Quick post

I know I said I had written my last post but I just read this great blog about children and emotions and wanted to share
https://nerdybookclub.wordpress.com/2019/09/29/learning-how-to-navigate-feelings-by-tom-percival/

Last Post

I'm sad to say this is my last post. I feel like over the past years I have shared all of the knowledge I have about raising children. If there were last words it say it would be:

It's the responsibility of parents to teach, guide and help their children become who they want to be. It's the responsibility of parents to teach children how to socialize in different situations and how to behave appropriately. It's a parents responsibility to discipline using age appropriate techniques to help their children learn from bad choices. There is a lot to raising a child in order for them to turn into confident, secure,well-rounded people who grow up to contribute to society in a healthy, socially  acceptable way. It's my hope that through these posts I have helped parents know and figure out ways to do that.

Positive Self-esteem Through Four Constructs

Nancy Curry was a psychologist and professor of child development at the University of Pittsburgh and Carl Johnson who is a faculty member a the University of Pittsburgh have broken down how to develop positive self-esteem and described the role of parents as an important process. They discuss the development of positive self-esteem through four constructs.The first one is love and acceptance. What children need is unconditional support in their efforts to learn, grow and develop. What a parent says should be offered with genuine affection to who the child is, not what they accomplish. For example, if a child fails a test, a parent can ask how they feel about it. They can ask if there's something they an do differently next time to improve the results. Don't make them feel bad for failing the test or not putting the effort into passing the test, just help them realize they have to put effort into things in order for them to have the result they want, Help them to see they may have made a bad (not wrong) choice and to make a different (not right one) next time.

The second construct in developing a positive self-esteem is power and control. There are a number of ways to help children achieve a sense of power and control. Providing children with opportunities to make a variety of choices is one way to do that. Parents should make sure the choices are acceptable, age appropriate choices. For example, do you want to have yogurt or goldfish for snack? Both are acceptable healthy snacks but the child can choose which one they want.

The third construct to develop positive self-esteem is moral value.  Moral value is the idea that a child is treated fairly and fundamentally a good person. A child with high morals cares for others and learns reciprocal behavior. We enhance a child's  sense of moral values by making sure interactions between  children and adults are characterized by mutual respect, cooperation, empathy, and fairness. Parents should find constructive ways to deal with frustration, disappointment and failure. By doing this it develops moral values and a sense of fairness.

The last construct to develop a positive self-esteem is competence. When you punish a child make sure you criticize and punish the child's behavior  and that the child knows it's the behavior that is unacceptable not the child. This helps the child develop competence in their ability to make good choices that lead to good behavior.

Happy Mother's Day

I'm spending the day with family. I hope you are too. Happy Mother's Day!

Treating Children As Individuals

While all children are expected to follow rules and behave in a certain way each child's efforts, abilities and accomplishments should be viewed in relation to each child's unique development and personality. One child will be good at ballet, one may be good at football and one may be good at organizing. The belief in the learning and success of a child regardless of the child's status, personality, learning struggles or behavior is important to instill in a child. One way to increase the affirmation that every child can succeed is for parents to avoid using words that label a child. Children shouldn't be labeled shy, trouble maker etc because labels can become expected behavior for children by the adults in the child's life and eventually by the child themselves.

When my child was in the 6th grade, there was a boy in her class. He had been in a previous class with her too, it was either 4th or 5th grade. The teacher they had in the 4th or 5th grade labeled this boy as a troublemaker and a goof ball. She didn't think the boy was capable of much and had low expectations of him. He lived up to these labels and expectations of himself. He goofed off and didn't try. When this boy and my child were in the same class their 6th grade year they had a child who believed in this boy. Their teacher brought out the best in him, and showed him that he is capable of more than the labels that were put on him. He didn't goof around, he applied himself resulting in good grades and proved to this boy that his potential was more than the labels put on him.

