Objective. There is a need for better understanding the relation between parents’ mentalizing about their child and their actual behavior toward the child. Specifically, it is important to understand the significance of mentalization about discrete parental challenges in comparison with mentalization about the relationship in general in relation to their interaction with the child. This study aimed to examine parental mentalization and observed emotional availability.Design. Forty mothers were observed in a play situation with their children (aged 3–10 years) to rate the emotional availability in the interaction. Mothers were also interviewed with the parent development interview and about parental limit setting to assess parental reflective functioning.Results. Analyses showed moderate correlations between the reflective functioning scores and the emotional availability dimensions. Approximately 15% of the variance in emotional availability scales could be accounted for by the reflective functioning ratings.Conclusions. The results suggest that parents’ ability to mentalize about limit setting behaviors may affect interactions between the parent and child.