Creating Opportunities for Self-Regulation

1. Creating Opportunities for Self-Regulation

2. Self-regulation is an ability to regulate ones emotions in a socially acceptable manner, use these strategies to complete tasks and monitor own behaviors. • Self-regulation cannot become a skill until a primary attachment relationship is in place. • This relationship can be with a parent or secure caregiver, such as a teacher. • The repeated exposure to positive experiences with the parent/caregiver allow the brain’s right hemisphere to organize in a manner to control emotions. • Repeated negative or violent behaviors interrupt this positive organization of the right hemisphere, interfering with the ability to control emotions, leaving a child feeling out of control and uncared for.

3. A memory of trauma, also called a trauma trigger, is set off by something in the child’s environment. • This trigger associates what is currently happening to a past event, tapping into emotions associated with that past event. • The connection of these events often causes great amounts of stress, requiring time for a child to regain control. • Continued exposure to violence and trauma result in a child living in a state of alarm, fear, or terror.

4. What Can We Do? • Provide additional support during times of the day that are particularly difficult for him/her. Ex: have the child help set up the next activity so that he/she is exposed to the activity prior to it beginning. • Help student identify their limit within an activity/classroom. Provide student break card, hand signal, or some kind of sign to signal limit. • Make sure that all adults working with the student are following same expectations/rules. Any variance will be traumatic for the student. • Make T-charts with the student for specific situations to specify what a behavior will look like. Ex. What does friendship look like and sound like? • Introduce, practice/rehearse, and encourage students to use strategies of behaviors that they will need in a new situation. • Use social stories to provide a visual layout of the behaviors that need to take place.

5. Avoid asking students to explain their behaviors when they are angry or out of control. This will only escalate their behaviors. • Develop a daily schedule and stick to it. Usually having that schedule visually represented helps even more. • Develop and use a clear transitional routine between activities, such as music, to make that change easier. • Be proactive! If you are aware of a change in the routine or schedule, discuss it with the class and prepare the student ahead of time. • Open classroom communication lines, giving students the opportunity to discuss things that the learned from a lesson or a topic of interest. • Utilize rubrics for scoring/grading student work. This provides a tool for students to self evaluate their work. • Encourage students to problem solve as a whole group, providing that anxious child with a variety of ways to solve a problem on their own when it occurs.

6. Read stories showing the entire range of human emotions and how these emotions are handled by characters in literature. • Talk with students about how you are feeling sometimes and how you handle those feelings. This gives students some insight into teachers being real people. • Use journaling as a tool to get students to describe their emotions and/or put a name with their emotions/feelings. • Use strategies, such as visualization, deep breathing, or yoga to teach students how to control their emotions and moods. • Work with students to set individual goals and CELEBRATE their successes when they reach their goal. • Teach students to utilize self-talk to manage particularly difficult situations.

7. Most Importantly… • Create a safe environment for students. Have classroom rules and hold students accountable for following the rules. Be consistent in consequences for all students. • Frequently remind students that you are there to help them and to keep them safe. • Be encouraging and supportive. • Provide students with opportunities to identify and discuss/write about what they are feeling/their emotions. • Allow students to make choices that will benefit them in regulating their emotions. Remember none of us are the same and we all handle things in different ways.