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.