Welcome to this web site which is dedicated to the promotion of self-regulation behaviors, skills and abilities in young children! I am Kathy Bobula, the author of this site, and I'm happy you are here!
As a life-long student of child development, I began to study about brain development in children in the 1980s and this work led me to discover the concepts of self-regulation, which, in turn, gave me a new way to view children. Many people today are aware of the importance of the early years. We have learned that the brain is especially plastic from birth to age 6, and that the experiences young children have actually change their brains in very permanent ways.
Today, self-regulation has become a central concept in child development and in the study of the brain's development. Self-regulation is an active part of everything we do as humans, and thus it is imperative that teacher-caregivers of young children consciously think about supporting all forms of self-regulation in the children who are in their classes. Early childhood teachers have been supporting self-regulation skills through the environments, guidance, and curricula they prepare for children. This has been true since we first had programs (or schools) for young children, but we may not have thought about it as self-regulation, per se. I'm guessing some of these strategies were initially for "teacher self-preservation!"
When we reflect on what early childhood teachers do on a day to day basis, we see self-regulation. For example, as we work with children, we help them learn to control their bodies (especially the hands) and to move at will. We help them acquire and practice strategies for thinking and problem solving. We model and support emotional regulation and positive social relations. We set up environments and activities that support a broad range of self-regulation skills. This is what we do as teacher-caregivers of young children. Learning about self-regulation can give us a new lens through which we can observe children and understand how to support their growth most effectively.
In the early childhood years, self-regulation skills are being developed (constructed) and are changing the highly plastic brains of young children so that they can use these skills in their everyday lives, and forever. This site has been developed to stimulate thinking about self-regulation and the ways we can scaffold experiences to help children perfect these skills and make them their own.
The topics in this site include a general approach to self-regulation as well as very specific methods and strategies for supporting its' development. In addition, there is material on the acquisition of and unlearning of implicit bias, a particular form of self-regulation that must be addressed with children as well as adults, especially those who work with children.
The material in this site contains both live lectures* and written materials for your consideration. The organization used is to start with some introductory materials. Following that are 3 live lectures (with written transcripts) and for each lecture there is a condensed file that highlights some of the key applications of the material from the lecture. I hope that these resources are helpful to you in your work with young children! You are free to share and reproduce (in whole, with author's name and date) any of the materials on this site. You are always welcome to use quotes from the materials. All live lectures are accompanied by a text version. I encourage you to use these to develop your own training for parents and teachers of young children.
Kathy A. Bobula, Ph.D.
Updated 2019
*Many thanks to Clark College, Vancouver, Washington for continued streaming access to the live lectures, and especially to Scott Coffie, who produced the videos.
- A new article has been added at the end of the list. It is an essay, of sorts, about emotionally safe environments. This is based on being contacted in February 2019 by a former student in a preschool where I taught in the 1970s and the conversation we had about feelings she remembered.
As a life-long student of child development, I began to study about brain development in children in the 1980s and this work led me to discover the concepts of self-regulation, which, in turn, gave me a new way to view children. Many people today are aware of the importance of the early years. We have learned that the brain is especially plastic from birth to age 6, and that the experiences young children have actually change their brains in very permanent ways.
Today, self-regulation has become a central concept in child development and in the study of the brain's development. Self-regulation is an active part of everything we do as humans, and thus it is imperative that teacher-caregivers of young children consciously think about supporting all forms of self-regulation in the children who are in their classes. Early childhood teachers have been supporting self-regulation skills through the environments, guidance, and curricula they prepare for children. This has been true since we first had programs (or schools) for young children, but we may not have thought about it as self-regulation, per se. I'm guessing some of these strategies were initially for "teacher self-preservation!"
When we reflect on what early childhood teachers do on a day to day basis, we see self-regulation. For example, as we work with children, we help them learn to control their bodies (especially the hands) and to move at will. We help them acquire and practice strategies for thinking and problem solving. We model and support emotional regulation and positive social relations. We set up environments and activities that support a broad range of self-regulation skills. This is what we do as teacher-caregivers of young children. Learning about self-regulation can give us a new lens through which we can observe children and understand how to support their growth most effectively.
In the early childhood years, self-regulation skills are being developed (constructed) and are changing the highly plastic brains of young children so that they can use these skills in their everyday lives, and forever. This site has been developed to stimulate thinking about self-regulation and the ways we can scaffold experiences to help children perfect these skills and make them their own.
The topics in this site include a general approach to self-regulation as well as very specific methods and strategies for supporting its' development. In addition, there is material on the acquisition of and unlearning of implicit bias, a particular form of self-regulation that must be addressed with children as well as adults, especially those who work with children.
The material in this site contains both live lectures* and written materials for your consideration. The organization used is to start with some introductory materials. Following that are 3 live lectures (with written transcripts) and for each lecture there is a condensed file that highlights some of the key applications of the material from the lecture. I hope that these resources are helpful to you in your work with young children! You are free to share and reproduce (in whole, with author's name and date) any of the materials on this site. You are always welcome to use quotes from the materials. All live lectures are accompanied by a text version. I encourage you to use these to develop your own training for parents and teachers of young children.
Kathy A. Bobula, Ph.D.
Updated 2019
*Many thanks to Clark College, Vancouver, Washington for continued streaming access to the live lectures, and especially to Scott Coffie, who produced the videos.
