Good approaches to teaching emotional regulation

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A comment in another thread leads me to wonder if people have had good experiences with or can recommend specific approaches to teaching emotional regulation skills?

I don't have a lot of strategies, but my kid struggles with this a lot.

However, the new school he is going to told me their emotional regulation strategies. 1.They observe the child over a period of time to see what their pattern of overload is. For example, one kid might start to unravel about every 45 minutes. Then, they have the child go to the break area (low stimulation area with blankets/ pillows/ books) based on their pattern before they reach that point. This slowly helps kids to learn when they need a break. 2. Social stories and visual schedules. 3. Visuals to help them choose whether it is a big problem, or a small problem. 3. Visual list of calming strategies.

The social stories really help my kid.

We struggle a lot with this. I don't know if your son is too emotionally mature for the movie, Inside Out, but it is proving to be a boon for us, in this regard. I have stacks of books on this, but this is what has finally allowed my son to have some insight.

I think the reason is that all the other resources stress being in control of ones emotions, which obviously is the end-goal, but not where we are.

Inside Out (not a spoiler, I don't think) depicts basic emotions as being separate entities that control how the child feels. This is much more analogous to how my son views emotions. All of a sudden----click!

Maybe this is an approach that will work for you. I use parts of the movie and riff on them ---and apply bits and pieces to other emotions. I will remind him that Anger in the movie was needed, but had awful ideas, so we should be careful on deciding things and taking action based on Anger's initial reaction. That is one example---and again, your child is older and I am sure more mature, so it may not work for you.

Inside Out really helped my kid gain some insight as well. It was an "aha" moment for him. I may take him to see it again.

Note to self: take both kids to "Inside Out."

I think there should first be a strong expectation from parents that flipping out and melting down all the time from any little thing, esp. violent aggressive behavior like hitting people and throwing things, is definitely not ok, autism or not. These behaviors should be less and less tolerated as the child gets older. Toddlers cannot control these behaviors, but 10-year-olds need to start learning how to inhibit.

But how do you back up that message? How do you teach it so that it is recognized on the inside?

My son (diagnosed ASD) is easy for me to talk to. He understands what I am saying and responds to appeals to reason. When he (now rarely) loses it, he knows it was the wrong thing to do. I talk him through other ways he could have responded to the situation, how his actions might have been perceived by others, etc. The hardest part is getting him not to beat himself up over doing the wrong thing, but as soon as he is out of the negative spiral, he is very ready to try different ways of managing his feelings.

My daughter (maybe BAP) is in another state altogether. She is going to extremes all the time. She is also, as a 13 year old, in the middle of the hormonal flux that comes with advancing puberty in girls... but the hyperbole and total lack of emotional regulation is hard to know how to handle. Certainly the same kind of talk that works well with my son seems completely ineffective with her. I wish I knew of other things to try, because appeals to reason seem like tossing a cupful of water at a house fire--not the wrong thing to do, exactly, but not useful either.

That is the really hard part, because they have to recognize they are about to meltdown, make a conscious choice to pull themselves from the brink, and do it effectively and fast.

This is a multi-step process involving multiple skills. I have a wallower, who likes to wallow in the bad emotions, so the first thing I had to address was willingness to try. Consequences did not work (for us) because they gave him something else to wallow in. We use them, but very moderately, and really mainly as a signal to let him know for sure a line was crossed and to get him accustomed to how the real world works. Anything more than moderate use gets us worse behavior because of his particular temperament.

Then there as the rationality aspect -- because if conditioning techniques do not work, you need the kid to understand. Theory of Mind is our biggest enemy here, because it is really hard for him to get outside his own mind.

When it involves something most people other than him would think, that is very hard to get him to understand, so I have to fall back on the "expected/unexpected" lingo. It is going to take him awhile to care about how "most" people feel about things because he thinks they ought to think like he does.

We are simultaneously working on trying to identify and describe the beginning signs of upset as a timing mechanism so he can start to de-escalate on his own. Right-now I intercede and help him calm when I see he is about to meltdown.

The end-game here is to transfer that job to him. Sometimes he does it spontaneously, but not as often as needed. I am going to get my husband's help on this because I am very bad at identifying and articulating body language and he is more observant. I notice it on a gut level, but could describe very few of the signs if pressed.

Thanks! I guess we are on the right track.

It certainly isn't easy, though!

Some kids do well with consequences, some don't, at least not the way we apply them. I would be very careful about consequences, to notice whether they are working. You mentioned BAP and any kind of activity restrictions might be something she really wants and needs if she is stressed by activities or people. Plus consequences are better for controlling behavior a person can control, not so much for emotions.

Your 13 year old sounds very sensitive, and she may need a lot of role modeling how to be calm and a lot of empathic listening. Trying to be rational does not necessarily help the actual feeling of out of control emotions. Some people just calm down better from being heard, rather than hearing why their reaction isn't the best.

I found that DBT skills improved a lot of my Aspie symptoms or problems or whatever. They teach crisis survival, emotional regulation, interpersonal skills and mindfulness, ALL very helpful. Also, they were taught in the context of validation, so that helped a lot.

A child I worked with, who was cognitively able to understand that meltdowns were wrong, did not respond well to being told they were wrong at all. If anything, it made meltdowns harder to reduce because he became very distressed after each meltdown because it was "bad" or he thought he ought to get in trouble.

Instead taking him away from situations and sitting quietly helped. The only "consequences" as of such were things he said would be restricted from doing until he was calm because they might endanger himself or others.

By making calming time positive - such as allowing him to participate in a special interest it wasn't something to be avoided until the last possible moment.

I would suggest signs that I could see in him that showed me he was he was getting frustrated. Gradually he learnt to begin to remove himself from situations. Towards the end of when I worked with him his family and school were beginning to teach him breathing techniques for calming during meltdowns although I have no idea whether this is something that later became successful.

Again my phone won't let me edit, but there's some poor wording up there. I meant that injuring others during a meltdown was "wrong". Before people understood his difficulties it was assumed he was just naughty.

We had good success when DS was younger with the OT program "how does your engine run" which is expressly about finding out what things help keep you regulated - essentially, it was about trying every single calming/arousing technique and having the kids rate them until, at the end, you wound up with a chart of things that work for your kid in various situations. They also talk a lot about what it means to regulate your emotions and offer a lot of language.

While I hear that violence is not OK, it isn't uncommon for children on the spectrum, and the age of 12 or so is when many kids have a breakthrough and develop the ability to stop themselves (somewhere in this board someone posted a study to that effect.) So, while you do need to keep working with your child on it, there is a developmental component of emotional regulation especially as pertains to violence. Having been there, it is easier said than done to get a child to stop - and my son managed to go a whole year BEFORE the developmental jump without hitting me, but I could see that it took everything he had to white-knuckle through that year.

There is also this thread with some ideas: viewtopic.php?t=226859

I didn't notice where the problem was violence. If it is consequences might be more important, but more for safety and motivation.

The topic being how to teach emotion regulation.....we don't expect consequences will teach how to read or tie a shoe, Or do algebra, thinking of consequences as setting the tone of what's expected and adults taking responsibility for helping keep things going in a good direction makes sense.....but while consequences may impact motivation they won't teach what she doesn't know how to do. You teach emotion regulation by talking about emotions, and choices, and making the environment feel safe enough that she can think about what to do.