Who Needs Self Control?

“Ah! You are so mean and I can’t stand being with you! I wish you would just leave me alone! Leave me alone! Leave me ALONE!”

Yitzchak screamed at his parents, kicking the door to his room after he had slammed it. Yitzchak’s parents stood silently outside of his door. They knew the drill, Yitzchak would scream for the next twenty to thirty minutes. Then, he would calm down, read something, wipe his face, and come out as if nothing had happened. When and if Yitzchak’s parents would try to address the issue, he would make them feel that they were exaggerating and that he hadn’t really thrown a fit.

Temper tantrums are normal for toddlers, but once children are after kindergarten, we expect the number of tantrums to be significantly reduced. That’s because as children grow older, we expect them to gain greater self-regulation skills. In other words, we expect them to have greater control of their reactions to their emotions. As children get older, poor self-regulation can not only lead to tantrums but can also lead to impulsive and inappropriate behavior.

So, how can we help older children learn to self-regulate?

Scott Bezysylko, the Executive Director of the Winston Prep schools for children with learning differences, explains that children who act out are actually just responding ineffectively to a stimulus. What parents need to do is to teach their children to slow down in order to choose a more effective response.

“We approach self-regulation skills in the same way we approach other skills, academic or social: isolate that skill and provide practice,” Bezsylko explains. “When you think of it as a skill to be taught – rather than, say, just bad behavior – it changes the tone and content of the feedback you give kids.”

This means that we need to give our children practice – and a guiding framework – on how to handle emotional situations. Instead of parents and teachers constantly being the “external” regulator, telling children how to respond and what they did wrong, children need to learn how to regulate their emotional responses on their own.

Dry run. Understand what situations can potentially be hard for your child for instance: lots of homework without a lot of time to do it, or a crowded supermarket and a long grocery list. Find a time when these challenges are a bit less challenging: a moderate amount of homework with a lot of time or a crowded supermarket and a short grocery list. Then, talk to your child about the situation you are entering before you enter it. Explain to him that you understand homework can be frustrating but that it is how he reacts to that frustration that can prevent or create a whole mess. Then, give your child an opportunity to enter those difficult situations and afterwards help him talk through what happened. Since the key to self-regulation is pausing before action, these dry runs will help your child have a few moments of reflection before the emotions.

Think sheet. With an older child, it might be helpful to create a “think sheet” in which the child lists the things that generally frustrate him and cause him to lose it. Then, in a separate column, he can list some possibly ways to pause and respond in a more productive manner. Parents and teachers can award productive and self-regulatory behavior as demonstrated by the think sheet.

Plan B. Celebrated psychologist and author Dr. Ross Greene explains that there are multiple ways to approach a child who is having trouble self-regulating. Plan A for most people is to solve the problem unilaterally. In other words, we see that someone is having an issue and we choose to figure out what the problem is an attempt to solve it. Of course, this will often fail because the person with the challenging behavior might not even be aware of the issue you are attempting to solve. Dr. Greene explains that some people choose Plan C; they set the problem aside and hope that it will solve itself without their intervention. Instead, Dr. Greene proposes implementing Plan B. In his book, The Explosive Child: A New Approach to Understanding and Parenting Easily Frustrated, Chronically Inflexible Children, Dr. Green advocates for Plan B. Plan B is a collaborative problem-solving endeavor that begins with a discussion and ends with a plan that everyone can agree on. So, if you are dealing with challenging behaviors, check out Plan B!

Self-regulation is a skill that people need throughout life – not just children! We need self-regulation to maintain healthy relationships and to respond to less-than-ideal situations. And because self-regulation is a skill, we can also learn to self-regulate more effectively through practice. For adults, those with executive function disorder struggle with long-term planning and with controlling their impulses, but with a bit of structure, the right framework, and a whole lot of practice, it is possible to pause and plan rather than feel and act.