Supporting Self-Regulation

Measurement of the children’s self-regulation

The Checklist of Independent Learning Development (CHILD) 3-5 was designed by researchers at Cambridge University as a teacher self-report tool to measure children’s self-regulation in the Early Years.

The 22 statements contained within it represent behaviours and abilities which most clearly identify the development of self-regulation in this age group. Pre-school teachers are asked to indicate the extent to which the child has demonstrated each capability over recent weeks, and to give an example of an observed behaviour illustrating this capability where it has been seen.

It provides useful information to the teacher, indicating where self-regulation support can most usefully be focused, and indicates the level of self-regulation achieved by the child and progress made since the last assessment (see: Whitebread, 2020).

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Supporting Self-Regulation

• Co-regulation strategies – Co-regulation is a necessary strategy to support the learner to be able to identify and understand exactly what it is they need to regulate. Calming techniques which can be modelled by parents and practitioners include breathing exercises, the ‘Incredible 5-Point Scale’, The Interoception Curriculum, visual tools, use of self-regulatory items or physical activities, and access to safe spaces.

• Labelling emotions through play – By adopting emotion labelling into daily practice, parents and practitioners can create a nurturing environment where emotions are acknowledged and validated. These ideas from Mindful Little Minds offer ways to help children learn about and process emotions through play:

Emotions Charts: Place a feelings chart on your wall so your child can show you how they feel next time they become frustrated, or angry or sad. When children are overwhelmed by emotion, speaking becomes difficult. Having a feelings chart up on your wall keeps lines of communication open for children during these times and also provides the child with a less confronting way to communicate with us how they feel.

Feelings Cards: Feelings Cards are a versatile tool for teaching emotions. You might like to play a game of feelings snap, or feelings memory with your cards. You could choose a card at random and ask your child to find that emotion in the book you’re reading. You could play feelings charades – take turns acting out the emotion on the card and have the other players try to guess what it is. Or you can simply use them as discussion prompts – when was the last time your child felt that emotion? How did they behave? How did their body feel? What can they do next time they feel this way?

Feelings Playdough Mats: Use this resource to help your child link emotions with facial expressions. What does angry look like? What does happy look like? What does sad look like? You could then take things a step further and talk about WHY someone might feel sad, or angry or happy. Helping children understand that feelings are linked to events and do not occur randomly is very important.

Feelings Puzzles: Help children match the name of the emotion to the face. This can lead to discussions about how to identify different emotions in others, as well as what those emotions look and feel like in your child’s own body.

Feelings Bingo: This is a fun way to build awareness of emotions and to open up a discussion about your child’s own emotions and experiences. Build emotional literacy by playing it as it is, or take it a step further: every time you call out an emotion, ask the players to describe a time when they experienced that emotion.