30-Days to Self-Regulation

Self-regulation is being aware of your emotions in the moment, and being able to respond with what your body needs.

Self-regulation is not self-control, suppressing our emotions or seeking compliance. Self-regulation is making sense of our experience and bringing back safety at the nervous system level.

Young children do not have the ability to self regulate. They depend on their parents and borrow their regulation. Essentially, what supports young children is co-regulation. Their calm depends on your ability to stay calm. Their ability to develop healthy self-regulation skills thus starts with our awareness of our own triggers and ability to self-regulate enough to offer our calm to a disregulated child.

It is important to remember that self-regulation is a skill. It is possible to help our children develop self-regulation by modelling it for them. By exploring what to do in the moments of stress and dysregulation. The important thing is that this exploration process needs to happen during calm moments and not when the child is dysregulated.

With all of this in mind, I created a 30-Day Self-Regulation Guide for you and your child. Shifting our mindset helps us work toward the goal of building this skill. And just like learning to play the piano or learning to express themselves, it takes practice. This guide and accompanying calendar will help you and your kiddos cultivate their self-regulation skills and to track your progress. The goal is not to do it perfectly, but rather to exercise your and their self-regulation muscle!