When we take labels off of children and help them succeed and reach their full potential we treat them as the individuals they are and they behave as those individuals instead of the labels that are put on them. They also live up to the higher expectation of who they can be rather than the expectation of the label.

2 Fundamental Ideas Central to Affirmation

There are two fundamental ideas that are central to affirmation. The first one is valuing uniqueness and the second is not expecting a child to be like others. This is a critical view that affirms each child's uniqueness. It's important parents don't compare children to other children in their family or other families or children in their classroom. When parents or others compare children to others they send the message that who the child is, is somehow wrong and not valued which causes the child to feel they aren't love-particularly for who the are. The message is sent they need to be like someone else, whether that is the next door neighbor, the child in youth group, one of their friends, someone in popular culture or even who a family member wants them to be in order to be someone who is liked, loved and accepted.  This sends the message that who they uniquely are is somehow wrong and it's not the child who is wrong, it's the adult sending this message to the child that who they are is wrong, who is wrong. This message is wrong.

I believe I've discussed before how my child had a youth leader who tried to teach this message to my child. My child isn't an athletic person. She doesn't  like to watch and particularly doesn't like playing them. Whenever the youth group would have an activity that was a sport the youth leaders would purposefully not tell my child what the activity was so that she would go and they would try to get her to play instead of respecting the fact that she wasn't a sports person. This made my child feel disrespected and unloved for who she was. The leaders would tell her she needed to be more like the girl in her youth group who did like sports which told her she wasn't valued for who she is and she didn't feel like her youth leaders valued her for who she was because they were constantly telling her what she should like and who she should be like. This affected her self-esteem and self-worth until I got it stopped because this was not a message they were going to give my child.

Love, respect and value your children for who they are, for their likes, their dislikes, the things they're good at, the things they're bad at. Let them know you see them for who they are and love them for that.

Happy Easter

I'll be spending today with family. I hope you are too. Happy Easter!

Affirmation- A Concept of Self-Esteem

An important concept of self-esteem is affirmation. Affirmation is a  belief in what children can become. This means that in each child a deep faith that they can learn, grow, mature, develop and blossom is instilled in them. This requires parents and other adults to accept children for who they are- personality, temperament, behavioral sill and abilities- while they believe their children can learn, grow and improve.

To develop this in my own child, I believed in what she could become and I did what I could to help her. I saw her talents and helped her develop those talents by making sure she took classes that would help her develop them and giving constructive feedback when she needed feedback. For example, my child is a good artist and when she was doing paintings and drawings for her art classes she would often ask how it looked. I would tell her how it looked and if I saw where it could improve such as curving a line further in or out or that a part of it needed more paint I would suggest those improvements. When she was struggling with subjects she wasn't as good at I'd tell her to do her best in those classes and that as long as she did her best and she know she did her best that was what happened. I never made her feel like a failure or made her feel bad for having things she wasn't very good at.We all have things we're good at and things were bad at. We do our best at the things we're not good at and not beat ourselves up over it.

I also developed this concept in my child by accepting who is. She developed OCD has a teenager and as we worked through it to get it under control and where she could manage it- this was a difficult time for us. I had to be aware of the ways it frustrated me and make sure it didn't show to her and that it didn't effect her self-esteem. It took months to figure out what things triggered it so that those things could be eliminated if they could be and it took months to get it where she had it under control and could recognize the triggers herself and prevent the anxiety attacks and other symptoms it caused. I had to love her through this time period and accept it was a part of who she was even though it wasn't an easy time for us.

I also had to surround her with people who would love and accept her for who she is as well. I had to surround her with people who would help her become the person she wanted to be. This wasn't always easy. She had a few youth leader at our church who would tell her who to be and what to like or dislike. My child has never liked sports or liked playing them and they would try to trick her into going to activities where the activity was a sport and guilt her into playing instead of allowing her to sit and watch from the side or not allowing her to go. This caused friction for a while between me and the leaders until they understood they needed to accept her for who she is not tell her who to be.

