Emotional regulation 

One of the most common complaints from parents and teachers is about their child's lack of emotional regulation. The problem; children arent born with the ability to emotionally regulate! Through co-regulation with safe people, children learn how to regulate themselves. Depending on the age of your child they hopefully will have learnt a little regulation. However, if they are stressed, their survival brain is telling them there is a threat, and their brains release hormones to equip them to fight or flee. Unfortunately, their brain has decided things like thinking, problem-solving, logic and memory are unimportant, so these have gone offline! This is why when you are stressed and in a hurry, you cant remember where you put your keys.

Co-regulation (or co-dysregulation) occurs through experiencing the regulation of the people around us. Have you ever come home after a great day at work feeling calm and your child has had a bad day? How long did you manage to hold onto your calm? That is co-dysregulation! However, those precious moments when your child is upset and just having a cuddle from you, is enough to help them feel calmer, are when co-regulation is working for you! 

To co-regulate your child, you first need to check in with yourself! If your child is upset, chances are you are starting to feel that. That tightness in your body, heaviness or tightness in your head and/or stomach is telling you something is wrong. Well of course it is; your child is screaming at you! Understandable, but not helpful! 

Ok, so, stop! Take a few slow breaths, in through your nose and out through your mouth and check to see if you feel calmer. If not, take some more breaths and try closing your eyes for a moment. Now approach your child, try to look into their eyes, at their level and ask them to look at you. Calmly ask what's wrong. If they arent able to tell you, then reassure them that you are there and keep taking those breaths yourself to at least maintain your state.  You can ask them to tell you how many blue things they can see around them, or ask them to picture their pet. This helps their brain to return to normal and then you can try rationalising with them, but not before! This gets easier with practice, so dont expect miracles straight away!

Part of the difficulty as parents; we want to be able to fix their problems and sometimes forget to just listen to them and let them feel heard.

Grounding techniques are things that can help you and your children return to the present moment, helping your survival brain to settle and put you back in control. One example you can try is;

Sensory grounding, looking around you for 5 things you can see, 4 you can hear, 3 you can touch, 2 you can smell and 1 you can touch. 

Below is Dr Dan Siegal's Hand Model of the Brain, a quick and easy way of understanding your brain's survival response.