Self-Regulation: What Parents need to Know to Help Their Child Succeed
By Maria Willner
Remember back to when you were a child. What type of parenting strategies did your parents turn to? Or, what types of parenting strategies are you using today?
There are a variety of parenting strategies with benefits and downfalls of each. We all know that authoritative parent that lays down the law. There is also that over the top supportive parent that will let anything slide. But which is better? The truth is you need a balance of both styles in order to help a child develop valuable self-regulation strategies.
Every parent wants their child to succeed in academics and in their social lives. Self-regulation is the ability to pay attention, keep information in working memory, and prevent inhibiting behaviors that keep people from accomplishing goals. There are many ways a child can learn to better self-regulate. That could be from:
Their parents
Mindful activities
Yoga, in and out of the classroom
Researcher Andrea M. Spruijt says that "parents who were more supportive, were less intrusive, and asked more open-ended questions had children with better inhibitory control" (2018). This means that when parents frequently kept an open mind and asked their children questions, they would benefit by displaying impulse control and staying focused on the task in front of them. Also, parents that were intrusive in their child's' daily lives saw an increase in behaviors that keep children from succeeding. An example of this can be found in the common phrase helicopter parent. This is where parents are actively trying to control every aspect of their child’s life.
There are many strategies that can help a child be successful and acquire skills that are helpful throughout their lives. Some of these strategies include mindfulness activities and introducing yoga into the child’s daily life. Mindfulness is the behavior of bringing your attention to yourself and your body, leaving problems to the side. This can be an act of meditation. There is a wide variety of yoga and mindfulness activates for all ages of children in the book, Mindfulness and Yoga Skills for Children and Adolescents by Barbara Neiman.
Yoga is a great tool when teaching children (more specifically, ages 3 to 5) how to settle down and calm the nervous system. A couple of yoga activities that are popular in the preschool classroom include sensory yoga. This is when children sit in a circle and mirror the teacher's yoga pose while using some type of sensory item, a ball or a textured object. Strategies that help a child who is struggling can be just giving that child a task. This could be sitting next to the teacher as a special helper. This lets the child feel important and redirects their energy.
For parents who have older children and are looking for something to do outside the classroom, a no-cell meal is a good activity for the whole family. That includes everyone at the table or even making the meal together with all electronics turned off. This is a great way to turn off distractions and be in the moment. It is also a good activity because there are clear starting and ending points. People with teenagers know that they cannot go forever without the phone, but they can survive one meal.
There are a lot of ways to keep your child on track and help foster good habits. Whether that be how you act toward your child or the activities that your child engages in. All ages of children should be included. It is important that we don’t forget that self-regulation is something that can always be improved upon, even in adults!
References
ACT: A parenting program by the American Psychological Association. Parenting Styles. (June, 2017). Retrieved from:.APA.org.
Intrusive parenting: How psychological control affects children and adolescents. (2001). Adolescence, 36(143), 615-616.
Neiman, B. (2015). Mindfulness and Yoga skills for Children and Adolescents: 115 activities for trauma, self-regulation, special needs and anxiety. Retrieved from: https://ebookcentral.proquest.com
Spruijt, A.. Dekker, C., Ziermans, T., & Swaab, H. (2018). Attentional Control and Executive Functioning in School-Aged Children: Linking self-regulation and parenting strategies. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 166, 340–359. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jecp.2017.09.004
Wood, J. (2018). Self-Regulation May Be Critical to Early Language & Literacy. Psych Central. Retrieved on February 18, 2020, from https://psychcentral.com/news/2018/05/26/self-regulation-may-be-critical-to-early-language-literacy/135670.html