Developing affirmation in a child can be difficult and often we have to realize our dreams for our children are different from theirs. We also have to realize it's our responsibility to help them achieve their dreams and help them have the confidence to be developing affirmations in them so they know they can achieve what they want in life and that we as their parents are behind them supporting them.

Funny Things Kids Say

Don't have a lot of time today. Enjoy this video about funny things kids say. See you next week.

Kids say the darndest things

Self-Awareness

A concept related to self-esteem is self-awareness. It emerges between fifteen and eighteen months and is the realization that one's existence and behavior are separate from other people and things. The roots of self-esteem begin in infancy with the form of attachment. Attachment is the strong, warm ties we have with the special people in our lives. When children have a healthy attachment to a parent, the attachment serves as the beginning of self-esteem as children learn they're safe with the parent who they have a healthy attachment to.

The idea of self-concept is defined as an individual's awareness of a person's identity from others. It's during infancy children develop a sense of their separate outlook different to their environment and others but also a sense of ability to influence others and their environment.

When my child was this age she had a healthy attachment to me which helped contribute to her healthy self-esteem. Where she knew she could be herself, that she would be taken care of and loved and supported this helped her have the self-esteem to try new things even when she was scared. She was scared to start preschool but as we talked about it, what to expect, about the friends she would find this helped relieve the anxiety she had about starting preschool.

My child's self-esteem grew as the learned that it was all right to have a different point of view from me. My child liked to sleep with books at night. Each night she picked out 2-3 books to sleep with and she would do it at nap time too. My point of view was that the books be on the book shelf while she slept but I respected her identity that is different than mine and allowed her to pick 2-3 books to sleep with. This helped develop her self-esteem as she learned her point of view would be respected and she would be allowed to make choices according to her point of view and those choices would within reason be respected. This helped her realize she could influence me and the environment she slept in.

It's not always easy to develop this part of self-esteem. We as parents think we don't want our children to do something like sleep with their books however, my point of view was always do I have a legitimate reason to tell my child no. If I didn't I wouldn't tell her no but I would possibly put a limit on it such as picking no more than 3 books to sleep with. When children know they can control their environment in this way and influence parents and siblings in such a way it gives them the control over their lives that they need but also realizing their parents are in charge.

Self-Esteem vs Self-Image

Self-esteem is the awareness that children make about their overall self-worth. This is based on children's growing insights of who they are and being able to define themselves. For example, children become aware of the things they are good at whether that be organizing, gardening or playing a sport. These insights about what they are good at help them develop who they become and how they define themselves. The development of these talents help build a child's self-esteem. For example, my child has always been good at art so I helped her develop this talent by having her take art classes and having art supplies in the home. As her skills developed so did her self-esteem. Her realizing that being able to do art was an insight into who she is also helped her develop who she is. She realized one of things I am is an artist.

Self-image is the view each one of us has about ourselves  and it's continually developing. It affects the changing interactions between people and people's social and physical environment. Self-image is neither positive or negative. Francis Wardle established an interactive model that self-image is based on. The model is: the individual, the individual's interaction with the environment, the response of the environment to the individual and their interpretation of the response.

This means a child's temperament affects who they are, the environment they are raised in effects it, and the way they respond to the environment affects who a child is. For example, some children are better off with a nanny than in a child care setting because they as the individual child may have a temperament that works better with a one-on-one situation than in a child care setting. The environment of the child care setting may be too fast and cause a child to feel like they are lost. This will cause the response of the environment to the child to be one where the child doesn't get the one-on-one attention they need and therefore their interpretation of the response is, "I won't be taken care of here and don't feel safe here." Therefore, a nanny situation is the better choice for the child. The child's self-image of themselves saw a child care situation as an environment they wouldn't be safe or taken care of and contributed to this being a setting that was not good for the child.

