Psychoeducational Assessments in Edmonton | Essential Strategies for Kids
Introduction to Emotional Regulation and Assessment
Hi there, I’m Dr. Kelly Clark, and this is Janine Christen. She is a psychologist that works at Clark Psychological, and we do psychoeducational assessments in Edmonton. She has quite a bit of experience working with kids, and what we’re going to talk about today is emotional regulation skills that help children right up into adolescence to manage their emotions and express their emotions in a healthy way. This is what we’re going to talk talk about, and Janine is going to talk give us some ideas.
We, we run into quite a few kids, or we, a lot of parents will come to us with kids that have difficulties managing emotions. They can be extremely disruptive at home and in school, and have difficulties with irritability, anger, and even display tantruming types of behaviors above their age. They should not be doing that compared to most kids. So when we talk about kids that have difficulties with managing their emotions at a severe level, things like a disruptive mood, condition is, is considered. So, Janine’s going to talk talk a little bit about even, you know, the more severe presentations of, of children and, and adolescents that struggle with managing their emotions and expressing it and can be very irritable and have outbursts. And it’s clearly different, you know, than most kids, that most kids get irritable and, and can disagree.
But kids with disruptive mood conditions, disruptive mood dysregulation have a severe outburst several times a week. And you can clearly see that it’s different than other kids who should be in multiple settings, not just at home, but in a school and, and other places, even sports. So they have difficulties with social skills and interacting with people and including adults. So she may not talk only about kids with that extreme spectrum, but also with just helping kids that are struggling with managing their emotions in, in a regular home. And, and also with kids that are having more difficulties in school. We’re going to kind of talk about, you know, all those levels and how to, to, to build those skills. So you have some ideas, Janine, about how to build emotional regulation skills. Mm-Hmm.
Building Emotional Regulation Skills
Sure. so there’s a bunch of ways to, to build emotional re regulation skills. So right off at the beginning for kids who are just struggling a little bit with the skills we would want to work on emotion awareness. So emotion awareness, like identifying their emotions and being able to express their emotions. Just that simple. But from there we want to be able to get them to see the intensity of their emotions. So even noticing the differences in their body as they’re getting, let’s say, let’s use anger. So as they’re getting angry, how it feels in their body as they go up, that, that potential, that angry thermometer that we use in what we do here. So those things are really, really important. But when you’re dysregulated all of the time, we need strategies that aren’t going to be cognitive in any means.
So those ones that I said right off the bat, those are things that we’re talking out and they’re in their thinking brain and they’re calm, and we get to the core of those things. But when we have kids that are dysregulated with big, big emotions, we actually don’t want to use those cognitive strategies. We want to use what’s called tonal strategies. So we’re going to talk use something like using the tone of a voice to actually calm down kids. It’s a form of co-regulation, basically. So co-regulation is where I’m going to use myself and I’m going to connect with my, the, the child that I’m working with, and you can do this at home to help them calm down. So what we do I don’t want to go louder than them with my tone, because if I’m going to talk do that, that basically elicits their sympathetic nervous system.
So if I started yelling, that’s going to talk create this fight, flight, freeze system. So that’s where they get more aggressive or they get where I need to get away from this situation, or they freeze like a deer in the headlights. We don’t want that situation. What we want to do with our tone is we actually want to go underneath their tone. So if they’re like, oh, I’m so upset that this doll broke, we want to match just right underneath, and we want to sympathize with them. We want to validate their feelings, we want to empathize, we want to be there for them and connect. This actually creates safety, right?
That connection when we’re validating and we’re hearing the child actually creates a place where they feel safe. And so all we do is we just bring our voice down and they actually follow it. It’s crazy. So they’ll go up, they might, you know, go up and have a flare up, and we will just keep ourself calm and then we’ll bring our voice down as we go down validating. And sometimes you have to set limits for the kids who are hitting you or the kids that are yelling and screaming. So we’ll say things like, I’m not for hitting, or I’m not for yelling at those kinds of things because we want to use I statements so that we don’t elicit more aggressive behaviors or violent behaviors. So that’s one of the tips that works with people, children especially, and adolescents. Janine,
Co-Regulation and Managing Outbursts
I wanted to ask you. Often I’ll hear teachers say that when the student erupts and has a big outburst, that it’s very difficult for them, you know, to be reasoned with, like you said, using a cognitive strategy. Yeah. So they’ll get stuck into their emotion and can’t, can’t flip, you know, the switch back towards calm. And they’ll, they’ll oftentimes say that giving them space time alone is helpful. Mm-Hmm. What do you think, what do you think of that? What, when they’re so upset and you actually, they’re actually trying to, you know, comfort maybe putting their hand on the back doesn’t work. They’re still really inflamed and they’ll get angry. So they find that if they detach, this is what they’ve, they will say to me that, that’s helpful to the student. Is that something you’ve noticed?
I’ve noticed that that can be helpful for some kids, but every child’s a little bit of a snowflake, so everyone’s different. So you’ll find that some strategies that work for some kids don’t work for others. So really getting to know the child and figure out what their triggers are, their emotional triggers are really important and things that work for them. So I actually tried so many strategies, like calming strategies because again, some just don’t work. Yeah.
