Together We Thrive

Your words and your actions matter so much in making emotional regulation an important part of your child’s day, that they see you being intentional in keeping yourself functioning at the just right alertness level for your activities over the course of the day. By commenting on your self-regulation, it lets your child know it is something we all do, often without even thinking about It, like when we stretch to wake ourselves up or deep breathe to calm ourselves, and we all have our preferred ways to self-regulate. When you show your child how to regulate their emotions through their senses, you’re teaching them a skill that will serve them for the rest of their life. You’re showing them that it’s okay to feel big emotions, and that there are healthy ways to navigate them.

Talking about how your body is feeling in the morning, for example by identifying if your engine feels sluggish and needs refuelling with crunchy cereal and a cold smoothie or perhaps a brisk walk before you go to work normalises self-regulation as part of your day. Show your child how feeling sluggish looks in your body before you take action with a sensory experience followed by the changes it brings to your body to make it feel bright and alert.

You can build sensory regulation into yours and your child’s day through co-regulation with shared sensory experiences such as a bike ride together to school or cuddling up together to read a book to calm before bedtime. Regulate through sensory play with your child such as a wheelbarrow walk, perhaps chewing gum on the drive home from school or sitting under a weighted toy whilst doing homework. Comment on how you think your child’s engine is running, fast or slow, and offer them some suggestions for sensory play or activities to change their engine speed to the just right level. For example, if you notice your child seems slow and low on energy before commencing homework you could comment to them that their “engine looks slow and sleepy, how about we put on some fun music and do some jumping jacks together or play a game of hopscotch to rev your engine to a just right level for homework?”

Preparations for moving into potentially overwhelming environments can be made prior to the event thereby improving the impact of the sensory sensitivities on their nervous systems. This can be done by being mindful as to how you together construct their day with built in highs and lows by scheduling sensory input into their day. Your child learns to control how they want to experience their day rather than being subjected to uncomfortable and possibly what feels to them threatening sensory experiences.

This may look like washing their face with cold water when they wake up, a crunchy muesli and fruit juice for breakfast, cleaning teeth with an electric tooth-brush, riding a bike to school, pre-arranging with the teacher to run a message such as carrying a box of books to another teacher prior to lesson transition time, crunchy fruit for recess and an active game of handball prior to returning to class, then continued throughout the day with carefully planned sensory activities to stay regulated.

Talk with your child’s teacher about ways you can work together to help keep your anxious or reactive child emotionally regulated at school. Together you can build a sensory schedule around their school day to ensure your child remains calmer, more focused and alert for engaging in problem-solving and critical thinking, more connected with their peers, and more emotionally regulated for a day intentionally set up for them to excel in transitioning between tasks, learning, play and socialising to shine as their best self.

The benefits of self-regulation extend far beyond that of transitioning, learning and play at school. Teaching self-regulation to your child is gifting them with a life-long skill and creating a positive family dynamic for you all to enjoy. Join us for part two, where we’ll explore sensory regulation impacts on families at home.

Sensory Tuning, Helping kids sense their value