Notes from your school Counsellor

During these times, you might be noticing more emotional reactions from your children. While this is not unusual in stressful tines, it's important to model and teach emotional regulation to our children.  Emotional regulation is the ability to recognise and manage our own behaviour and reactions to the emotions and situations around us.  For example, to be able to calm down after something exciting or upsetting happens, to be able to focus fully on a task and regulate emotions like frustration or anger.  Following are some tips from NSW School Link newsletter, which have been slightly reworked for your needs.

HOW TO ENCOURAGE SELF-REGULATION IN YOUR CHILD

Monitor your own overwhelming feelings:

If your child is becoming dysregulated, do not join in with them. Monitor your tone, volume, language and body language. They will only dysregulate even more if you are both reacting the same way. Calm is contagious.

Emotion naming:

Have your child name what he is actually feeling and describe how it makes him feel. It can be really hard to do this, but it will be important for your child to emotionally regulate and improve their emotional literacy.

Emotional regulation takes time:

Don’t expect your child to nail it on the first go. It takes time to master the skill and there may be some good days and some bad days at regulating emotions.

Co-regulation:

Provide assistance and support for your child to self-regulate through warm and responsive interactions. Support and model how to regulate thoughts, feelings and behaviours. Allow a space for mistakes to happen.

BEHAVIOUR STRATEGIES: PLAN – PRAISE - MODEL

Plan

If you know your child struggles in certain situations, discuss this before-hand and identify your expectations. For example, “The shop will be busy and noisy.  It's okay if you get frustrated, but if you do, just take a deep breath, and tell me so I can help."

Praise

When your child does manage to self-regulate, offer praise.  For example, “I know you wanted to get out of there, and you really managed your frustration today, I am so proud of you."

Model

Demonstrate when you have self-regulated and tell your child. For example, “I was frustrated, but I'm glad I didn't get angry because I might have ruined the day for us”.