Fun Ways to Teach Emotion Regulation Skills to Your Children

The following are a few ideas for improving self-regulation skills for you and your children. Self-regulation is the ability to think about your long-term best interests so you can calm your emotional reaction when you are upset and allows you to refocus when you are sad.

Children often lack the self-regulation skills to always act appropriately, just like us. You may notice that children, who fail to self-regulate, find it difficult to make and keep friends, interact with others in a positive manner, organize their schoolwork, and appropriately express their emotions. With all of the unpredictability during the past couple of years, kids have had a lot of strong emotions.

Model self-regulation

Share with your children your feelings to make a point. Give them examples about controlling their mood and emotions as well as communicating their own feelings.

• “I’m a little frustrated that you don’t clean up after yourself. We have worked on it for a long time. Let's refocus and try again.”
• “I am not sure how to respond to this, so I am going to take a moment to breathe and think about how to respond. Please give me a moment.”

Look for opportunities to develop self-awareness

• Teach children how to name their feelings by using free tools such as "Feeling Charts."
• Role-play ways to manage and express big feelings during a non-emotional time. It’s too late once the emotions take over.
• Help them identify which body parts give them their first warning that they are becoming so angry that they might not be able to control their emotions, such as clenched fists, nervous shaking, sweating, tense shoulders, and heart racing. Share your own warning signs.

Teach specific skills

• STOP: Stop, Think, Organize a solution, then Proceed.
• Breathing exercises/deep breathing techniques are a great way to relax and teach self-regulation skills, especially when at the Stop step.
• Counting to 10. This is when you count to 10 before reacting. The goal is to learn to delay an impulsive reaction. This is great to promote the Think step.
• Create some space/walk away. This is hard to implement in a small space but should be rewarded rather than punished. This is needed to Organize a solution.

Help children recognize when they do it right

• Reward positive coping skills and instances of self-regulation. If you see it, point it out, restate what they did correctly, and congratulate/thank/reward them. Remember, they might not know that they utilized a positive skill, but they will like the positive attention.

Personal timeouts (PTOs)

• Allowing your child to call their own timeout teaches them that they have the ability to recognize a stressful situation that they need a break from.
• It rewards self-awareness and reduces big consequences.
• You need to be careful not to let it become manipulative.

Extra attention

• If you have a child who needs extra practice, try to find time to practice that feels like special time, not punishment.
• Use this time to review strategies and build self-esteem.

Goal-setting theory

• Teach kids how to set goals and help them meet their goals. This builds self-esteem, trust, and a strong trusting relationship between child and parent.
• Goals should be specific, written down, and attainable. The more small, easy steps the better. “I want to be the best tennis player in the world” turns into manageable steps such as eating better, practicing, watching experts play tennis, and getting in better physical shape.

Remind them of their new tools

• Cue them when it is a good time to utilize a new skill.
• Feel free to suggest one of the new skills you know they have learned that might be a good fit for the situation.
• Point out that the skill is in their self-regulation tool kit and how it might help in this situation.

Emotion regulation is a great skill for us to share with our children. Giving them the gift of understanding their emotional reactions to stress and having the confidence to use a skill to help them through a difficult moment is worth the effort. By modeling and teaching emotion regulation to your children, you also get to develop some insights into how you manage stress and anxiety. Remember that children model what they see, not always what we tell them, so it is important to practice these interventions in front of them.