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.