31/05/2021
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Self-regulation involves the ability to manage your and in accordance with the demands of a situation.
It's a set of skills that enables your to inhibit their emotional or behavioural responses and direct their behaviour towards a goal, such as making it to the end of the birthday party for the cake to be served, or not hitting their friend so they can have a fun playdate.
Kids with good self-regulation can pay attention to classroom activities and ignore distractions, remember the teacher's directions long enough to carry out a task and resist impulses. All of these skills may give them an advantage to succeed in school. In fact, kindergarten teachers rank self-regulation as one of the most important skills for school readiness.
Self-regulation comes in different forms:
🔄 self-regulation is important for helping children manage how they express and experience emotions.
🔄 self-regulation helps children demonstrate control over their actions. Simple games, like Simon Says, have been shown to help children control their impulses.
🔄 self-regulation helps children follow rules and plan out the appropriate response, such as listening during story time.
Essentially, a child's emotional regulation skills come down to how they manage incoming and outgoing stress. Research consistently shows that self-regulation is necessary for social-emotional and academic success and well-being and is one of the most important skills for children to develop.
As parents we can help our kids develop self-regulation by explaining why they have to wait for something or why they have to take turns. And we can also nurture its development by being mindful of our own stress response if it urges us to move away from our child when they're emotionally floundering. What is often needed from us when helping our child deal with anger and other intense emotions is for us to move toward them.
A caregiver's calm and steady physical presence fills the gap of developmental immaturity during the time when a child feels and acts out of control. This collaborative approach to a child's emotional well being can help improve your child's self-regulation skills with time.
Infants do not have the ability to regulate their emotional arousal and need the soothing presence of caretakers to help them manage fear, frustration, and anger. They calm by experiencing their caretaker's voice tone and warm physical contact, being stroked and gently rocked, and having their physical needs attended to. From a developmental perspective, effective parenting of young children can be understood as a process of co-regulation.
Bessel van der Kolk, researcher on developmental trauma, maintains that a ‘primary function' of parents is to help children learn to manage their own arousal. Repeated cycles of emotional upset, followed by relaxation after the caretaker's calming intervention, provide the basis for developing a sense of trust and safety. In time, the child internalises this co-regulation as an expectation of a soothing response which provides a foundation for learning self-regulation.
The need for co-regulation continues throughout our lives. In times of crisis, troublesome emotions are managed with the support and soothing presence of attachment figures. For instance:
🔄 The small infant is totally reliant on caregivers and has many crises each day.
🔄 The pre-school child is expected to manage emotions and impulses more effectively, but will still be overwhelmed on a regular basis and need external soothing and support.
🔄 Even adolescents and adults must rely on attachment figures to get through periods of high stress.
In a broader sense, the patterns of self-regulation that one develops may come to define the individual throughout their life. Daniel Siegel states that “How we experience the world, relate to others, and find meaning in life are dependent on how we have come to regulate our emotions”
Children have immature sensory systems to process environmental stimuli. The parts of their brains responsible for impulse control and other self-regulation tasks are also underdeveloped. They are physiologically incapable of calming themselves down like adults can, but an effective way to expand your child's skill in handling big emotions is to envision an active partnership and co-regulate to help them learn self-regulation.
While the concept of co-regulation to nurture self-regulation is seemingly basic, it's more challenging than it sounds. Next time your child is in the throes of an emotional meltdown, some tips to call to mind in that gap between thought and reaction are as follows:
💙 Model positive emotional regulation skills for your child. Identify and respond to the stressors in your daily environment mindfully, not aiming for perfection but by making constant improvement.
💙 Help your child cultivate an awareness of what consistently causes them stress. Common scenarios are lack of sleep, excess hunger, loud noises, unexpected change, and transitioning away from electronic devices.
💙 Empower your child with knowledge. Familiarise them with emotions by discussing anger warning signs such as sweaty palms or pounding hearts. Helping kids notice the physiological signs of anger works towards promoting concrete internal signals that promote self-awareness.
💙 Teach the basics of emotional intelligence by widening your child's emotion vocabulary. Identifying emotions is the first step to working through them.
💙 Explore coping strategies together. Taking good quality breaths can soothe and calm the nervous system and lower a child's baseline emotional arousal level. Every child's nervous system and sensory system is unique, so it is realistic to expect plenty of trial and error, and solutions that change over time. Consider:
—Is there a particular space my child finds calming?
—Where do they run when upset or frustrated?
—Do they seem to calm with physical touch or appear to avoid it?
—Do they prefer to be around others or respond better to quiet solitude?
There is hope for improved emotional regulation for all children, regardless of any challenges they may face emotionally, behaviourally or environmentally. Or as Dr Stuart Shanker once said, “There isn't a single child who, with understanding and patience, can't be guided along a trajectory that leads to a rich and meaningful life.”
Working in an active partnership with your child in quest of developing self-regulation can lead to a radical change in outlook for both parties. And with time, you should eventually see your child begin to emulate your hard work by putting the pieces of self-regulation into practice themselves when things don't go their way.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/282744852_Effect_of_Self-Regulating_Behaviour_on_Young_Children's_Academic_Success
https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2005-05449-005
https://cyc-net.org/cyc-online/cyconline-mar2010-bath.html
https://parentswithconfidence.com/6-guaranteed-ways-to.../
https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/5675896
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