Self-Regulation Skills for Young Children - Sue Asquith - Early Childhood Consultant

What is self-regulation?

Self-Regulation is complex, but I describe it as the ability to manage your own energy, emotions, behaviours and attention, in a socially acceptable way. 

Emotional regulation can be broken down into co-regulation (someone supporting regulation) or self-regulation (when we regulate on our own).

Why is self-regulation important?

Self-regulation helps us to plan, think, problem-solve, interact with others, and control our own behaviour.  If you have settled down to concentrate on reading this article, you are probably regulated. Adults have the skills and life experiences to help them self-regulate.  However, we need to remember that babies are not born with these skills and the toddlers and young children in our care will need our help to learn them. We have all experienced challenging circumstances over the last few years, with the worldwide pandemic thrusting us all suddenly into uncertainty.  Lockdowns and periods of self-isolating have led to children potentially missing a lot of experiences, such as visiting places of interests and socialising with wider family and friends. Children may have missing skills gaps due to not socialising with others, going to the park, beach or a restaurant or not being able to attend kindergarten, nursery or school. 

Physical and mental health and well-being are important; sadly, we are hearing more and more about poor mental health in children, young people and adults.  Supporting children to build strong self-regulation skills in early childhood will help them with resilience skills and with their future relationships, team work and holding down a job.  

During the pandemic, natural disasters and the cost of living crisis, we may be experiencing emotions more intensely than in the past.  During change and feelings of uncertainty we often find ourselves in survival mode — even if we’re not aware of it. Worry and stress affects our mood, sleep, eating, patience and our ability to co-regulate children.

As adults it is okay to feel “fine”, “not fine” and then “fine” again – we can’t be happy all the time.  We need to support children with this too!  Young children have some quite intense feelings about things seeming unfair, with sharing toys and those “I had it first” moments, as they develop and grow an understanding of other people having differing views, etc.  Children need adults to co-regulate and also to acknowledge their feelings of frustration, anger, sadness, etc to help them understand what emotion they are feeling.  Over time we can help them to decode why they are feeling this way and possibly with strategies to apply.

What is co-regulation?

Co-regulation is a crucial part of early childhood attachment relationships.  From birth, infants need caring, attuned and consistent adults to respond to their distress (tiredness, hunger, loneliness, pain, etc).  If responded to in a caring, timely way, adults are co-regulating and the infant learns that they are meaningful, that the feeling of distress or dysregulation can be managed and they can rely on others to help; this becomes the blueprint for self-regulation and for future relationships. 

Despite adults having their own challenges and mixed/fluid emotions, children still need us to provide them with a sense of security and calm. Parents, teachers and early years educators throughout the world are experiencing children having more outbursts, or meltdowns as they express their uncertainty, frustration or confusion about their world they live in. All behaviours are communicating something and throughout early childhood, children communicate their feelings, frustration, fears and uncertainties by crying, kicking, throwing and screaming.  These are all typical examples of all how young children communicate their feelings and are possibly due to children being in fight or flight mode. We can help by observing children to establish their likes, dislikes, fears and learning styles and noting any triggers to them feeling dysregulated.   Children need calm adults to connect with them during these times, someone to acknowledge their feelings and trying to understand exactly what they’re communicating through their behaviour.

Try acknowledging and naming children’s feelings. For example, with phrases such as, “it looks as though you’d really like a turn with that car” or “you look to be really cross about ……..”. It is also important to speak in an age-appropriate way about any life events that might change their family or about any routines which may have to change.  Give them chance to process the changes, ask questions and to address anything that is worrying them. There are lots of books and resources with ideas about helping children to understand about moving house, expecting the birth of a sibling or about a long-term illness or bereavement.

Three easy things to consider:

1. Positive and responsive relationships: children need reliable adults who show care and professional love, helping them to identify and respond to their basic needs and cues of distress.  Strong key relationships with children and their families will also help with consistency, support and understanding, if there are events happening in the child’s life at home.  Warm and responsive relationships show children that you respect their feelings and emotions and that you can offer unconditional positive regard. 
2. Enabling Environments – careful thought and consideration needs to be given to the classrooms (environments) and routines in early childhood settings.  Positive relationships and enabling environments in your early childhood centre/setting can provide a buffer against any external environmental stressors.  We need to create environments that are developmentally and sensory appropriate, as well as physically and emotionally safe. When our brains are relieved of stressors, we can relax, play, learn and explore.  Consistent adults, environments and routines are like a security blanket for children.
3. Helping children to learn how to self-regulate throughout early childhood – parents and teachers/educators need to support and acknowledge children’s feelings and emotions.  Through co-regulation, modelling language, building emotional literacy, coaching and building coping strategies, we are helping children on their journeys to self-regulation. It is also important that our expectations of how children behave are age and stage appropriate.

About the author

Sue is an award winning freelance Early Childhood Consultant. You can read more about self-regulation in her new book, Self-Regulation Skills in Young Children’ which is available on Amazon in paperback or as a Kindle download. In her book, Sue provides a wider awareness of self-regulation in babies and young children. It emphasises the importance of giving children positive attachments and empathy and provides fun ideas of how to promote coping strategies for them. The book makes child and brain development an accessible read for parents, carers, teachers and all early years practitioners.