Teach your child to self-regulate to decrease negative behaviors

If you have ever said or thought "I don't know how to calm my child down!" you are not alone.

I want you to know that there ARE ways you can calm your child down and decrease the negative behaviors you might be experiencing. 

I want to invite you to my FREE webinar, Beyond the Behavior! I'm going to teach you how to understand, respond to and prevent your child's negative behaviors.

When it comes to your child's behavior, it all starts with being proactive with putting the right supports in place. It pays to be proactive!

The stressors of the day are most likely weighing heavily on your child. On top of that, they most likely struggle with self regulating to decrease certain feelings that provoke intense reactions (AKA negative behaviors).

To ease these potential reactions, you can proactively help your child develop emotional regulation skills. 

Emotional regulation is the ability to recognize certain overwhelming feelings and make a positive choice to calm those feelings. This is a really difficult task for someone with autism who experience bigger emotional reactions to their environment as well as a hard time moving past their emotions. 

When your child becomes overwhelmed with their environments and the demands put on them, they lose control of their actions, thoughts and feelings. This often results in negative behaviors. 

So, how do we proactively help your child self-regulate???

Structure their day as much as possible. This starts with a visual schedule. Your child thrives on and craves predictability. The visual schedule is going to give them that predictability and assure them that there are no surprises for the day. This will reduce anxiety almost immediately. 

When planning your child's day on their visual schedule, you'll want to build in sensory breaks throughout their day. Engaging in sensory activities is a great and fun way to help your child regulate their emotions and feelings. This is usually a time full of fun, engaging activities that your child will really like! Your sensory breaks will be designed based on your child's needs. Some ideas for sensory activities include swinging, bouncing on an exercise ball, wall pushups, hopscotch, deep pressure activities, jumping rope, and balancing on a pretend balance beam. I would recommend having a visual schedule for this time. Put a picture of all of the sensory activities you want your child to engage in during this time. Remember, your child responds better when visuals are present!

It's also a good idea to have an in-the-moment plan for when your child loses controls of emotions, thoughts and feelings. Get a list of 3-5 activities that calm your child down and create visuals for these activities. Put all of these visuals on one page to make a "calm down choice card." Let your child chose which activity to engage in or have them complete all in the moment of a meltdown. These activities could be blowing bubbles, bounce on a ball, go on a walk, do jumping jacks, or whatever might calm your child down in the moment. This process will be trial and error until you find activities that work in the moment to calm your child down. The goal with this step is to eventually teach them to grab this "calm down choice card" on their own when they get upset to engage in these activities independently. Independence is the goal with every skill or activity!

When you teach your child to self-regulate, you're going to help him or her become more aware of their own actions, thoughts and feelings. They are going to learn to take back control of their actions, thoughts and feelings. 

Don't forget to claim your spot for my free behavior webinar!