Helping Your Child Learn Self-Regulation

Self-Regulation in Children – A Key Executive Function Skill

Academic potential will not be fully realized until executive functioning skills develop. While the main signs of delayed executive function development often involve organization and planning, self-regulation is a critical skill for children.

Self-regulation refers to the ability to manage thoughts, emotions, and behaviors to achieve goals. There are three key types of self-regulation critical for strong executive function:

• Emotional Self-Regulation – managing emotions such as frustration, anxiety, and excitement so as not to derail thinking or behavior
• Behavioral Self-Regulation – controlling impulses and acting in socially appropriate and goal-directed ways.
• Cognitive Self-Regulation – monitoring and adjusting thinking while learning.

Together, these self-regulation skills enable the core components of executive function:

• Inhibitory control

• Working memory

• Cognitive flexibility

• Planning and organization

• Goal-directed persistence

For most children, self-regulation starts with managing emotions, then behavior, and finally cognitive self-regulation. This article reviews the steps your child needs to go through to learn self-regulation and what you can do to help the process.

Deal With Learning Delays First

Executive function is a higher-level thinking skill that only develops once your child has mastered core cognitive skills – working memory, attention, processing, and sequencing.

If your child has a cognitive skill delay, seek out an individualized learning intervention first. Once cognitive skills are mastered and automatic, your child can think while listening and think while reading. This freed-up mind space creates room for planning and organizing.

Another aspect of mastering cognitive skills is that faster processing effectively slows the world down for your child, giving them more time to think and react. This is another way that improved cognitive skills promote executive function.

Gemm Learning provides adaptive Fast ForWord software at home to target the cognitive skill gaps that cause most learning delays.

How To Help A Child Regulate Their Emotions

Many children learn to self-regulate naturally. Listening and reading are automatic and easy for them, so their minds are free to observe how others react to their behavior and how their own impulsive behavior adversely affects outcomes.

Children who don’t process language at a natural speed and therefore need to concentrate to keep up don’t have the same bandwidth. And so the mental space to observe, notice, and learn from impulsive behavior is not there.

The Mirroring Technique

The first step in learning self-regulation of emotions is to teach children to observe and notice the consequences of impulsivity, how it can upset others, and how it gets in the way of their intended or desired results.

This is achieved not by teaching your child, but by amplifying the feedback signals that children need to develop skills naturally. The steps are to observe, notice, and learn. This is self-realization.

This signal magnification is known as the mirroring technique, which is used extensively in ABA therapy for children with autism. Mirroring involves reflecting back to a child what they are experiencing — emotionally, physically, or behaviorally — in a calm, nonjudgmental way. This helps the child:

• Recognize and label their emotions
• Feel seen and validated, which fosters emotional security and openness to learning
• Recognize how  others might feel about their actions, and the link between feelings and behavior

For instance, when your child is upset because a friend bumped into him on a trampoline, the parent:

1. Observes and names what the child might be feeling:
   

   “You seem really upset right now.”

2. Validates the emotion without trying to fix it immediately:
   

   “It makes sense that you’d feel that way, your friend stepped on your foot, that must hurt.”

3. Provides prompts for self-reflection
   

   “Was your friend angry when he bumped into you, do you think he meant it?  Or was he happy, and so it was an accident?”

Over time, this consistent reflection teaches the child to:

• Tune into their internal state
• Look around to better understand the situation
• Recognize feelings and feel more in control of their responses

Why It’s Effective

This technique supports development in:

• Emotional intelligence

• Self-regulation

• Empathy (as children learn to notice others’ emotions)

It’s widely used in therapeutic contexts, especially in approaches like reflective parenting or the guidance approach for preschoolers.

However, nothing beats being able to add color to a situation for your child in the moment. Again, not teaching or helping them get over it. Instead, by staying in the moment, validating your child’s reaction, and then prompting them to look around or look within and recognize it’s all in their hands to resolve, to self-regulate.

The Tools Your Child Needs To Self-Regulate

This may seem like a long list, but in reality, once your child recognizes the value of self-regulation and how it helps them excel in areas they care about, their amazing brains will take over and develop these tools naturally.

1. Emotional Awareness. Discussed above.

2. Self-Talk. This can be modeled for your child as a calming mechanism (“I need a break,” “I can handle this”) and as a way to keep learning moving forward (“Do I understand this?” “What should I do next?”). Reinforce that feelings and not understanding are OK, but behaviors and actions are choices.

3. Practice Executive Function Skills. Build cognitive skills like attention and impulse control by playing games, using visual schedules, and modeling how to break projects into steps. Gemm Learning offers a program to develop executive function skills.

4. Foster Autonomy Through Choice and Responsibility. Two ways to build ownership over behavior through choice are: (1) create regular chores, and (2) name and praise positive behavior.

5. Create a Predictable and Supportive Environment. Avoid over-reacting to shutdowns, create consistent routines, and clearly explain expectations. Model calm and measured behavior.

Self-regulation is a skill set that matures over time and often continues into adolescence. Frequent practice, patient adult modeling, and positive reinforcement are crucial to helping children internalize these strategies.

The Role of Learning Interventions

Reading is a challenge; executive function is not easy either. So it’s not surprising that children enter middle school with gaps in one or both. However, while these skills will continue to mature in middle and high school, time becomes a premium.

Inefficient learning slows everything down and adds pressure to your child’s school life as he falls behind.

At this point, a learning intervention has real value. Gemm Learning offers learning interventions designed to provide a one-time reset, address the underlying source of difficulty, support self-regulation, and accelerate age-appropriate executive function skills.

If you are unsure where your child stands, take our 5-minute screening of learning issues and risk factors.