Emotional Regulation - Co-regulation

Suporting teenagers in emotional regulation

This story comes from Subodha Learning Community where we support families with older children on the spectrum.

Many older children have limited communication skills and those skills do not help them when they are agitated. We come across many situations where the child is upset about something and lack of communication pushes the teenager into a meltdown.

When we are trying to co-regulate, first we validate their emotions. We say ‘I see you are upset about something’. To facilitate communication, we rely on yes/no questions. And then we extend it to a dialogue.

The following conversation happened between a teacher and a teenager.

The teenager, let us say G, is a calm and quiet person. But when he gets agitated, he finds it difficult to manage and starts biting his hand. He screams for a long time to let the emotion pass. But he keeps remembering the incident and feels bad for a very long time. G communicates using Avaz AAC.

Setting: Classroom where there are 5 children and three adults. Context: G puts his hands inside pants. Teacher reminds him to keep hands on the table. G: Starts screaming and crying.

The entire class follows the routine of going to the calming room with an adult as part of ‘Group rules’. They go to the calming area. He takes a pause while crying.

T: Are you ready to get up? G: No T: Are you ready to talk? G: No T: Okay! I will wait.

G takes his hands to bite and two adults block him. He starts screaming and crying again.

T: How are you feeling? G: Angry!

T : Your teacher asked you to take your hands out. Did that make you angry? G : Yes T: Okay ! I hear you and understand that you are angry, but you cannot bite yourself

T : Are you ready to keep good hands? G: No.

T: Then I am going to hold. I don’t want you to hurt your hands. G: Wails loudly.

After about 2 mins,

T: Is it okay to put hands in pants, in public? (Their class learnt ‘Public and Private’ in their EVS class) G: No T: That is why your teacher reminded you of it.

T: How are you feeling now? G: Okay

T: Can I leave your hands? Will you keep good hands? G: Yes

T: Do you want a break? G: Yes

T: What do you want in the break? G: Chips

T: You cannot have chips in the calming room. We need to go to class for that. G: Gets up and walks to the classroom.

By that time, it was lunch time. He finished lunch and ate chips.

This time, he did not remember the incident after that.