As the child grows and learns more about themselves and develops a healthy self-esteem their self-image will grow and change along with it.

How Emotions Influence Moral Development

There are two ways that emotions influence moral development. They are: First we feel guilt when we do something wrong or defy authority. For example, the first time a child cheats in school they feel guilty for cheating. They feel guilty because they know cheating is wrong and they've defied authority because they know the teacher and probably the parent will be mad and give out a consequence for cheating.

The second way that emotions influence moral development is we feel good when we've followed the rules and behaved in a socially approprate way. So, if a child's parent tells them not to go be part of the group after school that is going to cause a riot over a racial issue and the child goes home after school they feel good for following the rules and doing what the parent asked.

The emotion of guilt and being proud of oneself influence moral development as the child either feels good about themselves for following the rules or feels guilt over their poor choice. Other emotions such as happy, sad or frustrated also help develop moral development as children make choices and then deal with whatever emotion the choice leaves them feeling.

Four Components to Emotions

The primary emotions are joy, anger, sadness and fear and other emotions develop from these.Children's emotional self-awareness, their understanding of other people's feelings and their ability to manage what they feel is what emotional intelligence is. Feelings can be felt, expressed, acted on and thought about. Feelings are how we react to experiences and help us organize and make sense of our world.

There are four components to emotions. The first one is trigger events. An example of a trigger event is when a child bites. For example, I had a child in the first child care center I worked in who would bite every time she got enclosed or felt enclosed.The enclosure of other children or even if she felt enclosed triggered her to bite. As a result I kept an eye on her throughout the day and noticed how many children were around her at any given time. When a certain amount of children were around her I would either remover her from the situation and take her to a different area or I would remove a certain number of the other children from around her and give them a different activity to do. This helped her control her emotions and kept the emotion of feeling enclosed and the need to bite under control and in most cases stopped the biting.

The second component to emotions is physical response. An example of a physical response is to cringe at something unpleasant or frightening or to flinch in surprise or pain. We've all done this just probably not thought of it as expressing emotion. Where something can make us cringe, flinch or frighten us though, those are all emotions and the response to the emotion is the cringe or flinch.

The third component to emotion is the expressive way we respond. An expressive way to respond to an emotion is when someone smiles when a person brings them flowers or someone rolls their eyes when someone is dramatic. Again, we've all expressed our emotions this way but we tend to think of it as a reaction instead of an expression. However, just the action of bringing flowers is a way to show someone they love them or feel sad for the death of someone we then express the emotion we feel at this gesture by smiling, hugging or thanking the person.

The last way component of emotion is a cognitive response. A person has a cognitive response to an emotion when they engage in self-talk. For example, if a child has to give a presentation in class and they are telling themselves everything will be fine and there is no need to worry or be afraid, they're using cognitive abilities to determine what emotion to feel and to regulate their emotions.

As parents help children work through their emotions this is a good place to start. It helps a parent know what why the child is choosing to express their emotions and can then help them not only regulate their emotions but help them express that emotion in a healthy, non-violent way.

2 Types of Strategies For Coping With Stressful Situations

Self- regulation skills are critical in effectively dealing with stressors after they've occurred. There are two types of strategies for coping with stressful situations. They are emotion focused coping and problem focused coping. Emotion focused coping is a strategy that involves regulation or management of negative emotions such as fear or anger. For example, when my child was eight we moved from one state to another which meant she'd be going to a different school and wouldn't know anyone. So I helped her work on emotion focused coping by listening to the reasons she was fearful and then gave her suggestions of how to deal with the fear. I told her it was normal she felt the way she did so I didn't minimize or belittle the way she felt and then I told her to ask questions of people who sat beside her such as whether they liked the teacher or a particular subject. These questions were ice breaker questions she felt comfortable asking because they didn't ask any personal questions they were just general questions and it helped her find friends in her class.

