Self-Regulation -- learned or just grown into?

Post Reply New Topic

I just watched a fantastic lecture by Russell Barkley -- one of the top ADHD researchers in the country. In it, he really drove home the 30% rule, where in terms of emotional control and self-regulation, a child with ADHD usually acts like one who is 30% younger (so a 6 yo has the control of a 4 yo, a 9 yo is like a 6 yo, and so on until they reach a stable level of control in the early 30's.) He makes a point that this is driven by neurology.

For purely ADHD kids, the research has shown that social skills classes are ineffective and do not generalize, unless they are done with the kids the child is going to school with, on the playground at school, focusing more on praising the use of social skills rather than teaching the of skills. (I have to assume that AS kids do have a knowledge deficit that social skills classes can help with.)

So my DS7 is really like a 4 years, 9 month kindergarten child who was mistakenly placed in a 1st grade class and has 1st grade academic and social demands on him. (His handwriting skill is about that of an early kindergartener, too.) Just how effective are the OT's "zones of regulation" lessons and IEP self-regulation goals going to be?

I'm curious to hear from parents of older kids -- do you think all the teaching about emotional regulation made a difference, or was it just the case that eventually your child's brain matured into having more self-control?

My son is the same age as yours, so I do hope you do not mind my input.

I think it is a little of both. My son acts about half his age. He is 7 and acts between 3 and 4. I do think a "light bulb" has to come on in his head, but if I recognize that, and do not get upset at slow progress things can improve a little bit. What I mean is, is that you can make progress based on where your child is, but a child who is emotionally 3, IMO, is not going to be pushed into acting like a 7 year old, no matter what you do. You can make a more emotionally aware 3 yr old, though, if that makes sense. It also depends on how rational your child is, and whether you can use reason to create a motivation to try.

I worked on emotional awareness with my son ALL SUMMER. Did it help? I think it did but I think some of it was him maturing emotionally and becoming more able to process and implement things. When I reached a stumbling block, I stopped and moved to something else. I used teaching moments that came up naturally, and I worked on things where I saw a window of opportunity. I didn't push too hard when I saw he wasn't ready.

Do I think he would have made any progress on his own? Maybe some, but I do think spectrum kids do need to be taught certain things explicitly. My son really has no understanding how his behavior impacts others, because it does not occur for him to think about other people. Explicitly explaining this (once he was able to understand it, and care about it) was helpful. When he was emotionally 2, it was like pounding sand, and he just was not ready.

We just completed the "How does your engine run" OT class with DS. It seemed to help.

Basically, the class was like throwing spaghetti at the wall: they first worked on identifying what different energy states felt like and looked like, and then they tried every single strategy in the book and had each kid rate each strategy. At the end of the class, they gave us our child's list of ratings.

This didn't mean he "learned" emotional regulation as much as he has more tools to throw at it now, if that makes sense. For instance, they tried all kinds of food and chewy object textures in one class. In another, they tried different kinds of active exercises. In another, they tried different kinds of relaxation. There were eight classes, the first one was spent on the emotions, and the remainder were spent trying different things, all organized by body system - usually two systems per class.

At any rate, DS has been less dysregulated this year, but he's also older. I think the tools - and the idea that he can regain control if he uses them - were definitely worthwhile, but I think you need to hit the right developmental level for this class to work.

Glad you asked this. I have wondered too. My son is 5 1/2 and the ST and OT habe been great but I feel like we are missing something with the whole social/self regulation arena. He just doesn't seem to 'get it' most of the time when we use stories and talk about appropriate social responses to situations. And being able to know when he is getting angry to not overreact but to give himself space and time to process. I guess it just takes repeat repeat repeat. His self-regulation and social skills are worse than my 3 1/2 year old. And yet he is so smart when it comes to engineering science, math, logic etc. Typical I know.
Have been wondering if a social skills group would be good. Just so expensive and we are already doing two a week of therapy. Might wait a bit.

Maybe I should put it this way: I do think the social skills classes and therapies are helpful. However, this is one of those areas where it's important to remember that autism is a developmental delay, not a developmental full-stop. They do develop and catch up on their own and I think it's important to do what you can when you think it will have the best chance of working.

We had no idea what was going on when DS was 5. Most of these therapies started happening when he was 10, and the emotional regulation stuff was this year at 12. Of course, each kid has their own trajectory, so don't think about this as a roadmap - just for DS, it worked out well.

If I had to do it over again, I would start by making sure my kid at that age had lots of access to information about what their feelings were. Our biggest discovery when DS got the appropriate diagnosis at 10 was that he was coding every single feeling as either angry or happy - he had no clue how to decipher what sad meant, or scared. The first successful therapy had a whole component linking body reactions and phrases to those emotions. You can't control your emotions if you don't know what they are.

Sesame Street has a whole series of videos on emotional awareness on their website - I think they are a really good place to start if you don't have other resources.

My daughter is almost 7 and very recently I've noticed a sudden improvement in these matters. I've not been doing anything specific with her and she's only ever had one social story in school, for a specific issue. So, we don't really have a programme, it's all just ad hoc explaining and teaching, as and when the need arises (moreso than parents of NT kids need to, of course). But, she really is picking up on a lot of different things and I can say that, over the past 2 weeks especially, there has been major developments. If it wasn't for the problems she's having at school and the knock-on effects on her mood and anxiety, I'd say life was sweet. Of course, things could change again, but I do think she's maturing. I seem to be able to reason with her nowadays, which is unbelievable. I thought this was never going to happen, as we've been arguing since the day she started to talk. She's behind her peers, but it has happened and she's turning into a lovely young lady.

Both for us as well. We worked a lot on giving them the language for their emotions, and being able to recognize when they were escalating (5 point scale) etc. I think this was important because it gave them a framework to build on. We also worked on social rules, boundaries and consequences as well. But we didn't see significant growth until a.) we had their sensory needs sorted, and b.) they hit a level of awareness and maturity to want to be in control emotionally. For us this was around 10 years old. Since then both of their growth in the area of self regulation has been astounding. One of my sons in particular I see very methodically employing the strategies we have taught him through the years when under duress, and meltdowns for him have become incredibly rare. The other struggles a bit more, but even though they are twins he has always been about 6mos-1yr behind his brother maturity wise, and I fully expect him to get to the point of having excellent emotional control, but in his own time.

I would say it is definitely a combo for my son. I do think that helping him learn some self-regulatory techniques helped him to some degree (I don't mean social skills stuff...I mean physical and emotional regulation), but I think what helped him the most in this area is passage of time. It's almost like the skills he learned helped to brace him a bit until his neurology started catching up to his chronology. He is still behind his peers, no doubt about it, but I do not think the difference is as stark as it once was. And his swings of emotional dysregulation tend to be less abrupt and shorter lived. Oddly, at age 7, my son's disparity from his peers was at it's height. It was almost physically painful to watch.

I disagree that teaching social skills to a kid with ADHD is not worthwhile. Although my son also has NVLD, so I don't know if that would matter. I think it is maybe more a matter of how you teach it. The one thing that I can say with ADHD is if there is a strong component of hyperactivity, impulsivity, and intrusiveness, social skills are exceptionally difficult to teach. Worse than for my ASD daughter. It wasn't until after we medicated him and his hyperactivity, impulsivity, and intrusiveness were curbed that he was really able to learn. Once that happened, he actually picked things up rather quickly. Actually, it was more like he was then able to implement the strategies I had tried to teach when he was still hyper, intrusive, and impulsive.