Self-Regulation in Game ON

Game ON is a children’s book created to encourage resilience in our young ones.

Learn about self-regulation in Game ON below

Self-regulation and temperament control are large predictors of resilience and have been embedded as learning opportunities throughout Game ON. Within the story, Alex is encouraged several times to slow down, stop and reflect on his behaviour, in regard to his poor outcomes from emotional reactivity. From a role-model stance, Alex was designed to demonstrate low resilience and low emotional reactivity traits. Alex demonstrates this by displaying poor conflict resolution and anger management skills, which is exhibited by throwing tantrums, yelling and blaming others for his shortcomings, which are poor resilience behavioural traits. Through this behaviour, Alex reveals an inability to regulate his emotions and temperament. These shortcomings cause Alex to isolate his friends and hurt their feelings, while also demonstrating that Alex is unable to take responsibility for his actions. Such behaviours compromise interpersonal resilience. It is not until Alex is able to calm himself down using a breathing technique, as suggested by Dusty, that he can see (through a new perspective) how his behaviour has impacted his friends and he is able to operate through adaptive coping mechanisms. The strategies suggested by Dusty, such as breathing and walking away, enable a proactive, cognitive approach which promotes solution-focused outcomes and clear thoughts. There are several approaches children can adopt to help regulate emotions and temperament. Dusty provides one option in Game ON to help guide children to understand the importance of being calm when making choices and decisions to provoke better outcomes with a clearer perspective.