Susan Hopkins EdD

04/20/2026

Co-Reg is a skill that includes recognizing that our regulated state can be an anchor.

04/17/2026

The Interbrain science and all that is linked to it is part of the reason I’m personally not a fan of using time-outs with children.

04/16/2026

A last call, as we begin 🌿

Today, we welcome a new cohort into the Self-Reg Learning Facilitator’s Program (Level 2 Certificate).

This program is a deeper step for those who have already begun their journey with Self-Regan opportunity to sit with the science, to reflect in community, and to explore how this understanding can be meaningfully woven into your work and daily interactions.

Together, in a supportive cohort, participants gently deepen their understanding of stress and behaviour, while building the confidence to bring Self-Reg into their professional roles - whether in education, early years, or the helping professions.

It’s not about doing more. It’s about seeing more clearly… and responding in ways that truly support well-being.

If you’ve been considering this next step, there is still time to join us today.

We would be so glad to have you with us.

Learn more and register:

Learn how to share the science of Self-Reg with your colleagues and those you support with Stuart Shanker & Susan Hopkins

04/15/2026

There are moments in the year that feel like a gentle opening - an invitation to pause, reflect, and perhaps take a next step in our learning.

As we move through April, we’re looking forward to a few upcoming opportunities to come together in community:

🌱 April 16 - Self-Reg Learning Facilitator’s Program (Level 2 Certificate)
🌱 April 30 - Self-Reg Foundations 1 & 3

The Facilitator’s Program is a deeper step for those who have already begun their Self-Reg journey—an opportunity to sit with the ideas, to explore them more fully, and to consider how they live in our everyday work and relationships.

And Foundations 1 & 3 offer a meaningful place to begin—or to return—grounding our understanding of stress, behaviour, and what it means to support regulation across the lifespan.

Looking just a little further ahead:

🌿 May 7 — Self-Reg and Leadership in Schools
🌿 May 14 — Self-Reg for Education Assistants

Each of these spaces is, in its own way, an invitation—to notice, to wonder, and to deepen our capacity to support well-being in ourselves and in others.

If this feels like the right time, we would be so glad to have you join us.

You can learn more here:
self-reg.ca/online

04/15/2026

I’ve been thinking a lot about the people who are gathering with us at SRSS 2026.

These are people who are in it every day.
In early years settings, in classrooms, in communities, in clinical work.

Sitting alongside children and youth.
Trying to understand what we’re seeing - and what actually helps.

Each of them brings something different.

A way of seeing.
A way of being with others.
A way of helping us look beneath behaviour.

And when we come together like this, there’s something that happens in the space between the sessions.

In the conversations.
In the shared understanding.

Stuart Shanker & Co. joins us again this year as well and it is only talk for the year. It always feels like a chance to step back and look at things a little differently. To think about what we’re seeing through a different lens…and what that might open up.

If you’ve been following along with the days I’ve been sharing, you’ll have a sense of how the week unfolds.

This is the part I find myself most looking forward to - being together in this work.

If you’ve been considering joining us, early bird pricing is available until April 30th.

You can explore the full program and register here:
self-reg.ca/srss

And learn more about the presenters here:
https://self-reg.ca/srss-2026-presenters/

04/14/2026

There is something in Melissa’s reflection that brings us right back to the essence of Self-Reg.

When a child is in a heightened state, we can feel the pull to step in, to guide, to correct. But as she shows us so beautifully, this is first a moment to reduce the stress - to ease what the child is carrying so their system can settle.

Thank you, Melissa, for sharing this reflection from the Reframing Stress Behaviour with Gray Brain Science Level 2 Certificate Program. It speaks so clearly to how calm is not demanded, but supported.

You can read Melissa's reflection here:
https://self-reg.ca/regaining-calm-why-connection-comes-before-correction/

What helps you notice the stress beneath the behaviour, and shift your response in that moment?

Much of how we respond to behaviour is shaped by a self-control mindset—the belief that if we explain, persuade, or apply consequences,

04/13/2026

Self-Reg offers us a way to recognize when someone - child, youth, or adult - is in distress, even when we don’t know why.

04/10/2026

One of the most powerful shifts in this work begins with a simple question: why?

Why is this child reacting this way?
Why now?
What’s underneath?

As Stuart Shanker & Co. reminds us, it’s in exploring these “whys” that we begin to find answers that truly matter—answers that can change a child’s trajectory.

This is the heart of Self-Reg: moving beyond the surface, and gently uncovering what a child is experiencing.

Our Self-Reg in Early Childhood Development cohort has begun—and there is still time to join us.

We would love to have you with us.

Learn more: https://self-reg.ca/early-childhood-development-program/

✨ It’s not too late to join. ✨

04/10/2026

I’ve been wanting to share more about this day, because it’s where things often start to come together.

Day 2 — Stress, Learning, and the Five Domains

Once we begin to see that stress is at the root, the question becomes—how?

How is it showing up across the biological, emotional, cognitive, social, and prosocial domains?

What I always find interesting about this day is how people begin to notice patterns they hadn’t seen before.

Things that felt disconnected… start to make sense.

You can see it in early years settings.
In classrooms.
In ourselves.

There’s something about understanding the domains that changes how we interpret what’s happening in the moment.

And that opens up different ways of responding.

You can explore the full program and register here:
self-reg.ca/srss

And learn more about the presenters here:
https://self-reg.ca/srss-2026-presenters/

04/10/2026

This paper made me wonder (again, but deeper this time) about how easy it is for any of us to be misled by AI generated facts. It's certainly happened to me! And I wonder how many educators and parents are landing on information about children and youth wellbeing that's complete rubbish, even if they are good at checking sources and verifying content.

We are all vulnerable to getting roped in and swayed. This is quite the paper. Funny and not at the same time.

Bixonimania doesn’t exist except in a clutch of obviously bogus academic papers. So why did AI chatbots warn people about this fictional illness?

04/09/2026

Thank you, Stuart Shanker & Co.,for grounding us in what matters most.

We all want children to learn, to explore, to be curious about the world around them.

But this reminds us—learning doesn’t begin with instruction. It begins with a felt sense of safety.

It’s when a child feels safe and secure that their curiosity can emerge… that they can move out of high alert and into exploration.

This is the foundation for everything that follows.

If this resonates, our Self-Reg in Early Childhood Development cohort begins today—and there is still time to join us.

Learn more: https://self-reg.ca/early-childhood-development-program/

✨ Join us today—there’s still time. ✨