The Connotation And Feature Of Reflective Functioning Of Chinese Adolescent Parents

Parenting adolescents is often seen as a confusing and challenging task for parents.In the interaction,parents are always out of control,‘involuntarily’angry,it is difficult to understand why adolescents do ‘inexplicable’ behavior,at this time parent-child interaction is easy to fall into a vicious cycle of conflict.Parents who want to endure the painful,impulsive emotions of the interaction and truly pause to think about what’s going on inside themselves and their adolescents need the help of the parental reflective functioning.Parental reflective functioning(PRF)refers to ability to understand the nature of the mental state from the point of view of themselves and their children,the ability to relate,interpret,and predict behavior in a meaningful and accurate way,not only emphasizes the experience and cognition to the child’s inner world,more important is to realize the mental state and mental state,the mental state and behaviors of the dynamic relationship.So far,most of the beneficial researches on PRF have focused on the parents of infants and young children,has been proved that it can protect and predict the parenting behavior of parents,the development of children’s social ability,and the parent-child relationship.The connotation and performance of PRF during adolescence need to be integrated,the unique role in raising may act on PRF under the cultural background,such as parents’ academic anxiety,respect for a position of authority,anxiety and stress caused by intensive motherhood may hinder the attitudes and abilities of PRF,it is necessary to analyze and explore the influencing factors.Finally,parent-child conflict may lead to more frequent loss of PRF,clarifying the manifestations,triggering situations and triggering points of reflective functioning loss may reduce the risk of loss of control in parent-child interaction.This study was divided into two parts to explore the connotation and influencing factors of PRF,as well as the manifestations,triggering situations and triggering points of loss.Using qualitative research methods,semi-structured interviews were conducted with the parents of 29 adolescents aged 12-18,using self-designed reflective functioning interview outline.The data were analyzed and sorted through Nvivo software,and the following research results were obtained.Study 1 found that the connotation of PRF during adolescence includes three aspects:(1)the developmental and dynamic understanding of mental state.(2)the understanding of the nature of mental state.(3)the regulation and evaluation of parenting.Considering the influencing factors of PRF from the perspective of culture,it is found that the supporting factors mainly include(1)the promotion of theory and knowledge(2)social support.Factors that may prevent PRF from playing an effective role in parent-child interaction include:(1)unresolved personal factors.(2)entrenched cognition.(3)emotional state.In the second study,the performance,triggering situations and triggering points of PRF loss in parent-child interaction were analyzed in depth,and the questions of when parents will lose it,what it is like and why they lose it at these moments were explained.The loss of PRF mainly performance for(1)no access to child’s inner world,namely,lack of interest in children’s mental state and loss of the developmental thinking of mental state(2)excessive attribution and deviation,that is,the distorted and purposeful nature of attribution and the excessive self-focused mental state.Triggering situations of PRF loss mainly focus on four aspects including life events,mobile phone use,academic performance and negative performance of adolescents in the interaction.The internal triggering points that lead to the loss are mainly about:(1)the internal world of parents in parent-child interaction,i.e.,emotional feelings and thoughts;(2)psychodynamic factors,i.e.,anxiety,internalization,projection and narcissism.From the perspective of qualitative research,the study showed more detailed and systematic exploration of PRF during adolescence in connotation and influencing factors,manifestations,triggering situations and triggering points of loss,may provide theoretical support for the development of measurement tools and localization research,provide practical guidance for promoting the improvement of PRF and positive parenting to protect the development of adolescents.