Strategies for Emotion Regulation

It is not uncommon for children to struggle with regulating themselves.

Humans experience all kinds of emotions on a day-to-day basis. We might feel happy when we get to eat our favourite foods, or irritated when stuck in a traffic jam. It is expected that these emotions occur regularly, but for some the experience can be more extreme and volatile. This can affect their daily functioning and negatively impact their relationships with others.

It is not uncommon for children to struggle with regulating themselves. They can go through intense meltdowns for a number of reasons. For example, they might have a genetic predisposition to sudden changes in mood. Or perhaps, emotional regulation has never been modelled to them. Nonetheless, strategies can be taught to improve self-regulation. Let’s take a look!

Practice Runs (Scaffolding):

The key to teaching self-regulation is not to avoid tough situations, but rather to go through them. What caretakers should focus on is guiding the child through the emotions until they are able to handle these situations independently. To start, a great tip would be to break it down. We can do this by either lowering the stakes or by breaking down the activity into smaller increments.

For example, if your child often has meltdowns when asked to disengage from their favourite toy, we can practice transitioning away from the activity by using another toy in which they are less invested in. You can have them play with the toy and get them to return it to you and praise them for following through with your instruction.

Deep Breathing:

Emotions can happen fast. After a trigger, we can turn into a jaw clenched and furious ball of anger. So an incredibly important skill to teach is to take a step back and breathe. We can encourage children to create space between a trigger and an emotion by practicing deep breathing. We can encourage them by naming it something fun like “dragon breaths” (i.e., putting their hands on their hips to make dragon wings and getting them to breath in slowly, and to exhale “fire”) or “bunny breaths” (i.e., taking three quick sniffs through the nose and one long deep breath out).

Ensure you connect with them by getting down to their level, sitting with them, and breathing with them. Name and acknowledge their feelings to help them understand what’s happening. Taking a step back will be crucial to the next strategy in this article, self reflection.

Encouraging Self-Reflection:

We can help kids learn to further self-regulate by approaching inappropriate and impulsive behaviours calmly and at a slow pace. Ideally, we respond to them with feedback that is non-emotional and non-judgmental so they can focus on what went wrong, why, and how they can find a solution in similar situations.

If we respond in an emotional and fast-paced way (e.g., shouting back and repeatedly asking them to stop), it doesn’t allow them to take a step back and make better choices. In fact, it may only exacerbate the intensity of their behaviour and emotions. If we can slow down, they have the opportunity to choose more appropriate behaviours with our guidance and suggestions.

The bottom line is…we can teach self-regulation by modelling it and by breaking challenging situations and big feelings down into smaller pieces. These skills will equip the child to handle all that might come their way.

Written by Aileen