Self-Regulation and the Developing Brain: A "Set-up" for School Success
(Text Version of Live Lecture)
Kathy A. Bobula, Ph.D.
Opening:
I’m going to start out with presenting some basic facts about how the brain works so that we have a common vocabulary. I’ll introduce you to a couple of principles or concepts about how the brain works. Then we’ll focus in on the frontal lobe and what psychologists call the “executive functions” which include self-regulation. We’ll take a look at what some research has found about self-regulation and its relation to success in school as well as in life in general. Then finally, we’ll explore some applications of this information to ways we can support self-regulation abilities in young children.
Let’s start by taking a look at some brain basics. The brain is composed of a variety of cell types, which can be classified as neurons and glial cells. Glial cells provide numerous support functions for the neurons. The neurons are the communication cells of the brain.
Here is a neuron. (Explain the parts of the neuron and how it works.) Looking closer at the place where one neuron “talks” to another neuron, we need to look at the synapse. (Explain the synapse)
Neurons are created at a rapid rate throughout fetal life and through the first 2 years after birth. This creation of new neurons, called neurogenesis, slows down considerably throughout the rest of development, though new neurons are created in certain structures of the brain throughout the whole life span.
Neurons are connected to each other in vast and intricate networks. DNA lays down the basic structure or architecture of the brain and sets up connections between neurons. Most of this happens before the baby is born, but the brain is not actually done developing at that point. Now that the baby is out in the world, the brain needs to find out what the baby needs to know…who these people are, what language do they speak, what food do they eat, and so on. For the next two decades, the development of the rest the brain’s architecture will be based on the experiences that the baby has. This is how the brain develops itself.
When a baby is born, the people who surround that child begin to transfer the cultural information they know (their language, their perceptions, their values) to this new human. In this way, the new baby does not have to “discover” all the accumulated human knowledge of our entire history in what would be a “hit or miss” manner. Instead, we deliberately expose the baby to the sights, sounds, smells, and people of their world, and the baby’s brain modifies its architecture accordingly.
For the brain to continue to develop itself, the baby needs to learn what is known to his parents, relatives, and other people. During the first year of life, for example, a hearing infant will strengthen the connections in the hearing centers of the brain that process the sounds that are in his culture’s language. At the same time, his brain will discard the brain connections it would have used for sounds unique to other languages. The baby starts out able to discriminate – to hear – the sounds of any of the world’s languages. But, through interaction with his caregivers, the baby’s brain strengthens the connections for the sounds he hears, and “prunes out” connections for the sounds he doesn’t hear.
DNA lays down a “boiler plate” structure for the brain that has way too many connections and even too many cells. Once the baby is born, the baby’s brain begins to modify and adapt its structure based on the experiences he or she has in the world, especially with other people. This modification happens by strengthening and adding connections between neurons that are used, as well as by “pruning” away connections that are not being used. In this way, using the case of language as an example, the baby learns what sounds to pay attention to, and which ones to ignore, and gradually begins to associate meaning with the sounds. Thus, the brain has been significantly changed by 11-12 months of age.
The whole process of the brain developing and modifying itself takes about twenty years – from birth to early adulthood. Then the brain stabilizes its structure and makes more minor (though constant) modifications throughout adulthood, based on experiences. We never stop learning and so our brains never stop changing. In fact, it appears that even the “aging brain adapts to its own decline.” (Reuter-Lorenz and Mikels, 256)
Now, let’s look at a couple of the most critical concepts or principles of brain function.
First Concept: What we “do” gets transformed into neural circuits in our brains.
Each time networks of neurons activate-- the connections between the cells become stronger and the connections increase in number. Remember in the picture of the neuron how the axon ended with multiple terminal branches and terminal buttons? Well, when neurons are stimulated frequently, the axon grows more terminal branches, thus increasing the number of connections possible with other neurons. Connections that are used also fill up more of the synaptic vesicles with neurotransmitter, so more is available to be released.
Likewise, we have the flip-flop situation: when neural connections go unused, they weaken or are let go entirely. Thus the phrase, use it or lose it.
So, what does this mean? It means that experience shapes the brain by determining which connections to keep and which connections to “prune” out. The brain keeps those that are used—for better or for worse! Let’s take a look at that.
On the “for better” side of use it or lose it, when preschool children build with blocks, for example, they observe relationships between, say “height” and “stability.” (The higher you build, the more issues you have with stability.) These observations are stored as patterns of connections between neurons that are based on their observations. They can access this information at a later time when they build with blocks again or when they observe a skyscraper in construction. They will even be able to bring up a picture of the blocks in their mind. It’s like an information bank account.
Connections in the brain that are used get kept. This is how knowledge is constructed.