Problem solving coping is strategies that involve setting goals that include behavioral and attention regulation strategies that resolve a stressful situation. An example of problem solving coping is when a child may feel stressed because of the amount of homework they have. When my child was feeling this I helped her deal with it by helping her prioritize. I asked her what assignments were due first, which ones required research before being able to do them and I helped her make a list and put the things due first at the top and on down so that she prioritized the assignments and had a list of everything she needed to due so she wouldn't forget anything and could cross them off as she did them which helped her feel less overwhelmed because she was trying to keep it all straight in her head. Once it was out of her head and on paper it helped her feel less stress. The example of the homework is a strategy that involves a goal, the effort to achieve the goal and resolved a stressful situation. The next time the child is in this situation they can do the same thing on their own without help or they may just need to talk it out out loud with the parent to make sure it all makes sense.

Both situations help build a child's self-regulation as they learn to deal with their emotions in a healthy way and learn to problem solve and be able to do both on their own.

Parents Influence In Developing Self-Regulation

Parents and caregivers influence the development of self-regulation in how warm they  respond to children in distress and the ways they model the expression of emotions. Parents who respond warmly when children are angry and talk to their children about emotions are promoting self-regulation skills. They promote self-regulations skills by helping the child work through the emotion they are feeling. For example, a parent can say, "I know you feel sad that you have to leave the toy in the store, but maybe we can come back and get it at a different time or put it on your birthday list." The parent has acknowledged how the child feels and helped them work through it which develops self-regulation because the parent has helped the child worked through the emotion of sadness not just dismissed it. The child may continue to feel sad but the child knows it's all right to feel sad and it has developed self-regulation as the child learns to deal with their emotions is a positive way.

Parents also play a critical role is developing self-regulation by providing social structure, teaching manners and social etiquette and modeling appropriate behavior.  Teaching manners and social etiquette teaches self-regulation as children learn how to behave in social situations and in public and they learn to have the self-regulation not to throw tantrums in social situations or say hurtful comments in social situations. Modeling appropriate behavior when handling disagreements and problems and providing guidance when they misbehave helps children learn not to yell in order to get their way or just take something that someone else is using because they need to use it and it teaches them the self-regulation skills they need to wait and be patient.

One last way a parent influences the development of self-regulation is supporting a child's independence. Parents can use hints and cues to help children gain independence. For example, if a child is learning to tie their shoes a parent can give the hint of pulling the loop through the hole. This gives the child the hint of what to do however, they are the ones who have to do the action of pulling the loop through the hole. A parent guides the child through how to do the task but allows the child to do it and can keep the child calm while the learn how to do the task and develops their self regulation because they keep the child calm instead of getting frustrated.

Self-Regulation and Volition

Self- regulation is influenced by a large component inside a person called volition. Volition of course is the freedom to make choices, on how what to think and how to act. This aspect of personality  drives a person to follow through and finish an activity which is why if parents leave a child alone they will in fact do what was asked instead of needing the parents to nag them about it. For example, if a child doesn't take the trash out right away when a parent asks them, the child will eventually get up and do it. If the child doesn't remember to take the trash out they feel bad about forgetting and then the consequence comes in because where they didn't do what was asked a consequence can be given.

However, most of the time if a parent will leave a child alone they will eventually make the choice to do what the parent asked. Just because they're not making it right then doesn't mean they'll not make it, they will eventually make it. Give children time to make the choice, give them the opportunity to learn. If they don't eventually make the choice to do what was asked, a parent may need to consider a consequence or the possibility that they are wrong. Volition helps explain persistence and why children ultimately make their own choices on how to act even though parents, teachers and friends can give a nudge in the right direction by modeling behavior that is appropriate for the social situation.

