Every child has to learn how to handle his or her own distress. Initially the parents calm the child.
As they read their child’s cues and see what works, they come up with a set of soothing strategies that work for their child.
The child begins to mentally process these strategies and gradually takes over the task of self-calming.
The process of becoming a well-regulated person depends on certain skills.
The child also needs models in the environment for how to become a good self-calmer.
Here are some methods that help a child become well-regulated:
When babies cry, it helps them to have a responsive, caring, and sensitive parent who helps them calm down. This gives the child the message that their basic needs can be met and there are ways to handle distress. This step requires that parent(s) know how to read their child’s signals and gestures, as well as have a host of calming strategies at their fingertips.
As a child matures, he learns to internalize strategies to self-calm. Consistent use of good calming strategies helps the child lean which ones to call upon in different situations. The child also observes others solve similar problems and learns when and where to use which strategies.
Calming strategies and environmental modifications are most useful when one anticipates what could go wrong and have things in place for that moment when the child needs them.
This leads to the importance of teaching the child to understand the precursors of irritability, to anticipate the onset of frustration and distress, and to use appropriate strategies that are available.
Self-calming depends on the ability to problem solve before, during, and after a distressing episode.
The child gradually learns a variety of ways to help himself organize and monitor his own actions and to tolerate various negative emotions.
To help your child become a thinking child, it is useful to help him or her step out of the negative emotions and be thoughtful about the sequence of events that occurred. Many parents say things like “I’ve told him a thousand times that when he falls apart, he needs to go to his bedroom and calm down, but he never listens. If I pick him up and put him there, he screams even more”.
The problem is that once the child reaches a distressed state, he may completely shut off his thinking brain and cannot follow the strategy that his parents are trying to teach him.
This is why it’s important to break the strategy down into steps so that the child learns a successful approximation of what may work.
For instance, instead of expecting the child to go directly to the bedroom, the parent may guide the child to go to a corner of the room and hug his body tightly while humming a calm-down song.
The idea behind this is to teach your child how to stop and think in the moment, then slowly move towards anticipating what could go wrong, remembering the strategy, and using it.
It isn’t until children have the capacity to remember past events and reflect on what has happened that they are able to internalize and use strategies that might work.
This is when the child develops insight into his behavior.
Self-calming requires the child to decrease the state of arousal he experiences related to distress.
An adaptable child learns to recognize the internal state of distress and hyperarousal, then finds ways to inhibit the arousal through strategies such as closing his eyes.
A toddler may hold his hands together or put them in his pockets when told not to touch a fragile object, thus inhibiting himself in an adaptable way.
An adult struggling to master a very difficult task may take a break to refresh himself mentally and physically, thus avoiding an adult-sized tantrum.
Self-regulation develops through synchronized, reciprocal, and well- modulated interactions between parents and their children.
A task of the young infant is to be able to tolerate the intensity of arousal they feel while interacting with their mom or dad. An infant who is flooded with too much arousal during interactions will avoid them and shut down.
For a child to experience pleasure from playing or interacting with his parent(s), he needs to find ways to avoid becoming over-stimulated.
The child has to find an optimal level of internal arousal to remain engaged in the interaction.
Consequently, the parent acts to help regulate the child’s arousal by timing her responses, laughing at the right moment, touching her child periodically, encouraging him, and other behaviors that engage the child.
If you’re too active, though, and doing more than what your child can process, the child will respond by backing away or becoming distressed.
Research has shown that when the parent and child are out-of-sync, the child learns to withdraw from the overly arousing interaction.
This can lead to disengagement, with resulting insecurity in attachments.
So how do you find the most optimal level of stimulation when you interact with your child?
The first thing you need to keep in mind is that the optimal level varies greatly from one child to the next and depends upon the child’s threshold for arousal, tolerance for stimulation, and ability to self-control arousal.
The best way to know if you’re on the right track is to watch your child’s response. If you are offering an optimal level of stimulation, smiling occurs.
An increase in your child’s attentiveness will usually relate to you becoming less active and more attentive to what your child is doing. Pay attention to what your child is seeking and needing from you. If you are too active and directive of your child, he is likely to become less focused and attentive.
Here are the skills needed for your child to become an effective self-calmer:
Provide a model of what it looks and feels like to be calm.
Validate your child’s level of distress. Respond to him gently through gestures and words.
Show your child how to calm down in many different situations.
Expand your child’s repertoire of self-calming strategies so that when one fails, another one might work.
Help your child find activities that give him pleasure so that he can shift from a distressed feeling to a positive one.
Once your child is calm, help him think through what caused his distress and what he can do to make himself feel better next time it happens.
While he is distressed, help your child to decrease that feeling. Use calming strategies that involve his cognitive abilities.
Help your child think of what the next step might be and remain focused on accomplishing that goal.