Transcript Document

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
Brain activity and responses that we don’t actively
control
2. Our self-awareness and self-help
1.
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
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.
1.
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 selfregulation
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