program’s different formats and discuss two National Institutes of Health-funded randomized trials evaluating program outcomes.