How to Get Through Stressful Situations with Your Child
Hi, my name is Lindsey and I'm an occupational therapy assistant at Metro Therapy Special Children's Clinic in Fridley, Minnesota. Today, I'll be talking to you about two important terms you may hear a lot at our clinic: self-regulation and co-regulation. What are these terms, and what do they have to do with your child’s therapy? Keep reading to learn more.
What Is Self-Regulation?
Self-regulation is the ability to adjust and control your energy, emotions, behaviors, and attention. It includes your ability to maintain an alertness level appropriate for a given situation. Self-regulation does not necessarily mean that we are just sitting still quietly, it depends on where you are and what you’re doing.
What Is Co-Regulation?
Our ability to self-regulate begins to develop in infancy, and it is built on a foundation of co-regulation, which is how we adapt ourselves in order to interact with others. For example, in pediatric therapy, we co-regulate with the children in our care to support their therapy goals. It is basically the way that we can help children maintain their attention, feelings, and behaviors so that they can benefit from therapy.
If we think all the way back to infancy and in the womb, co-regulation is so important because it enables us to facilitate experience sharing, emotion sharing, and to promote a shared enjoyment. We need to experience reliable, comforting presence to learn regulating emotions and impulses from very early on.
How to Handle Stressful Situations as a Caregiver
Children need a model from a caregiver, parent, teacher, or therapist in order to learn to manage their emotions and then develop long-term control. But that’s difficult to do if you are having a bad day and are struggling to self-regulate your own emotions.
In a very stressful situation, maybe your child just threw a ball at a vase and it shattered everywhere, and the first thing you want to do is yell at your child. But that is the complete opposite of what they need. Instead, they need us to help them calm down because they were probably also scared by what just happened, and they didn't mean to do what they did.
And if we were to yell at them, we would only be adding fuel to the fire. In the long run, we're not teaching them good emotional regulation skills and how to handle difficult situations. So we might take a deep breath first and maybe tell yourself something like, “I can handle this. I can do this. I'm strong.” And once you have that self-regulation as the caregiver, then you can go in and help the child.
How to Help Children Through Stressful Situations
There are many ways you could then help a child get through a stressful situation while co-regulating (or helping them manage their feelings and reactions appropriately). You might give them sensory support like their favorite stuffed animal. You might remove them from the situation that's going on.
For the example of the broken glass, we might take them out of that room completely, make sure they're physically safe, and make sure that they know that they're emotionally safe. Then you might go on to mirroring (or empathizing with) what the child is feeling. You might say something like, “Oh, that was probably really scary that that vase just broke. I know you didn't mean to do that, it was an accident and we're going to clean it up together.”
Doing this lets your child know that their feelings are validated, that they indeed were scared. What happened was not an ideal situation, but that you're going to be able to work through it together.
Seven Steps for Co-Regulating with Your Child
Here are some very specific steps of how you might help a child co-regulate:
1. Assess the environment
Take a step back and look at what's going on in the environment. It might be a really busy environment, and if it is, you should take them totally to a new place with less sensory stimulation, less overload.
2. Breathe
Then you're going to work on breathing. You can just breathe alongside the child. You don't have to tell them, “Hey, you need to start breathing slowly,” because that almost always has the opposite effect. We have to find ways to be kind of sneaky about it, including just breathing alongside them audibly so that the child can hear it.
3. Speak calmly
This is a really tough one, especially in difficult situations, but you should use a very slow, low and intentional voice. If you start yelling, if your tone is really high and you're talking really fast and you're mad, then that child is going to feel really upset and amped up, too. Then you’re both just dysregulated, which doesn’t help the difficult situation. So think about it like, how can you give your child an audible sort of hug? You use a slow speaking voice and a low tone.
4. Be aware of your body language
Body language is super important. In order to be really open, you might have your palms up almost like you're ready for a hug, which is really open and inviting. You don't want to be closed off like with your arms crossed while your child's having a really tough time. You want to really be open and inviting.
5. Try grounding yourself
You want to work on grounding, which is just being in the here and now. There's a lot of different grounding techniques, but one that I recommend is to name:
Five things you can see
Four things you can feel or touch
Three things you can hear
Two things you can smell
One good thing about yourself
The order doesn’t particularly matter, the point is to look at what's here, what's now, how can we be present now?
6. Do more, say less
It's easy to want to talk through a situation really, really thoroughly with a kid, but usually when they are dysregulated, they can't take anything in. So we just want to be there for them. Maybe we're just walking alongside the child, maybe we're just giving them a hug. Maybe we're just breathing. But less is more in these situations because when a child is upset, talking usually does not help very much.
7. Talk about it later
Lastly, we want to give the child opportunities for practice both in these dysregulated states and outside of them. The above steps are great for when you’re in the heat of the moment; but then we also want to talk outside of those moments too, and maybe revisit the situation an hour later when they finally calm down. That way you can talk about it with them and they’ll actually be able to focus, hear, and learn from you.
Call Metro Therapy for a Consultation
Just remember that what works can vary a lot from person to person, and it's up to you to adapt yourself and know what works for your child and for yourself to make long-term progress. I hope some of these tips have been helpful. If your child has any challenges with difficult situations and managing their emotions you can always give Metro Therapy a call at (763) 333-9547 to request a free consultation, and we’ll be happy to help.
