Co-regulation

When everyone is a bit overwhelmed, overstimulated, overloaded, we all need a little bit of help to calm down.

Some little people just need more co-regulation than others, particularly if they are more sensitive.

If a child has had something tricky to process, are uncomfortable, feeling frustrated for example, they will therefore need you more…… day and night.

An example of co-regulation:

A childs stress response could be triggered by something, a dog barking, broken banana (we’ve all been there), a snatched toy.

Because they don’t have the developmental maturity or cognitive ability to problem solve, rationalise, or logically reason, they need you to come and ‘bridge them back to calm’.

This is where co-regulation comes in. You hug, sing, rock, rub their back, use soothing words, and ultimately hold space for those feelings.

However….. you need to be calm and regulated yourself in order to co-regulate others and we are talking about real life…. this can be tough.

What can we do?

Just trying to be mindful of our own emotional state and acknowledging and normalising that there is always going to be situations that are stressful or triggering. once we can identify these, we can try to manage it.

We need to regularly check in with our own emotions and stress levels and ways we can support this could be:

• Take a moment… you will probably find that calming them is easier if you take one minute to calm yourself first.
• Think of Calm as being contagious.
• Taking time to pause in a busy day.
• Practice some deep belly breathing.
• Check in with another adult.
• Leaving the house, change of scenery and fresh air!
• Fuelling our bodies with nutritious food and plenty of water.