I helped develop volition in my daughter by giving her choices and respecting her choices. When she was little I picked out a pair of pants and let her pick out the shirt she wanted to wear. If she was reading or doing homework and I asked her to do something such as take out the trash, I let her finish the page she was reading or get to a place in her homework where she could stop and then take the trash out. It wasn't about her doing it right then and doing it immediately. I didn't care when she did it, I just cared that she did do it and then if she didn't a consequence was given. When she got older and was old enough to drive she would ask if she could take it when she left to go do something with friends or go to her volunteer assignment. I always told her that was fine and I was fine with her doing it then as long as she did do it then. It was when she didn't that a consequence was given. This taught her that her volition was important and something that would be respected and she respected mine in return. By doing this it also developed responsibility in my daughter as she became responsible to do what I asked her to do and for her to follow through on that request even if it wasn't done immediately.

Two Components of Self-Regulation

There are two key components of self-regulation. They are: executive function and effortful control. Executive function is defined as the ability to remember a rule and follow through to complete an action even when something in the environment says different. Executive function is the ability to hold back on impulses in order to respond to a request from someone else.

For example a parent teaches executive functions when they teach their children to clean their room. From a child's perspective they may not see the point of cleaning their room because they aren't done playing with the toys that are out or done reading the book laying on the bed. However, the rule may be that the child has to clean their room before having a friend over so the child has to remember and follow through with the rule of cleaning their room before having a friend over and when they do this successfully they have achieved an executive function. Where an executive function is also the ability to hold back on impulses in order to respond to a request from someone else, an example of this is when a parent is filling a pool in the backyard. A child's first reaction is to get in the pool. However, the parent may tell the child to wait until they have it filled. When the child waits until the parent is done filling the pool as asked they achieved executive function on this task and held off doing the activity to respond to the request of the parent.

Delaying gratification is a component of effortful control and is demonstrated when a person gives up a smaller immediate reward for exchange of a more valuable reward after a period of waiting. For example, when a child gives up having a snack fifteen to thirty minutes before dinner is ready in order to eat dinner. The child has given up the snack ( the immediate reward) for a more valuable reward (dinner) after waiting  the time period until is ready. Whenever a child doesn't do something and it takes effort not to do it because it's something they really want to do they are developing effortful control which develops self-regulation as the regulate their behavior to what is expected or appropriate.

Two Categories of Self-Regulaion

The process of self-regulation has been divided into two categories: social emotional and cognitive self-regulation. Social emotional regulation enables children to follow social interactions in diverse settings. For example, we teach social emotional regulation when we teach our children not to say things such as,"Your outfit is ugly," or "I don't like your hair." When we teach our children not to say things like this we're teaching our children to follow social interactions in diverse settings. This teaches children that in these settings we don't say things like that because in social settings it's not appropriate to say things like that and teach the emotional regulation part of it because we teach children that saying things like that hurts other peoples feelings. It teaches self-regulation as children learn to regulate their impulses so that these types of comments are no longer said in public settings.

The second category of self-regulation is cognitive self-regulation. Cognitive self-regulation enables children to use thinking processes needed to solve problems and make decisions. Self-regulation plays a role in helping children interact and get along with others by following social standards of conduct and making decisions and solving problems that arise. For example, a child may need some soap to go take a bath but the soap is on a shelf they can't reach. Cognitive self-regulation helps a child either get a stool so they can reach it or ask a parent or older sibling for help instead of throwing a tantrum or not taking the bath because they can't reach the soap. The child has used 'the thinking process' to determine that the way to solve the problems is to either get a stool or ask for help and they have 'made a decision' as to which of those to do in order to solve the problem.

Cognitive self-regulation helps children interact and get along with others by following social standards of conduct and making decisions and solving problems that arise. For example, a child may be over at a friends house playing and cognitive self-regulation helps them determine that social standards of conduct dictate out that they both need to agree on what to play. It helps them solve problems that arise because the child can then talk with their friend about what to play instead of demanding that they play what they want to play. For example, one of the children may want to play a video game while the other wants to go outside and play basketball. Having and using cognitive self-regulation helps a child determine that in order to keep the friend that social standards of conduct and problems solving skills help them decide that a solution to the problem is to do one activity for a while and then do the other for a while or play something else entirely and be able to be all right with that and not be sad, mad etc about it.

