Aims: Oppositional defiant disorder that occurs in pre-school or early school-age children and in pre-adolescent stage has a widespread impact on the child, family, teachers and society. The aim of the study was to determine the effect of mindful parenting education program on reducing the  anxiety and parent-child conflict and increasing the self-agency of parenting in mothers who have oppositional defiant disorder daughters.

Materials & Methods: This semi-experimental study with a pretest-posttest control group was performed during 2015-2016 academic year in 34 mothers of primary school girl students of Noorabad City, Iran, who were suffering from oppositional defiant disorder. The samples were selected by purposeful clustering method and were randomly divided into 2 test and control groups (each had 17 members). The research tools were Child Behavioral Logbook and Teacher Report Form, Beck Anxiety Inventory, Conflict Strategy and Parent Self-efficacy Questionnaires. Mindfulness-based parenting educational program was conducted for the experimental group one 2-hour session a week for 2 months. Data were analyzed by SPSS 23 software using MANCOVA test.

Findings: The average of total anxiety, parent-child conflict and parental self-efficacy scores were higher in the experimental group in posttest. After controlling the effect of pre-test scores, there were significant differences between the test and control groups in terms of all variables (p<0.001).

Conclusion: Mindfulness-based parenting educational program reduces the anxiety and parent-child conflict and increases the parental self-efficacy in mothers with oppositional defiant disorder.