If you are a parent or teacher or a caregiver I am sure you’ve experienced a number of signs when a child is being overloaded by stress, for example when a child:

- has a lot of trouble paying attention, or even responding to his name

- has a lot of trouble doing simplest things

- is very crabby when wakes up in the morning, or never seems to be happy during the day

- argues a lot, seems to want to opose our wishes, however reasonable these might be

- gets angry a lot, or too angry, or resorts to hurtful word or even violence

is highly impulsive and easily distracted

- it is difficult for the children to: sit still, go to bed, get a long with other children, have any positive interests, turn off the TV or stop playing video game.

 

Aren’t you familiar with those situations? I’m sure you are.

 

Everywhere you turn you can come across teachers or parents talking about the importance of enhancing children’s ability to self- regulate. But you should ask yourself what that exactly means.

 

There is a tendency to think that “self-regulation” is just a similar term to of self-control. It is not true. It is said that self-control is a sort of muscle: internal strength to resist the impulse. It’s important ability to deal with the task and the temptations that they need to struggle with everyday life. It is not the same as self regulation because it is a different way of understanding why people might have problems with self-control and what we can do to help them.

 

Students may behave the way we want because of they are afraid of punishment or to obtain some award, it’ not the same thing as the student who wants to behave this way.

 

For a long time idea of teaching and learning was that you could get what you want from your students (or your own children) by using punishments and rewards. We, as adults or teachers, used to play the role of disciplinarian, but it doesn’t work for a long time. Self- regulation represents an attempt to understand the causes of problematic behaviour  and then migrate those causes, rather then trying to extinguish the behaviour. Simply speaking sel-reg refers how efficiently and effectively a student deals with the stressors and then recover it.

How to deal with the stressors in classroom environment, how to make students eager to accomplish some task or learn new information without using any punishments and rewards.

It could be the successful way of teaching without any grades or to make students interested in dealing with the tasks.

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Teachers can do a lot of work to lower the stress level of their students (and themselves) and this course is to propose what to do to make students’ learning more effective and efficient without forcing them to study. What to do with children who are constantly distracted and those who aren’t energetic enough to focus on the lesson.

 

What can I do to support students in learning how to self-regulate?

What can I change in my environment to reduce children's stress levels?

How can I support children in recognizing when they are under and over- stimulated?

How can I help children recognize what sorts of activities help them to become calmly focuses and alert what activities the need limit?