The Ins and Outs of Co-Regulation - Kelsey
Regulation has entered the mainstream as it buzzes about Tik Tok or if you're of a different generation, Instagram reels. You might have heard people regulating their nervous system by shaking their bodies, chanting, cold dips or meditating for hours on end. Maybe you have used movement breaks, sensory circuits, or mindfulness in your classroom.
So, is regulation something you do? What exactly are we regulating? How does being regulated feel? How do we do this for a classroom of learners?
The FNSB Whole Child team defines regulation as feeling your feelings, naming your feelings and taking care of your feelings. Feelings being the sensations you feel in your body or the emotions that are coming up for you. Regulation is a felt sense, not a behaviour or about being calm. It’s about being connected to your experience and authentically naming it. You can be regulated in any emotion, have you ever said you needed to take a walk during an argument rather than flipping the table? This is self-regulation at work.
We are not born with the ability to regulate ourselves. Think of newborns and how caregivers learn their different types of cries, this one for hunger, that one for a diaper change. The caregiver responds with a loving smile, a warm embrace and a soft voice, they take care of their little ones' needs and take time to connect with them afterwards. This is co-regulation and is how we develop self-regulation, by someone else lending us their regulated nervous system time and time again.
The ability to self-regulate is developed at around 25 for females and 30 for males, and it could take longer to develop for those with neurodiversity, developmental differences or those that have experienced trauma. It is therefore not developmentally appropriate to even expect a high school student to be able to self-regulate. In fact, puberty causes the brain to reorganize and now the adolescent learner needs as much co-regulation as a toddler!
How do we co-regulate a whole classroom? Luckily, co-regulation has a ripple effect. You co-regulate one or two and the impact extends to the other learners. You model self-regulation, and that can impact the regulation of your classroom too.
Here is a classroom teacher’s experience: I can feel the moment my nervous system tips into dysregulation. Sometimes it is because of all the sounds in the classroom, the smells (yuck), the fact that every learner is doing just about anything other than what I have asked them to do, add your own scenario to this list. That moment is when I can either feed the co-regulation or dysregulation, I am very versed at doing both! Regardless of the scenario, things will move toward regulation when I focus on that for myself, which can be a simple sentence (aloud or in my head) of “I am frustrated that things are not going the way I want.” I follow up with immediate self-compassion for feeling that way, it is valid and okay, then I do something to regulate, like breath in for 4 seconds and out for 6, or any other mindful strategy. Sometimes I even need to put those classroom noise cancelling headphones on, they are not just for the learners! Once I am regulated, I can attune to those around me with curiosity. Being regulated is not a guarantee that my learners will magically co-regulate with me, it guarantees that I will be more available to meet learners where they are at and still have energy at the end of the day for all the other people and things I love to connect with in my life.
What exactly is being co-regulated? We are regulating the learner’s arousal. Arousal is the just right state needed to meet the demands for the task at hand and is challenged by the brain’s capacity to meet the energy required. It's the level of alertness or intensity of response that an individual experiences, ranging from relaxed, mobilized to immobilized, and blended states. Autonomic Nervous System Diagram: ENGLISH | What is Polyvagal Theory?.
For learners, this involves developing self-awareness and strategies to adjust their energy and emotional state to be engaged in learning and to recover from overwhelming situations. Educators need to get curious about what level of energy the task at hand requires and ask what do the learners in front of you need to be engaged to complete the task. We support arousal through cognition (having a just right challenge), sensations (do they need movement or a quieter environment) and emotions (are we feeling curious and relaxed). Our brains need a state of balance between these three to access thinking, communication, connection to self and others, and make choices.
Learners are not just hearing and seeing what you are doing, they are also sensing you through your nervous system state.
We need to recognize and acknowledge that dysregulation will happen, and it is ok and needed. Emotions need to be felt in order to be regulated and we need adversity to grow resiliency as the capacity to develop lives here. There are many factors that impact learners that are out of our control. When we meet a learner in their dysregulation, by showing them that all feelings are valid and can be regulated. When we co-regulate with them, we regulate our own energy in their dysregulation, and this creates a sense of safety. When learners’ feel emotionally safe, they are more likely to co-regulate and engage in learning. We need to remember that all behaviour is an attempt to regulate, even aggression.
What can you start doing in your classroom tomorrow to support your learner's regulation?
Build up emotional vocabulary. By modelling emotional vocabulary and expanding from mad, sad, happy, disgust and scared we help grow learners’ self-awareness which then builds the foundation for self-regulation. How are you doing? Plutchik’s Wheel of Emotions
Connection to self comes in moments of being in flow states, this is when our mind is wandering, moments when we aren’t really thinking about anything. Flow state can occur in creative activities (dancing, playing music, art), engaged in physical activities (running, skiing, mountain biking, yoga), building and constructing, or being on the land and play!
Think aloud and model your self-regulation by sharing your thinking process of how stressors impact how you think, feel and relate to others, and how you deal with them in a good way.
Linking emotions to bodily sensations they feel in their bodies. Bodily maps of emotions | PNAS Emotion Sensation Feeling Wheel Handout by Lindsay Braman
When supporting a learner through dysregulation: vary the tone, volume and pitch of your voice and slow down your speech, use as little language as you can.
Share your experiences with your school team, there is a wealth of knowledge amongst your peers!
Reach out to the Whole Child team!