Enhancing Self-Regulation in Children: Strategies for Engagement from Birth to 4 Years

1. www.self-regulation.ca and Education Meet; Start Early/Change Lives

2. Birth to 18 months 18 months to 4 years OUR QUERY TODAY What is our proactive and reactive engagement with children across this continuum? Do we have the capacity to disrupt otherwise predictable trajectories?

3. Values/Beliefs and our Shared Work • There are no throw-away kids and no throw-away schools • The overwhelming majority of the adults in our system come to work wanting to do the best job they can do • We need to work smarter together rather than harder alone • “Skill and Will” are not fixed assets. They can be influenced and increased by strategic action • Each school is in a different place in its development, level of success and sense of efficacy.

4. Self Regulation: A Working Definition “Different groups talk about the importance of the concept of self-regulationas it relates to their field. So we encounter everything from ‘emotion-regulation’ to ‘self-control’ to ‘self-regulated learning’. But the underlying or core concept of self-regulation refers to “the manner in which the brain maintains physiological stability through complex feedback mechanisms.” Dr. Stuart Shanker

5. What is Self-Regulation? How effectively and efficiently a child deals with a stressor and then recovers from the effort • Ever time a child has a stressor the brain responds with processes that consume energy • This is followed by restorative processes to recover from this energy expenditure

6. Driving Analogy helpful for understanding the subtle adjustments in energy expenditure involved in regulating attention • To maintain a speed of 100 km/hr we are constantly pressing and easing up on the gas depending on the state of the road, incline, wind speed etc. • Learning how to drive involves learning how to smoothly adjust the amount of gas or braking required for the current conditions

7. Stress-Response Systems • Three core systems for responding to stress: • Social Engagement • Fight-or-Flight • Freeze There is a fourth, very worrying stage, dissociation, which is a last-ditch mechanism for dealing with excessive stress

8. The Self-Regulation Matrix Calm Focused Alert These are our kids…and each of us at one time or another.

9. Self-Regulation and Trauma • Working on self-regulation is especially important for children that have been traumatized, or raised by caregivers that have been traumatized • Shift from the Learning Brain to the Survival Brain • Chronic state of fight-or-flight, freeze, or even in some cases, dissociation • Chronic fight-or-flight is extremely energy expensive, reducing child’s ability to pay attention, inhibit impulses, regulate mood, co-regulate

10. Allostatic (Over-)Load Condition Too much stress result is can result in: • prolonged over-activation of SNS and/or PNS • inappropriate activation of SNS or PNS (i.e., in situations not warranting a heightened stress response) • Sudden transitions between emotions • diminished ability to return to baseline after activation of the stress response

11. Adaptive Calibration Model • Child’s stress system adapts to early life conditions • E.g., heightened stress results in heightened stress reactivity (HPA pathway) • Behaviors that might have been evolutionarily functional are poorly suited to learning environment • Possible to ‘recalibrate’ by creating safe and nurturing environments

12. Effects of Allostatic (Over-)Load • Disrupts brain development (e.g., hippocampus; HPA pathway) • Chronically hypo-aroused or hyper-aroused • Difficulty staying focused and alert • Poor interception/exteroception • Heightened impulsivity or numbing

13. Signs of Excessive Stress • Chronic hyper-arousal • Chronic hypo-arousal • Heightened stress reactivity • Increased sensitivity to pain (physical and emotional) • Reduced ability to regulate negative emotions • negative bias • reduced ability to read affect cues, show emotions • Reduced ability to hear human voice • Blunted reward system • Increased immune system problems

14. The Effects of Excessive Stress • heightened stress means child has to work much harder to pay attention • negative effects caused by falling further behind, being yelled at, having greater social problems, etc., exacerbate the drain on nervous system • leads to a chronic state of heightened anxiety

15. The Three Stages of Self-Regulation • Identify Stressors • Develop Self-Awareness (interoception and exteroception) • Develop self-regulating techniques, learning what to do to mitigate a stress response and what to avoid

16. A community of “learning detectives” (kids and adults) • Parent awareness and engagement • Influencing the shape of the day and the shape of the learning spaces • Progressive relationship with the medical profession and other agencies • Sharing the stories, celebrating the successes, one discovery and one self-regulating moment at a time Where to From Here? CSRI: Committing to a productive nexus between neuroscience and education

17. Join us on this learning journey via • The website: www.self-regulation.ca • The on-line book club started this fall • A staff study/action research group • Recommending articles for colleagues via the website • Watching for the launch of the on-line “Matrix” tool Catch the Wave www.self-regulation.ca Again, and again I was amazed at students’ positive response to having input/control in their own learning/behaviour – this inquiry changed this dramatically for my students.