Calm, Alert, and Ready to Learn

How to Help Your Child Self-Regulate

What Is Self-Regulation?

The ability to adapt your physical and emotional energy, and your thinking and social skills, to a task or challenge you must complete

Research shows that self-regulation plays a big role in children’s behaviour and learning.

Aspects of Self-Regulation

• Physical: managing levels of energy and tension in the body

• Emotional: understanding, expressing, and managing feelings

• Thinking: processing information from the senses, paying attention, reasoning, planning

• Social: communicating and adjusting behaviour to match what is needed in social situations

What Does Self-Regulation Do?

Self-regulation helps children

• control behaviour• deal with emotions• learn, think, and succeed in school• get along with others• be kind and caring

Self-Regulation in the Body

It involves adapting our levels of energy and tension to a current situation.

Levels of energy and tension can help or hinder us depending on the situation.

Poor Self-Regulation in the Body

Children burn too much energy coping with their feelings. Result: They have less of the energy they need for positive behaviour and thinking. This can cause

• behavioural problems, meltdowns• problems with attention and focus• irritability, sadness• lack of cooperation, poor “listening”• difficulty getting along with others• lack of empathy and caring behaviour

How It Works

Self-regulation in the body is controlled by

1. Brain activity and responses that we don’t actively control

2. Our self-awareness and self-help

Children’s ability to manage their energy and tension is limited. It improves with increasing brain growth and life experience.

Help Kids Manage Their Energy

Parents can help children develop the ability to manage their levels of energy and tension. They can

1. Help kids recognize when their energy and tension are not right for a situation (too low or too high).

2. Show them strategies for changing how they feel.

Too Much Energy and Tension

If children are too excited or upset, help bring down their levels energy and tension by

• comforting, soothing, or hugging an upset child• taking a child out of a scary, stressful, or over-

stimulating situation• speaking to an upset/excited child in a calming voice• letting an upset child have quiet time alone with you

Too Little Energy

If children don’t have enough energy, help them find more physical or positive emotional energy. Try

• speaking to a child in an animated voice or using facial expressions

• turning a task into a game• doing physical activity that involves large muscles

and/or lifting• playing lively music

Emotional Self-Regulation

Ability to understand and manage emotions

Emotional self-regulation develops through a combination of brain growth and interactions with people.

Supporting Emotional Self-Regulation

Support children’s emotional self-regulation by

• comforting them when they have negative emotions• helping them learn that bad feelings are normal• sharing kid’s positive emotions (joy and excitement)• teaching kids to express feelings in words• helping them understand emotional experiences

The Language of Emotions

Children who have trouble expressing emotions in words tend to have more behavioural and emotional problems. To help, parents can

• name emotions• have conversations about emotional experiences

Remember: how parents manage their own emotions is the most powerful lesson for kids.

Anxiety

Genuinely positive emotions fuel creativity, happiness, and learning. However, the number of kids with anxiety problems is rising.

Help anxious children by

• explaining that anxiety is normal, but it can get out of control

• gently challenging kids’ negative thoughts• helping them learn what makes them feel better when

they are anxious

Getting Help

Learning to manage anxiety is an ongoing process─kids can’t just snap out of it.

If anxiety persists, parents may need professional advice. Doctors and schools can refer you to psychologists, child therapists, and mental health services.

Anxiety BC has good resources for parents: www.anxietybc.com

Self-Regulation of Thinking

Ability to use and manage our thinking skills so that we can process information and learn

Thinking skills include

• memory• reasoning• problem-solving

Developing Thinking Skills

Children develop their thinking skills when they work on their ability to

• process and use sensory information• focus their attention• plan and carry out a series of steps to achieve a goal

Thinking Starts with the Senses

Our brains process a constant stream of sensory information. This is the root of how we learn, understand our environment, and build knowledge.

Our ability to manage sensory information develops gradually through everyday experience.

Running into Problems

Sometimes, children’s senses become overloaded and they have difficulty concentrating.

Kids can spend too much time playing with electronic toys, video games, and media.

Even though these activities can be educational, they don’t require children to work at focusing their senses or paying attention.

Help Kids Concentrate

If kids are having trouble concentrating, try

• reducing sensory distractions, like background noise and visual clutter

• limiting the time they spend looking at a screen• giving them breaks during a task

Build Attention Skills

• Engage kids in activities where they have to focus on their senses (e.g., pointing out sounds during a nature walk).

• Engage kids in activities that require effort to pay attention. • Talk to them about a topic they like, and encourage

them to stay focused by asking questions.• Read to them.• Help them draw a picture or write a story about a

character they like.

Build Planning Skills

To make decisions and solve problems, children need to know how to plan and carry out a series of steps. Activities that build planning skills include

• doing jigsaw puzzles• assembling models or toys from instructions• helping you follow a recipe• playing games where they coordinate their

movements with instructions (e.g., Simon Says, Red Light Green Light, treasure hunts)

Social Self-Regulation

Ability to adapt our behaviour and thinking appropriately in social situations

Social skills include

• understanding and responding to non-verbal cues• taking turns in conversations• repairing communication breakdowns• understanding how emotions affect behaviour

Developing Social Regulation Skills

Children develop social skills largely from experience and observation.

Parents can help children develop these skills by

• modelling good social skills• helping them understand how someone felt, or why

someone behaved in a certain way• helping them with their physical and emotional self-

regulation

Managing One Another’s Feelings

Social self-regulation is partly about the way people manage each other’s feelings.

Group members support each other by reading moods and balancing emotions (e.g., when someone is angry we may speak softly to calm them).

Being Good People

Building children’s social skills helps them become kind people with empathy and integrity.

Self-regulation gives kids tools to make positive contributions in their communities and families.

All Kids Are Different

Children develop self-regulation in different ways and on different schedules. Some develop it more easily than others. Why?

• Children have different temperaments.• Some children are more sensitive.

Difficult Kids

“Difficult” kids often behave the way they do because of problems in self-regulation. They have more negative interactions with adults.

These kids can

• be emotionally reactive• be easily upset• be difficult to comfort• lack self-control• get into trouble often

Helping Difficult Kids

Ensure that difficult kids have positive interactions with adults (receive warmth and praise). Difficult kids may also need more

• guidance • help staying calm, focused, content• patience• forgiveness

Parent Self-Regulation

Parents have trouble supporting a child’s self-regulation when their own energy, tension, or mood is out of balance.

Parents can practise self-regulation by

• getting adequate rest, nutrition, and exercise• managing energy and stress levels• seeking support when needed

A Different Way of Looking at Behaviour

Day-to-day misbehaviour is often a sign of problems with self-regulation.

Recognizing this helps us to understand why discipline isn’t effective.

Helping kids self-regulate often improves their behaviour.

Thank you