Welcome to "The Regulated Child" Online Course

Welcome to The Regulated Child. This is the opportunity for you to stop, take time to reflect and deepen your understanding of why your child responds to everyday situations in the way that they do, and how you can strengthen your relationship with your child to create positive, successful routines.

I have created this programme to be as flexible as possible to fit in with your busy life! The programme consists of 31 videos, an Information Book and a Thinking Space Book. Each video lasts between 5 and 15 minutes and links up with a corresponding chapter in the Information Book and a reflection point in the Thinking Space Book. These resources are designed to be used together to allow you to get the most from the programme.

Download your Thinking Space Booklet and the Course Book.

We are now going to look through a new lens. It's not about us controlling our child's behaviour but responding to their needs. It's about us taking a step back, looking more closely making small changes in what we do and say and using the power of our relationship to bring about long-term change.

Considering reducing and changing how we use consequences might be a scary thought. After all, consequences are the main tool that we've got in our box about our child's behaviour right.? Wrong. Let’s look at it more closely. By changing how we describe consequences, changes how we think about them and how to use them. Let’s stop using the word consequences and instead think of logical responses.

Structure and boundaries do not equate to rigidity. Life is unpredictable therefore we need to have the capacity for flexibility. Depending on the context, how our child is feeling, how we are feeling and potential stressors that might be around, we need to be able to adapt, change and be flexible.

There are three key things to consider when reflecting on our child's behaviour.

We all have a unique window of tolerance. When our child is inside their window of tolerance, they feel safe, secure and connected. Being inside this window feels great, it feels like a place of endless possibilities and exciting adventures, a place where they can learn, explore, and have fun. It also allows them to tolerate feelings and situations that might otherwise be uncomfortable and opens the ability to reflect on the past and think about the future.

All behaviours are driven by an inner, unmet need. Unlike feeling hungry or thirsty, our child is not conscious of these internal needs. As parents, if we get better at noticing the signals, which tend to be communicated through behaviour, we can figure out what is going on for our children and respond in a way that meets their needs.

What we experience as our child’s behaviour, is their body’s response to stress. We view stress as something to be avoided but in fact, it can be positive and we need a tolerable amount of stress to mobilise and stay alert. If we didn't have stress hormones pumping around our body, we would never be activated to do things we need to do or be focused on important events in our lives such as sitting a test or attending an interview.

Behaviour is really emotive. It brings out the best and the worst of us as parents. Just when we think that we’ve cracked it and we’re moving out of a tricky phase, a curve ball hits us from behind and we’re right back in the eye of the storm.

This Regulated Child is based on recent findings in neuroscience and research about how our child's body and brain respond to stress. We're going to explore how our child's brain develops, how information gets from their external environment into their brain and how this impacts their responses, which is the behaviour that we see.

Wouldn’t it be great if we knew how our child was going to respond to a situation before it happened, or if they were always consistent in their responses?

Our child’s development is sequential and all children develop at different stages. This is obvious in relation to their physical development. We wouldn’t expect our children to run before they could walk. But when it comes to their emotional development or the development of ‘softer’ skills such as taking turns, delaying gratification or coping with disappointment we tend to group our children by age and not stage.

Our child is not just a body or a brain. They are both. The body and the brain are connected and work together on a constant looping system. This is called our child's nervous system. Our child's nervous system is constantly taking information through the senses from the outside world, into their body, and the information is then fed to the brain. The brain interprets this information, and then feeds it back to the body, telling it how to react and respond.

Sometimes the most difficult aspect of parenting a child who regularly feels distressed and displays dysregulated behaviours is the unpredictability.

Let's delve a little deeper into survival responses and what that might look like for our child.

When our child is dysregulated we tend to describe it as a tantrum or a meltdown. But let's think about what is happening at this point. Using their behaviour as signals we know that they are now functioning in their ‘downstairs brain’.

We can also use our knowledge of the senses and how our child responds to stimuli as a way of helping their nervous system stay in balance and reduce the likelihood of our child becoming distressed. We can do this by providing our child with a sensory diet. This isn’t a conventional food diet but more like creating a recipe of sensory experiences that prevents their brain from tipping into survival responses.

Our babies come into the world ready to connect.

Let’s start with playfulness, or more specifically, reciprocal playfulness. Being playful ignites the relational, fun parts of our child’s brain and helps us to connect. We need to consider this as reciprocal. Is our child in the right emotional state to bounce off of our playfulness or have they tipped too far into their stress responses and need to regain their sense of safety and connection first?

Acceptance is about accepting how your child is feeling physically and emotionally, where their physiological state is at any given time. Not where we expect them to be.

Looking beyond our child’s behaviour and being curious about what might be going on for our child is important.

Empathy is the ability to share someone else's feelings or experiences by having the ability to “walk in their shoes.” Our child was not born with this skill. They learn to be empathic by experiencing empathy from the adults around them.

A key capability that our children need to acquire to manage well at home, school and in the community, is self-regulation. Self-regulation is the ability to regulate our emotions and stress responses, be flexible and adapt to our surroundings and have the ability to predict and plan to achieve daily goals.

As well-regulated adults, we are constantly planning and reviewing. It keeps us focused and on track and allows us to achieve everything that we need to 34 achieve throughout the day.

As parents, we want our children to develop the ability to regulate their stress responses and impulse control when we are not around to co-regulate with them. By following a simple, collaborative framework throughout everyday routines, we can be more proactive with our children in enabling them to predict and plan for successful outcomes.

Self-regulation is self-talk. It's that little voice in our head that coaches us every minute of every day.

Scripts are not about becoming a robot, churning out repetitive language that feels uncomfortable and lacks compassion. They are about us being thoughtful in what we say and how we say it.

Even as well-regulated adults, we sometimes require visual support to help us, whether it’s a written list, a screenshot on our phone or using a map to get around. Sometimes just talking things through and trying to hold onto the information isn’t enough. Our children are no different, in fact as their “upstairs brain” is still under construction, they have a greater need for visual support.

This programme is all about looking beyond our child’s behaviour, using what we see as clues to help us understand what might be going on for our child and what they need to soothe and regulate their nervous system.

Everything that we have explored throughout this programme does not just apply to our child but also applies to us.