What Is Self-Regulation?
The College has an Educational Framework that focuses on five areas of development for our staff and our students. One of these areas focuses on the development of Self-Regulation. Self-Regulation is an important characteristic of effective learners and well as being integral to our social and emotional development. The modelling of Self-Regulation by both parents and staff to young people is important as it is a skill-set that is learned incrementally over time and develops only when the context supports it.
Self-regulation is the ability to understand and manage your behaviour and your reactions to feelings and things happening around you.
It includes being able to:
- Regulate reactions to emotions like frustration or excitement.
- Calm down after something exciting or upsetting.
- Focus on a task.
- Refocus attention on a new task.
- Control impulses.
- Learn behaviour that helps you get along with other people.
Why self-regulation is important
As your child grows, self-regulation will help her:
- Learn at school – self-regulation gives your child the ability to sit and listen in the classroom.
- Behave in socially acceptable ways – self-regulation gives your child the ability to control impulses.
- Make friends – self-regulation gives your child the ability to take turns in games, share toys and express emotions in appropriate ways.
- Become more independent – self-regulation gives your child the ability to make good decisions about her behaviour and learn how to behave in new situations with less guidance from you.
- Manage stress – self-regulation helps your child learn that she can cope with strong feelings and gives her the ability to calm herself down after getting angry.
(raisingchildren.net.au 2019)
In future articles we will continue to look at the development of self-regulation, helping your child to learn to self-regulate and how to manage and support students with problems self-regulating.
