Emotional Regulation Builds Resilience

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Emerging literature in the resilience research has a particular focus on encouraging children to adopt strategies that facilitate emotional regulation.

Each child’s ability to monitor and regulate their emotions is unique and is indicative of their personal intrinsic ability to adopt self-regulatory mechanisms and apply them to create solutions. So when children are feeling emotions such as sadness, frustration and anger, it can be useful to observe what techniques children use to firstly manage their emotions and also what strategies they apply to solve the problem. Now, children are not immediate experts with self-regulation techniques and obtaining the skills for self-regulation takes time and practice. So it is important that mentors are available to guide the children with positive, peer mediated assistance.

According to Vohs & Baumeister, self-regulation is characterised by the efforts of humans to regulate or alter their own psychological states or behaviour and voluntarily inhibit, activate and change attention or behaviour.

There are many ways that we can teach children to firstly practice, and then apply emotional regulation. To discover what they are, simply click here to read the full article by The School For Living founder, Sarah Tillott.

Teaching Children How To Deal With Emotion

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At The School For Living we provide children with the confidence and skills they need to handle complex emotional situations.

Emotions are very complicated, especially for a young children. It’s difficult teaching kids about emotions because it’s an abstract concept. It’s hard to describe how it feels to be sad, scared, or excited, however it’s crucial to begin teaching kids about their emotions as early as possible since their feelings affect every choice they make.

Name Their Feelings

Teach your child basic emotion words such as happy, angry, sad and scared. Older kids can benefit from learning more complex emotion words such as frustrated, disappointed, and nervous. A great way to help kids learn about emotions is to discuss how various characters in books or TV shows may feel. Pause to ask, “How do you think he feels right now?” Then, discuss the various feelings the character may be experiencing and the reasons why.

Talk About Feelings

Show kids how to use emotion words in their daily vocabulary. Model how to express emotions by taking opportunities to share your feelings. Say, “I feel sad that you don’t want to share your toys with your sister today. I bet she feels sad too.” Each day, ask your child, “How are you feeling today?” With young children, consider using a simple chart with smiley faces to help them pick a feeling and then discuss it together.

Model Healthy Choices

If you tell your child to use their words when they’re angry but then they witness you slam the door during an argument, your words won’t be effective. Model healthy ways to deal with uncomfortable emotions.

Teach Coping Strategies

Kids need to learn that just because they feel angry doesn’t mean they can hit someone. Rather, they need to learn anger management skills so they can resolve conflict peacefully. Proactively teach your child how to deal with uncomfortable emotions. Encourage your child to take a self-timeout. Encourage them to go to their room when they get upset. This can help them calm down before they act out on their emotions.

Welcome To The School For Living!

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Welcome to The School For Living’s new website!

About The School For Living

The School For Living offers contemporary resilience & wellbeing programs for primary school teachers, saving you time while delivering a highly engaging program.

The program, Dusty & Friends, builds resilience and social/emotional wellbeing in children using strength-based approaches.

Dusty & Friends has been developed using evidence-based principles, aligning with the Personal Development, Health and Physical Education K-10 goals.

Our Mission

The School For Living aims to enrich our wider communities by caring for resilient children, adolescents, and adults who develop into high-functioning individuals.

The School For Living achieves this by delivering evidence-based resilience programs nationally across multiple educational, sporting disciplines, and corporate industries, which establish, apply, and sustain high levels of resilience.

The Founder – Sarah Tillott

Dr. Sarah Tillott is a mother, a researcher, and teacher, and has university qualifications in the areas of health and education.

Sarah is a resilience researcher who has created a series of innovative resilience resources that have demonstrated behaviour change as measured by her PhD.