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.