Welcome to the first of three volumes that I will be distributing all about emotional regulation, or otherwise known as "self-regulation". This first volume will cover an overview of emotional regulation - what it is, how it develops, and the importance of supporting our students in the development of their own self-regulation. The following volumes will cover emotional regulation for us as adults, and finally how we can teach regulation to our students via co-regulation.

What is emotional regulation? Why is it important?

Self-Regulation is the ability to understand and manage our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors; it is the ability to influence and change how we respond to an emotion. It helps us to remain calm and alert, and supports the capacity to ‘respond’, rather than ‘react’ in the face of our many strong emotions and stressors in life and the environment.

Children who have strong self-regulation skills can handle stress, adapt to changes, and control impulses, leading to better interactions with peers and adults. These skills also enhance their ability to focus, follow instructions, and complete tasks, which are critical for academic success.

By providing support and teaching self-regulation strategies, parents, teachers, and therapists can help children build resilience, improve their relationships, and achieve their full potential.

• Research shows that emotional regulation is a critical life skill that can facilitate learning and improve educational outcomes (see article at the end of this Smore).
  
• Emotions allow us to express ourselves and connect with others — but they can also cause conflict and harm if we don’t know how to handle them.
  
• Self-regulation is about understanding feelings, thoughts, and behaviors in ourselves as well as others.
• We can think of maintaining our emotional regulation like maintaining a consistent rate of acceleration in a car - not accelerating and slowing frequently - but instead remaining steady. (Stuart Shanker)
• It begins in our nervous system ("safety detector"): Our body is constantly scanning for threats and making predictions about what we need to stay in homeostasis (Lisa Feldman Barrett)
• The capacity to self-regulate effectively is affected by age, developmental stage, trauma exposure, and our own well being at any given moment.
• It is a vital part of social and emotional learning.
• Being regulated doesn't necessarily equate to being calm; being regulated means that your emotions and energy levels match the task / environment / situation you are in.

Dysregulation is the inability to regulate our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors due to a stress response.

• When we face a stressor, our body's stress response engages. Our pre-frontal cortex goes offline, making it difficult to respond to stress in an adaptive way.
• We are more prone to dysregulation when our sensory systems become overloaded
• It may present as "misbehavior" or "withdrawal"

The video below is from Dr. Daniel Siegel. He explains a model of the brain, and his theory of "flipping your lid". It is a great representation of what happens during dysregulation.

When children are born, they have little ability (if any) to self-regulate. Parents and other primary adults (like teachers!) help children learn to self-regulate through a process called co-regulation. Co-regulation is when we help another person to regulate their emotions (we will dive deep into co-regulation in Volume 3). When children grow up with co-regulation during moments of stress, such as when they are struggling with strong feelings, they begin to learn and understand strategies for self-regulation and self-soothing. Without self-regulation, children struggle to develop meaningful relationships, communicate reciprocally, and succeed at school or work. Therefore, it is paramount in social emotional learning.

Please note: Children don't choose to be unable to regulate their emotions. They don't choose to have challenging days and to experience out of control responses. The excess stress from their environment is driving the behavior.

• Genetic Traits: personality, gender, temperament
• Language Skills
• Caregiver relationships: Children begin to develop emotional regulation skills through interactions with their caregivers. When caregivers are attentive and consistently meet a child's needs, the child develops a sense of trust and security.
• Neurodivergence
• Sensory Processing Profile: sensory seeking, sensory avoidant
• Brain development: The limbic system, which controls the body's stress response, and the prefrontal cortex, which helps with rational decision-making, are involved in emotional regulation. The prefrontal cortex develops primarily during adolescence and fully matures around age 25.
• Practice: Emotional regulation is a learned skill that requires time, practice, and effort.
• Trauma / Neglect / Isolation / Stress: These factors can delay the development of emotional regulation

• Children should know how to self-regulate when they get to kindergarten.
• Wrong. This development of self-regulation is dependent on many factors, and many children may not have self-regulatory skills by kindergarten.
• When children misbehave, it’s because they are bad or manipulative.
• Wrong. "Kids do well when they can." (Ross Green)
• Once a child learns how to self-regulate, they should always be able to do it.
• Wrong. Just as when we are first learning a new skill, it takes a lot of practice to develop that "muscle memory".
• The goal of regulation is to be calm.
• Wrong. Regulation is dependent on the situation we are in. Here's an example: if a person is at a concert, they are jumping up and down and having fun, but that doesn't mean that they're dysregulated. But, in classroom, jumping up and down isn’t appropriate. Regulation does not equal calm, it means you’re in a state that makes sense for the situation you are in.

Think about "masking" like a duck on a pond: They look calm on top (the part we can see), but under the water, their feet are paddling hard.

Dysregulation may also be what drives outward behaviors. We can use the analogy of an iceberg to understand. We can only see the top 10% of an iceberg (the behaviors) - but there is 90% of it under the surface that we can't see (factors, such as dysregulation, that are driving the behaviors). So we may be seeing yelling and hitting or interrupting, but in may in fact be because the person is dysregulated.

I have created a "Regulation Strategies Padlet" that I will continue to add to throughout the year. It is broken down by category (breathing, movement, mindfulness, etc.). You can visit this Padlet whenever you are looking for something to implement in your classroom and are needing some ideas. Click the button below!

In the "Regulation: Volume 2" Smore (due out soon!), we will talk about regulating ourselves as adults - the importance of it and how to do it!

If you are in need of more information or have any questions, please reach out!

Sara Joseph, MSW, LSW, C-SSWS

sara.joseph@miu.org