This type of self-regulation is one of the hardest types of self-regulation to teach a child and takes lots of time and energy and patience to teach.

3 Tasks to Developing Self-Regulation Part 2

Last week I mentioned three tasks to developing self-regulation. I however, only talked about the first one brain development. Today I want to discuss the other two, effortful control and emotional regulation.

Part of emotional regulation is multi-sensory experiences. Multi-sensory experiences along with learning how to enjoy learning, increase a preschool child's ability to control their thinking, emotions and behaviors. Multi-sensory experiences help a preschooler control their emotions, thinking and behaviors because the variety of experiences cause children to be put in different situations. Sensory experiences help a child control their emotions because they may not like how a texture feels. Instead of crying and walking away from the experience it gives the child the opportunity to control their emotions by giving them the opportunity to tell a parent or other adult what about the texture they don't like instead of just reacting which helps them develop self-regulation. As the child has the opportunity to discuss what they don't like this allows them to think about why they don't like it, not just react. It helps control the child's behavior because it gives them a chance to go from reacting to calming down and learning how to react to something they don't like. For example, if a child doesn't like Legos  because of the bumps on them that help them connect to one another, but they do like blocks that are wood and smooth, playing with Legos gives them a chance to control their emotion of disliking the feeling of the bumps on the blocks. It also gives the child the chance to think about why they don't like the bumps and learn to control their behavior when needing to use them instead of overreacting.

The third task to developing self-regulation is effortfull control. Effortful control is the ability to regulate impulses and respond to a developing conscience. Effortful control is the ability  to hold back a response in order to execute a different response. These are techniques and skills children use to delay temptation and inhibit immediate impulses which grow as a result of brain development and experience. Only when a child learns to control their impulses can a child pay attention to what they're doing and delay gratification. The ability to self-regulate enable children to show more pro-social behavior as they control their initial impulses and enjoy playing with friends. For example, instead of grabbing a toy from another child, a child can ask, "Can I have a shovel and pail too?" Preschool children learn about effortful control as they observe how older children and adults regulate their emotions and behavior and they begin to imitate them.

I helped the children I took care of in the child care centers I worked in by making sensory boards. I had one that had different materials clothes were made out of. I had one that was made of different materials found on a construction site. The children were able to touch each kind of material and we talked about what it looked like and felt like. If a child touched a material they didn't like and pulled their hand away from I talked about how the material felt and why the child may have pulled their hand away and encouraged them to touch it again but didn't force. This gave the children different sensory experiences to have but in a safe environment.

I helped my child learn effortful control when I was raising her when I taught her not to take toys from other children, when I taught her not to grab something out of my hand and when I taught her things like having to wait until after breakfast to be read to. As soon as she woke up she wanted to read a book. I needed to wake up more before I read to her and at least eat breakfast first so I taught her self-regulation through effortful control when I taught her that she would have to wait until after breakfast for me to read to her. These are concepts that make parenting challenging but these are skills that are important to teach a child.

3 Tasks to Develop Self-Regulation

There are three tasks to developing self-regulation in order to achieve self-control.  They are: brain development, effortful control and emotional regulation. Efforts by adults to assist children in learning appropriate skills need to focus on developing these three dispositions in children.

During the infant and preschool years the brain is making  billions  of connections. These connections depend on the child's experiences, interactions with others and emotions. Brain development through play, exploring nature, interacting with friends and developing important emotional relationships with significant adults increases a child's capacity, attention, learning, memory and reasoning.

I developed self-regulation in my child using these factors by giving her positive experiences. I not only would hug and kiss her to let her know that I love her but I would sit and read and play with her as well so that her experiences with me were positive. I also helped her interactions with others be positive. I would have other children over to play so that she had to learn not to cry or throw a tantrum if my attention wasn't always on her and it helped her to learn to share instead of being upset that someone else was playing with her toys. We went on play dates to parks, museums etc so that she learned the rules of how to behave in public and having to wait her turn to go down the slide etc.