Yeah. When somebody’s stuck like that giving ’em a timeout or, or, you know, isolating them, is, does that work? Or would there be a different way of supporting that child that might be more opportune, do you think?
Well, like I said before, with the co-regulation, that’s the, that’s the way to connect. So if we push kids away right off the bat it actually creates a lack of trust. So right off the bat, when they’re really in that state of dysregulation, we want to connect with them. Afterwards. If, if there’s consequences dependent on the age of the child, we can do things like, you know, you have to go for a time out to be away from your peers or away from the situation, but typically right off the bat to, to keep that trust and that connection with that child. You want to do the co-regulation.
So, so you, you want that child not to feel like, you know, their behavior is they’re bad or that you’re distancing or I isolating them. You’ll actually kind of be there with them. Mm-Hmm. Help them transition through that emotion. Mm-Hmm. So again, that emotion is not a bad thing. No. The extreme reaction is something that we want to curtail, but we’ll want to support, to build their, their ability to manage or express that emotion in a healthy manner. That’s right. Okay.
Cognitive Strategies and Problem Solving
And another thing, and this is again, it goes more to the cognitive strategy strategy. So a child has to be completely calm to do this. So again, if we’re looking at that anger thermometer, they have to be down in the one to three range. So we can, at that point, we want to do some independent problem solving. So this is for the child to figure out, okay, so what can I do? My dolly just broke. What can I do now? Right. Can we fix it together? Can we do an operation? What can we do? And this is also your point to work on the behaviors that you were setting limits with. Because, and sometimes it depends on the kids. Sometimes they have to be, go away from the situation and come back. Because doing it right away is not possible for them. But you do want to set up what you can do next time? And just telling them is not effective. Right. You can model all of that good stuff. because That’s going to be a part of your relationship throughout the relationship with the child. Somo modeling is good, but that independent problem solving actually builds the pathways in their brain so that they can do it themselves. And it builds those emotion regulation strategies and skills for them.
So if the student or the child is in a strong emotional state trying to reason with them you know, like an adult. So I find even as a parent myself, sometimes I’m trying to engage my kid with my brain, you know, at my level of, of logic and reasoning, and they’re not there at all. So again, you’re, you’re trying to get them to a different state before you’re going to talk and introduce a different strategy sometimes.
That’s right. And so I like one of the models that I use all the time is Dan Siegel’s the Flip Your Lid model. So when they flip their lid, they’re actually in their emotional brain, right? So here we’re not going to talk, do any reasoning, any cognitive strategies, but as soon as they can come back into their thinking brain, then we can use those cognitive strategies.
Hmm. And I’m sure every parent has heard this, or at least a lot of us, when our kids get so mad they’ll say things to get a reaction, right? Like, I don’t like you, I hate you. These kinds of things. Right? And so, and that’s so offensive to us that, you know, the ire comes back with parents, but a better strategy would just to, to be to realize that they’re just not in the right frame right now. They actually don’t mean that. That’s right. Yeah. And so you’re trying to help them to, to move through that emotion. Mm-Hmm. And then later you’ll talk about that, that hurt my feelings. Mm-Hmm. When you say they’re not going to talk receive that when they’re flipping their lid, so to speak. No. Yeah. That’s great. Any other strategies?
Practical Tools for Parents and Final Thoughts
Well, it depends on the age of the kids. So I find that for youngsters, you can actually make a toolbox with them. Like, I’ve made a backpack, I’ve made a toolbox, and you just put all of the things that you’ve learned about them into that. With older children and, and, and youth, it becomes, you can make it creative, right? One thing that really helps with older children actually. So any adolescents would be paralleling, you know, with something that they love. So I find that it really works with, so if they can identify their, their like triggers and everything with say an animal or say with somebody that they like or know, right? Paralleling and talking about it and then coming up with strategies and like normalizing it like that right. It is a lot easier for them. So, but you can do it in lots of ways. There’s so many ways that you can put together coping skills for youth and children.
That’s great. I know that, you know, as a parent that I’ve got a lot of psychological tricks and, and tools in the bag, but, you know, as a parent, sometimes you’re just on your heels, not sure what to do about a situation. And, and for me, I’ve generally just been driven by that philosophy to try to understand Mm-Hmm. My kids try to understand their perspective. That also means that at least for me, that, you know, being connected to their emotions and helping them move through that doesn’t mean that I let them do whatever they want. Mm-Hmm. There are clearly limits there, there are expectations. And when my kids say that they flew off the handle you know, and, and had difficulties managing their emotion. Yeah, I, I really like what you’re saying. We help them kind of move through that as best we can.
You know, sometimes it’s not, not always available to us because we’re handling our own emotions at the time, but then try to bring them back to, well, okay, you did throw that at that moment. I want you to clean that mess up. And so there is still that limit, limit. That doesn’t mean that we’re permitting them to rule the house, but we are helping them to, to build their repertoire of skills, to manage their emotions, and ultimately be a healthier emotional human being. If you want to seek out more information or, or to chat with us about what concerns you might have with your child, certainly give us you know, some questions at www.drkellyclark.com thank you. Thanks Janine for being here, by the way. Thanks.
It was awesome being here. If you need psychoeducational assessments in Edmonton, don’t hesitate to reach out to us at Clarke Psychology.