2. Calm, Alert, and Ready to Learn
How to Help Your Child Self-Regulate

3. 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.

4. 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

5. 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

6. 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.

7. 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

8. How It Works Self-regulation in the body is controlled by
Brain activity and responses that we don’t actively control
Our self-awareness and self-help
Children’s ability to manage their energy and tension is limited. It improves with increasing brain growth and life experience.

9. 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).
Show them strategies for changing how they feel.

10. 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

11. 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

12. Emotional Self-Regulation
Ability to understand and manage emotions
Emotional self-regulation develops through a combination of brain growth and interactions with people.

13. 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

14. 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.

15. 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

16. 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:

17. 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

18. 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

19. 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.

20. 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.

21. 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

22. 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.

23. 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)

24. 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

25. 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 self-regulation

26. 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).

27. 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.

28. 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.

29. 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

30. 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

31. 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

32. 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.

33. Thank you