Self-regulation, defined by Deborah Schwind, a pediatric occupational therapist, as “a child’s ability to do what needs to be done for a particular situation in an optimal state,” is a foundational skill; it is needed for the acquisition of all other skills. In order to make gains in areas such as visual motor integration and fine motor coordination, a student must be self-regulated. Yet, self-regulation is the most common area of deficit shared among the vast variety of students on my caseload, and this truth has only rung more true since the onset of the pandemic. Here are three strategies that are helping my students develop self-regulation.
Create a safe environment
One day last spring I had a fun, feelings-based intervention activity planned for a first grader who struggles immensely with emotional regulation. But plans changed, as they frequently do in the world of school and kids. When I went to pick her up, she was on the brink of tears. We started walking; I gave her a side hug and asked what was wrong. She started pulling down on her head, avoided eye contact, and tried to keep herself from crying while exclaiming, “I just wish I had a break on Fridays!!! Fridays are SO HARD!” I asked, “Well hey, do you want to go for a walk? We can walk a few laps around the school and just talk.” She stopped walking and asked, “Really? Can we really do that?” I said, “Yep! Let’s go!” She smiled, relieved — and grasped my hand. I asked her for a high five and she asked, “Why?” I explained that it was AWESOME that she told an adult that she needed a break; she smiled really big in response. From there, I threw my plans out the window. It’s not the best idea to color emojis and talk and write about feelings while a kiddo’s in the middle of feeling so much. That activity was placed on hold for another day, when her brain was a little less tired and a little more free to wonder, explore, and learn.
While she was writing sentences on a different topic, she stopped and looked up at me to ask, “Umm, would it be okay if we go on another walk when I’m done with this, before I go back to class?” Of course, sweetie. Of course.
Kids need to be reassured that hard feelings are not bad feelings and that breaks are good! They need to feel safe expressing their big feelings with the adults in their lives, without fear of discipline, judgment, or frustration. Take a walk. Breathe deep. Sing a song. Model for the kids around you that adults need breaks too!
Stay calm
Along the lines of modeling adults’ need for breaks, students must feel that the adult working with them is regulated and calm in order to follow suit. As the moms of Big Little Feelings say, “An escalated adult cannot de-escalate an escalated child.” In the same way, an anxious adult cannot calm an anxious child.
I have a non-verbal student who has autism, whom we’ll call Nate. Nate has always presented with sensory processing differences. However, returning to school after two years of intermittent distance learning has significantly increased the challenge of these differences. Nate can type and can type fast; with a model, he’s a functional typist. This year, we’ve taken a step back to try to develop him into a more functional writer. He can write — hejust writes too fast and too lightly. He’s not grounded in the activity which impacts all the physical mechanics of his writing. His most recent and most impeding sensory seeking behavior of the school year has been his impulsive need to have his fingers in his mouth, fidgeting nonstop with his lips and tongue. I won’t exhaust you with all of the sensory tools and strategies that his intervention team and myself have tried; long story, short: no tools provide the input he’a seeking quite like his own fingers. You can imagine how this affects the success of our therapy sessions, when his fingers are supposed to be grasping a writing utensil.
I caught myself feeling frustrated, week in and week out. My frustrations were actually based on my own anxiety and growing self-doubt. I had started down the rabbit hole of negative thinking, wondering things like “What in the world am I going to do?” “What else is there to try?” “How are we ever going to meet this goal?” “What are his parents going to think when they see that no progress has been made this quarter?”
Then I got an idea.
What if I just took a deep breath?
What if I let go of the goal for the week? Or two?
What if I just focused on the child?
I decided to do those things. I picked Nate up for his therapy session with a completely different demeanor than in our greetings past. I had relieved myself of the pressure of forcing him to do better. I was calm. I was regulated. I was ready to be whatever he needed me to be for those 20 minutes.
Miraculously, we had fun! Or is it all that miraculous at all? We took a break from writing complete sentences and used more of a cognitive behavioral approach — rather than a sensory processing approach — to work on keeping his fingers out of his mouth, with the positive reinforcement of playing games on the iPad. You may have already figured this out, but in that session I realized for the first time that his oral motor fixation was a result of anxiety. On top of his own anxiety, he had been feeling my anxiety . . . which further fueled his own. When I was calm, he was able to meet me in my state of calm — a process referred to as coregulation — and focus more successfully on the activity at hand.
Teach simple movement and breathing patterns
At the start of every therapy session, we exercise. We do wall push-ups to prepare our upper extremities for fine motor tasks and we do deep breathing to prepare our minds for a therapy session of sustained focus.
For six months I attempted doing “downward dog,” the well-known yoga pose, with my students following their wall push-ups. Although I strongly believe in the value of inversion and the grounding effects of this pose, I noticed that my students were ramped up afterward instead of focused and ready to work. After winter break, I decided to make a change and replaced “downward dog” with “elevator breathing.” Let me tell you, I have not looked back.
One of the reasons breathing slowly in “downward dog” wasn’t effective for my students is because they weren’t skilled in slow, rhythmic breathing patterns, involving the alternation between inhales through their nostrils and exhales through their mouth. Using the visual and kinesthetic cue of moving our hands up and down to teach the skill of breathing in slowly for four counts, holding for four counts, blowing out slowly for four counts, holding for four counts, and repeating, has been highly effective. Instead of being silly and laughing on the way to their seats, they’re already in their seats at the finish of our exercises, they verbalize feeling “good” afterward, and we calmly transition to a state of being ready to work as I whisper, “Quietly choose a sharp pencil.” Just this week one of my students commented, “It feels so much better now that I know what I’m doing!”
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I hope these strategies work for the kids in your life! Do you already use some of them? Do you have any additional go-to strategies in your repertoire? I’d love to hear. Please share with us by posting a comment!