Big Feelings: The Training Ground for Self-Regulation.

Boy looking at camera in training ground for self-regulation

Wherever our nervous systems are, theirs will follow. We will co-regulate or co-dysregulate.

When we meet their big feelings with frustration or anger, it doubles the already unbearable emotional temperature of the room and drives the brain into bigger distress (fight or flight).

They will either catch the emotional heat and go bigger (fight), or escape it by shutting down (flight).

Our job is to bring the temperature down by meeting their distress with an anchor presence -steady, attached, grounded.

The problem with traditional ‘discipline’.

Traditional discipline (time-out, punishment, shouty voices, shame) uses emotional or physical separation as a way to bring children back to calm. But here’s the rub: Children can’t come back to calm on their own. It also squanders an opportunity for us to build their capacity to self-regulate in healthy ways.

These strategies might look like they work, but we have to not confuse a quiet child for a calm child.

From co-regulation to self-regulation.

It takes lots of time and experience to build the neural pathways that will support self-regulation. Those pathways build through co-regulation. This provides children with the actual experience of coming back to calm safely, without having to shut their feelings down or put themselves away.

When we leave them to come back to calm on their own, we’re leaving them to do the work that adults are best placed to do. We might not be able to do this all the time – we’re human too – and that’s okay, but it’s important we do it whenever we can.

Every time a child goes into distress, their young brain is calling to the adult in the room to lead it back to calm. It’s as though the brain is saying, ‘Can you show me how to do this regulation thing. I’ll need to practice lots with you before I can do it on my own.’

Big feelings are not an interruption (though it can certainly feel that way!) and they absolutely not a bad child or bad parenting. Big feelings are the training ground for self-regulation, and co-regulation IS the work that will build this.

5 Comments

Mary

I needed this. My son is 3 (possibly on the spectrum, eval happening soon ) and is starting to throw tantrums. I lost my cool today and yelled. I felt so bad afterwards but I was tired, and frustrated and felt very flustered. I completely disregarded the fact that he’s still a baby.

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linda

What about when most of the disregulation happens because the 9 yr old doesn’t get his desires met?

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Karen Young

This is very normal. This counts as ‘missing out on something important’. It’s his job to hit the boundaries to discover where the edges are. It’s ours to hold the boundaries lovingly and gently. You’ll find a number of articles here on how to do this.

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Karen Young

This is very normal. It’s their job to hit the boundaries to discover where the edges are. It’s our job as parents and carers to hold those boundaries lovingly, and help them back to calm through co-regulation. You’ll find many articles on this site to guide you through how.

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Mattering is about feeling valued and feeling like I’m doing something that adds value. It doesn’t have to come from grades or schoolwork, and for so many kids it probably won’t. There are so many ways to help kids feel seen and valued that have nothing to do with schoolwork, but which can work to engage them in schoolwork. Little things make a big difference. 

We also have to let our teachers know how much the matter. They are the greatest key to ‘mattering’ (or unmattering) in our schools and for our young people.♥️
If we want to meet their learning needs, we first have to meet their relational ones. If we want them to be open to learning, they first have to open to the adult they are learning from - and they won’t be open if they don’t feel seen, safe, and cared for. It’s not always easy, it’s just how it is.♥️
You know what's lovely? Aside from Sundays and sunshine? …
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For a short time, we’re taking 25% off books, plushies, courses, posters, and a bunch of tiny treasures that can help build courage and calm in kids and teens.

With the end of the financial year just around the corner, it’s the perfect time to top up your toolkit — or quietly replace those resources that have shimmied away while you weren’t looking. (We see you. We've been there.)

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We know there are too many kids struggling right now, including those from loving, responsive families and in loving, responsive schools. 

One of the places these struggles will show themselves is at school, even in the most loving responsive ones. Sometimes these struggles show themselves with a roar, sometimes with nothing at all.

Too many kids are feeling no sense at all that they matter. They don’t feel they are doing something that matters, and they don’t feel that they matter to others.

Too many of them will go weeks at school without hearing their name in a way that makes them feel seen, cared for, and valued.

Too many of them are showing up at school but are noticed more when they don’t, even if only by the unticked box beside their name.

For too many kids, we are asking them to show up when they don’t feel like they have anything to offer, or anything at all to show up for. Why wouldn’t they struggle?

This week I had the greatest privilege of speaking to a room of 300 school well-being staff about how to support all children, how to catch the ones who are struggling, and what we can do to buffer, protect and heal all young people at school.

If you are a parent of a young person who is struggling, I want you to know that schools are working hard to hold them, lovingly and safely.

I know there are also many parents who haven’t had this experience, and your children haven’t got what they need. I know that. I want you to know that change is happening. I want you to know what I see when I work with the wellbeing staff at these schools. They care. They really do. They are so invested in supporting your children, seeing the child behind the student and showing up big for all of them. The work is happening. There’s a lot to do, but it’s happening.

Yes we need more resources, and yes more people, and yes we’re asking more of our schools and teachers than ever, and yes the world is asking more of our kids than ever, but the work is happening.

Thank you to the Department of Education Queensland for working with me, and thank you to the wellbeing staff, teachers, and leadership who are giving everything they can to be there for our children. You matter.♥️

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