Self Regulation
What is self-regulation?
Self regulation describes your ability to adjust your level of alertness and how you display your emotions through your behavior and responses. Self-regulation is the ability to manage your emotional responses in a way that is socially appropriate.
Sometimes when we get upset and respond negatively to a situation we may need to take a moment to calm down. This might mean taking a break from what we were doing, making ourselves a cup of tea or doing some exercise. When we do this, we are self regulating. Often, we do these things automatically as we know that they are activities that help calm us, or make us feel better. We don’t usually need someone to tell us to do them, as adults we have learned to do this naturally.
Self-regulation in child development
As children develop, they rely on those around them to give them options for self regulation. For example, when a baby cries, an adult may offer them a toy that they can play with. We would view this as a distraction, but for the child playing with that toy, it is something that regulates them and makes them feel calmer. As children continue to develop, they will experience many situations that will impact or challenge their emotional responses. The strategies to deal with these emotional responses might come to them naturally, they may know that they need to do a particular activity to feel calmer. A lot of the time, adults will offer or suggest an activity that they know will calm the child down. The child may then continue to use these activities as coping strategies because they know that they will make them feel calmer when they are upset.
Self-regulation strategies
Recently, due to the Covid epidemic, there have been many changes to schooling. Children are being supported at home and the school routine is very different to the one that they may be typically used to. Changes like this can be stressful and you may notice that your child is responding more emotionally than usual. This may be a time where self regulation strategies could be used to help calm some of these emotional responses. Please refer to the activities within this section of the blog. You may find that some of them work well for your child and others do not. It is also a good opportunity to have a visual available that can help your child to identify how they are feeling before they become too dysregulated. Sometimes, when we are feeling frustrated it is easier to self regulate at this point than when we are really angry.