I helped develop self-regulation through emotions as she had to learn how to control her emotions of jealously because my attention was on another child, she was mad because someone was playing with her favorite toy etc. It helped her develop self-regulation skills such as sharing, patience etc. and helped her control her emotions and learn appropriate responses to her emotions.

Next week I'll discuss effortful control in more detail.

Milestones of Self-Regulation

There are milestones in the development of self-regulation that continue to emerge during the toddler years. Between ages and one and three children make major progress in the development of self-regulation. In particular, they become more skilled in changing behavior according to motives of different situations so an objective can be achieved. For example, when my child was growing up she learned that her motive of getting me to help her with something like getting a snack was better achieved if her behavior was kind and she asked for a snack instead of her demanding I get her one.

Toddlers understand external standards of behavior better and are becoming more capable of meeting these standards. Toddler's success at self-regulation is critical for adjustment later in life. Toddlers with better self-regulation skills are less likely to demonstrate behavior problems in preschool. Compliance with a parents request is one of the earliest forms of self-regulation because it requires the child to stop and modify their behavior in order to meet the parents demand or instruction. An example of this is when a parent ask a child to stop playing and come help them put their clothes away, take a bath, eat dinner etc. Self regulation is important because it helps children solve problems and get along with others. Children with strong self-regulation skills are able to adapt to changes in their environment.

Developing self-regulation in my child helped her solve problems because sometimes I was busy helping another child and couldn't help her so she tried to figure out the problem herself and at times solved it while I helped another child so that when I went to help her she had figured the solution out herself or had figured most of it out so that she just needed a little instruction on how to continue to solve the problem. It helped her get along with problems because she had enough self-regulation to understand that sometimes she had to play what her friends wanted to play even if she didn't like the game because if she threw a tantrum or refused to play it meant she wasn't very well liked or had to play alone. These are just some of the ways I helped my child meet the milestones of self-regulation and how other parents can as well.

Developing Self- Regulation

Happy New Year everyone! I hope everyone had a safe new year and that this new year brings lots of good new memories for all of you. Let's start of this year talking about how to develop self-regulation.

Self-regulation is the ability to control ones behavior and to adapt to a situation. It's the ability of a child to follow expectations for behavior and regulate their behavior. This is one of the critical features of development and socialization within the first five years of life. How children begin to adjust to rules and conduct as well as changes from external to internal control are some of the critical developments of socialization. Self-regulation is a mindset that begins to develop in infancy. It's an important concept because it relates to efffortful control and temperament. Self-regulation and effortful control are related to infants and toddler's development because this is when a parent is teaching a child to soothe themselves in order to go back to sleep or calm themselves after crying because they got upset because their toy got stuck and they needed help. That is what self-regulation at the infant and toddler age is.

I developed self-regulation in my child at this stage by teaching her to cry herself back to sleep and calm herself after becoming upset. For example, one night when my child was between one and two we went to dinner with my parents and she became upset because she was hungry. I had brought snacks for her to snack on until dinner arrived but she continued to make a scene and cry and scream to the point that I had to take her out to the car and calm her down. I had to allow her to have her tantrum until she calmed down enough that I could explain to her that her behavior was inappropriate and that I knew she was hungry and that she could eat the goldfish I brought until our dinner arrived. This helped teach her self-regulation as she had to regulate her emotions so that she learned not to throw a tantrum when she was hungry but learned that I would provide a snack until her meal was ready and she would be fed. This helped her develop self-regulation and regulate her emotions so that instead of throwing a tantrum because she was hungry she learned to regulate her emotions to the point that she could wait patiently until her food was ready and ask for a snack if she needed one while she waited for her food.