If you live or work with children, you’ve likely learned all about self-regulation. But you may not be as familiar with the concept of co regulation. Read on to learn more and to download the free handout!
While we often think of self-regulation as a skill (or set of skills) that a child demonstrates independently, the ability to self-regulate actually depends largely on guidance and positive interactions with caregivers and other adults in a child’s life. Supportive interactions between a child and an adult allow the child to regulate their emotions, behavior, thoughts, and state of arousal. This is known as co regulation.
What is Coregulation?
From the time a child is born, co-regulatory relationships with caregivers provide the basis and foundation for the development of self-regulation skills. Obviously, co-regulation is most significant during infancy, when a child relies almost completely on caregivers to regulate their arousal states.
However, coregulation interactions remain an integral part of self-regulation throughout much of the lifespan.
Co regulation strategies are typically broken down into three main categories:
-Building supportive, trusting relationships
-Creating a safe, structured, and stable environment
-Specific teaching and modeling of self-regulation skills
These are common strategies that are used for different age groups:
Common Co Regulation Techniques for Infants:
Attending to physical needs, providing calming sensory input, building consistent routines, providing physical and emotional comfort.
Common Co Regulation Strategies for Toddlers:
Introducing and modeling rules and self-regulation skills (e.g. waiting, turn taking), helping to identify emotions, continuing to provide physical and emotional comforts, structuring routines and schedules (e.g. mealtimes, nap times, bedtimes).
Common Co Regulation Strategies for Preschoolers:
Modeling and teaching more complex self-regulation skills and rules (e.g. voice volume, manners), introducing calming strategies and techniques, structuring the environment to support self-regulation, identifying emotions and discussing others’ emotions.
Common Co Regulation Techniques for Elementary school:
Providing clear boundaries and consequences, exploring more complex emotions and coaching through complex social emotional situations, exploring perspective-taking, modeling and supporting perseverance, supporting problem solving and flexibility.
Common Co Regulation Strategies for Adolescence:
Forming close, supportive caregiver-child relationships; balancing opportunities for independence with close monitoring of choices and safety; providing support for complex social situations; providing support for self-reflection.
Common Co Regulation Strategies in Young adulthood:
Giving guidance for social situations and support for problem-solving, being a source of empathy, coaching for coping strategies and stress management, providing perspective from a more experienced point of view.
Things to keep in mind about co regulation…
-Co-regulation involves attending to a child’s cues, demonstrating responsiveness to their changing needs, and providing more or less support as needed based on the situation and the child’s cues. Coregulation includes facial expressions, tone of voice, physical touch, and timely responsiveness to the child’s needs.
-Children’s individual differences will dictate their co regulation needs. This includes temperament, personality, sensory processing needs, neurodivergence, exposure to trauma, developmental delays, and other aspects of the individual.
-Acknowledging these unique aspects of the individual child is of critical importance in building trusting relationships that allow for co regulation.
-It is important for caregivers and professionals who work with children to practice self-regulation strategies and techniques themselves, both to model the strategies and to ensure that they maintain a regulated state while supporting children with challenging behaviors.
Other Resources about Co Regulation and Self-Regulation
Learn more about co regulation from the Child Mind Institute.
This practice brief from the UNC Frank Porter Graham Institute is a great resource on co regulation for kids.
Find all of our best Games and Activities for Self-Regulation.
Check out our free printable Self-Regulation Red Flags Checklist.
This fun, interactive (and free printable!) emotional regulation activity for kids is a great way for preschoolers and elementary school kids to learn to identify their emotions!
And try this other free printable emotions activity for understanding and identifying emotions.