Imagine this scene – You’re starting work a little later today because you’re attending an inset course this morning. You rush to get the children ready for school and your 12 year old realises they have a food technology lesson and need to bring in all the ingredients for a Victoria sponge… you manage to find everything they need thinking, I guess I won’t have omelette for lunch after all… Then there’s a scream as your younger child has spilled their cereal milk all over their clean uniform (and all over the floor). You manage to clean it up, pour more milk on their cornflakes and find a clean uniform for them to change into. The phone rings as you are leaving the house and your elderly neighbour asks you to buy them some groceries because they’ve had a fall and can’t leave the house. So after walking the kids the school, you pop into the shop and get the bits they need. When you finally arrive at the training, you are 5 minutes late, but after your morning, that’s pretty good going. Unfortunately, you are met with a sarcastic remark from your manager who says, “What time do you call this?” The comment doesn’t go down well, you feel your blood pressure rising and you leave the room! Your friend rushes after and calms you down, saying you look upset and asks you about your morning. With a few more minutes and a strong cup of coffee inside you, you re-join the training smiling and much calmer.
We all have days like this. Things happen, sometimes out of our control, and our emotions get the better of us. At this moment we are dysregulated, that is we feel stressed, out of sorts and not OK. As Dan Siegal would put it, we have ‘flipped our lid’ and the downstairs brain has taken over, in other words – we’re in ‘freeze, fight or flight’ mode. At this point we cannot think rationally until we have calmed down. Most of the time we are able to calm fairly quickly, and in the example above our friend helped us to do this. She acted as a co-regulator, helping us to regain that sense of calm.
Young children have times when they are dysregulated too and they do not yet know how to deal with these powerful feelings. They need us co-regulate them, to coach them ‘in the moment’ and help them to feel calmer. We do this by becoming attuned to their emotional states and then acknowledging and validating their feelings. Labelling what they are feeling and why can also be useful as many children do not know what these feelings are and how they should respond when feeling that way. Wondering is a useful technique, for example, “You look sad. I wonder if you are feeling sad because your daddy has gone to work…” Then following this with a suggestion of what we can do. “When I feel sad, I sometimes need a cuddle. Would you like a cuddle?” In this way we are helping the child by labelling their feelings and offering a way forward.
In order to become adults who can co-regulate children’s emotional states, we need to have built strong, loving, authentic relationships with them. Our children need to trust us and know that we have their best interests at heart. We need to ensure our children feel safe and secure in our setting. Having a consistent routine and predictable boundaries can help, so that children know what is expected of them. Within this environment, adults can help children to regulate their emotions and teach them strategies to use in the future, if ever they feel that way again.
Therefore, before we as adults deal with a child’s challenging behaviour, or overpowering emotions, we need to ensure the child feels loved, safe and secure. There is a well-known phrase in therapeutic parenting circles, connection before correction which reminds us that before we can even think about discipline, we must have built a loving, trusting, reciprocal relationship with our children. The word discipline can sometimes be unhelpful in an early childhood context. It is often associated with rewards and punishment which have no place in our settings, however, when we think about discipline from a more Biblical perspective, it can be a helpful word to use.
Christian discipline is about teaching and instruction, not punishment. According to the online Merriam-Webster dictionary, the words discipline and disciple have the same root, stemming from the Latin word for pupil: disciplulus. If we consider a definition in this context, discipline is about instruction, learning a trade, coaching and moulding yourself to be like the master. When we act as a co-regulator we are coaching our children, in the moment and teaching them about how to act and react when they experience certain things or feel a particular way.
The role of the adult is vital and must be a calming influence, so de-escalating the situation, not making it worse. This reminds me of the verse in Ephesians which reminds parents not to wind their children up or treat them harshly, “Parents, do not treat your children in such a way as to make them angry. Instead, raise them with Christian discipline and instruction” (Ephesians 6:4, GNT). We need to role model how to act when feeling certain ways, create an emotionally literate environment, where we use emotion language daily and use strategies like emotion coaching and problem solving to turn incidents that arise into opportunities to learn.
Unfortunately our children will face challenges and difficulties in their lives. They will have days when the number of tasks or their feelings overwhelm them, and our aim is to teach children resilience and help them develop self-regulation so that they remain calm and cope when facing adversity. Research suggests that children who are able to self-regulate are well-adjusted, socially competent, cognitively more able and ultimately more successful in life. Through co-regulation, we can play our part in helping children get there, so it’s a worthwhile endeavour with great outcomes!
Tamsin Grimmer