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.
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