Student Wellbeing

Self-regulation is the ability to manage your emotions and behave appropriately. This involves resisting highly emotional reactions, calming yourself down, and having the ability to adjust expectations. 

 At what age can a child control their emotions?

Once a child reaches school age, around five years old, they should be able to regulate their emotions with some success.

What does emotional dysregulation look like?

Problems with self-regulation manifest in different ways depending on the child, says  Matthew Rouse, PhD, a clinical psychologist. “Some kids are instantaneous — they have a huge, strong reaction and there’s no lead-in or build-up,” he says. “They can’t inhibit that immediate behavior response.”

For other kids, he notes, distress seems to build up and they can only take it for so long. Eventually it leads to some sort of behavioral outburst. “You can see them going down the wrong path but you don’t know how to stop it.”

The key for both kinds of kids is to learn to handle those strong reactions and find ways to express their emotions that are more effective (and less disruptive) than having a meltdown.

Why do some kids struggle with self-regulation?

“A child’s innate capacities for self-regulation are temperament and personality-based,” he explains. Some babies have trouble self-soothing, he adds, and get very distressed when you’re trying to bathe them or put on clothes. Those kids may be more likely to experience trouble with emotional self-regulation when they’re older.

But the environment plays a role as well. When parents give in to tantrums or work overtime to soothe their children when they get upset and act out, kids have a hard time developing self-discipline. “In those situations, the child is basically looking to the parents to be external self-regulators,” Dr. Rouse says. “If that’s a pattern that happens again and again, and a child is able to ‘outsource’ self-regulation, then that’s something that might develop as a habit.”

Children withADHD or anxiety may find it particularly challenging to manage their emotions, and need more help to develop emotional regulation skills.

Help kids become self-reflective

When parents or teachers approach impulsive, inappropriate behavior calmly and give them time, kids can learn to choose better ways to respond to that situation. The feedback kids need is non-judgmental and non-emotional: what went wrong, and why, and how they can fix it next time.

When kids are part of an environment that’s reflective and analytic as opposed to emotional and fast-paced,“they can learn to make better choices. Slowing down allows children to become more thoughtful, reflective and self-aware. We need to slow down and model self-reflection and self-awareness and self-regulation for our kids, but it’s also helpful and good for us, too.

https://childmind.org/article/can-help-kids-self-regulation/