Have you ever stayed up late, but had to wake early the next day? How did you feel in the morning? How about by the afternoon, with no caffeine? Were you able to complete your daily occupations effectively? How did you interact with others?
Now imagine a time when you were trying to concentrate on finishing a project, but were distracted by something else. How effective was your work? Did it take you longer than normal to complete?
These are examples of times in your life when you were struggling with self-regulation. Various professionals define self-regulation differently. Here self-regulation will be defined as the process by which our nervous system can adjust and organize itself to deal with the demands of a situation or task. These demands may be social-emotional, motor, language, and/or cognitive. Self-regulation is the foundation for more advanced skills to develop, so challenges here can affect a child's ability to make progress.
As an adult, you probably know your strategies to deal with these example states of dysregulation. Maybe you did get a cup of Joe or go for a walk to help you stay alert throughout your day. Perhaps you used your Inner Coach to refocus your distracting thoughts. Or did you choose to deal with the distraction first, so you could concentrate on your project? Just like adults, some kids naturally learn what works for them, while many others struggle with identifying when they are dysregulated and how to recenter themselves.
The Development of Self-Regulation
Similar to anything else in childhood, learning self-regulation is a developmental process. Babies are not born with the ability to regulate themselves. Instead, they depend on supportive caregivers to address their needs. Babies learn to tune into and become regulated by their caregivers. This process is known as coregulation. Coregulation is also influenced by a baby's temperament. Temperament is a baby's emotional reaction, which is based on biological and environmental factors. Babies can have an easy, difficult or slow to warm temperament.
As babies grow, they learn early self-regulation strategies, which may include looking away from overwhelming stimuli or using a pacifier. As babies become toddlers, they gain more control of their motor skills, and their language and cognitive skills develop to allow for better self-regulation. However, they struggle with delaying gratification, resulting in tantrums. Caregiver support is needed to build self-regulation skills during this time. As kids approach school age, the influence of social expectations, in addition to the growth in language and cognitive skills, helps kids build impulse control.
What Affects Self-Regulation?
What is often challenging for adults to understand about self-regulation is that a child is not always dysregulated. At times the child can attend and complete their work. While other times they are fidgety and have challenges interacting with peers. Teachers may say that the child is wonderful at school, while the parents note consistent meltdowns in the afternoons and evenings. As a result of the inconsistency with dysregulation, children are often labeled as lazy or attention-seeking. However, nothing could be further from the truth.
Self-regulation is affected by environmental and/or task demands. It is important to assess the environmental demands through observation of the child in their natural environment, not just the testing setting. Additionally, it is important to gather input from the adults in the child's life, and if possible the child themself. A child may have a low threshold to certain sensory stimuli, meaning they can be more sensitive to sensory input than others. Are certain classrooms too loud or is the artificial light overwhelming? Is there group work that results in physical contact that the child can not handle? Furthermore, the child may need to stand and move to stay alert, but is required to be seated in class.
A child's skills affect their ability to complete task demands. Here it is important to assess if the child has the capability to complete the task. Motor, language, academic, and/or social learning skills need to be examined by professionals trained in those specific areas. One final factor to consider with task demands is the automaticity of a child's skills. A child may be able to complete the task, but has to visually monitor themselves or use increased cognitive effort. These strategies can both be mentally exhausting, resulting in dysregulation.
Building Self-Regulation
So how do we, as parents, teachers, therapists, and school counselors help children build their regulation skills? Well, just like children go to practice to train for sports and teachers provide direct lessons to teach new concepts and provide homework to practice, self-regulation requires instruction as well. In addition to working with an occupational therapist, adults can teach children to identify the bodily sensations and name the feelings associated with them. They can help children learn about settings that cause distress and strategies to proactively, as well as reactively, deal with them.
To help children learn more about self-regulation, Social Sleuthers has produced bookisodes on the topic. Watch a preview of one here.
Social Sleuthers' "Self-Regulation" Bookisode Preview
Click on the button below to watch bookisodes for free.
Freebie: Self-Regulation Fortune Tellers
For more support with self-regulation, check out this fun freebie.
Click on the picture to get access to two self-regulation fortune tellers.
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