Since what we “do” gets wired into the circuits of our brains, even the very “act of being engaged” lays down a pattern, so the child can become engaged again with greater ease. Becoming engaged comes to be automatic! It is up to parents and teachers of young children to ensure that children are safe in their setting – both physically and psychologically. The warm and supportive relationship that the parents have with their children is critical for supporting learning. In the context of the attachment that forms and the safety that brings, the child can become engaged again and again.
Now, let’s look at an example from the “for worse” side of the Use It or Lose It principle. If a child, for example, is the victim of bias (be it ethnic or racial bias, gender bias, ability bias, or so on), this child will have to spend a lot of time and energy trying to cope with the people who are expressing that bias. Some children who are victimized may become hyper-vigilant to other people’s reactions or behavior for the sake of self-protection. Because this is what the child is “doing,” this exaggerated stress response can lay down patterns in the brain, so that it becomes automatic. Since hyper-vigilance usually comes with elevated and sometimes chronic anxiety, it takes a toll on both the child’s learning and health.
What we “do” will come to be wired into the neural circuits of the brain, for better or for worse. The hours spent playing video games or watching television grab a lot of cortical space and strengthen our ability and preference to learn in these ways, at the expense of space that could be used for, say, reading or listening. Learning from a book or a lecture becomes hard. In the world of the cortex, there is a constant competition for “real estate” – for connection. Use it or lose it. This concept goes hand-in-hand with the next.
Second Concept: Repetition forms stronger and more elaborate memories.
Simply put, the more we “do” something, the more numerous are the connections between neurons, and the stronger the connections are neurologically. This is especially true if we repeat activities on multiple occasions, on different days, or over time. We get better at it, understand it more, and can apply it. Remember the old saying, “Practice makes perfect?” Well, we may not be aiming for perfection, but practice does yield ability and expertise.
Take concepts of number for example. In one study, researchers found that Early Childhood teachers who “use numbers in their everyday speech may aid their students’ math abilities.” (Dingfelder, 2006, 10) For example, in getting ready to go outside, a teacher could say, “You two get your coats on, please,” instead of saying, “You guys get your coats on, please.” Hearing number references throughout the day within the context of the normal activities helps the child build more elaborate concepts of number and number relationships. This certainly applies to the home also – parents can embed numbers in their interactions with their children in the same way.
Elkhonon Goldberg, a neuroscientist and author, states that “unlike instinctive behavior, learning, by definition, is change…. At an early stage of every learning process the organism is faced with novelty and the end stage of the learning process can be thought of as routinization or familiarity. The transition from novelty to routinization is the universal cycle of our inner world.” (2001, 44) In fact, novelty is processed more strongly in the right hemisphere and cognitive routines are processed more strongly in the left hemisphere, though it may be the opposite in left-handers. According to Goldberg, as the neural activation moves its concentration from the right hemisphere to the left, there is “an overall decrease of prefrontal activation.”
This means that skills that have become automatic or routine from practice or repetition don’t take up as much cortical space or energy as do novel experiences. Automatic skills and knowledge can be combined in new ways, which usually takes the child to a more mature way of thinking or behaving. So, having what we call “open ended” materials, such as paper, crayons, scissors, glue, tape, as well as blocks, Legos, or other construction toys, available for children every day allows them to advance their thinking and problem solving when using these familiar materials, in contrast to getting a lot of new toys frequently, to which they must become accustomed. Repetition forms stronger and more elaborate memories.
Now, with the concepts of “Use it or lose it” and “Repetition makes stronger connections” let’s zoom in on the Frontal Lobes of the Brain
The frontal lobes of the brain take the longest to develop, and require a lot of practice to mature.
The frontal lobes are the forward most part of the brain and are especially large in humans. The frontal lobes, occipital lobes, temporal lobes and parietal lobes make up the majority of the brain’s cortex. The cortex is the outer layer in the brain that has deep folds and looks like a cauliflower. As you recall, the cortex is divided into two hemispheres, a right hemisphere and a left hemisphere. The frontal lobes of the cortex allow us to move, think, and talk, among many other things. The frontal lobes of the cortex are of particular interest to those of us in child development and early childhood education.
In his book on the frontal lobes of the brain, Elkhonon Goldberg introduced this area of the brain in the following way. He said:
“Frontal lobes perform the most advanced and complex functions in all of the brain, the so-called executive functions. They are linked to intentionality, purposefulness, and complex decision making. They reach significant development only in humans; arguably, they make us human.” (2001, 2)
The frontal lobes of the cortex include areas that are responsible for the initiation of motor movement as well as these higher order “executive” functions. Bruce Wexler adds that the “late maturing frontal lobe regions play critical roles in language function in general and word generation in particular.” (2006, 105)
The “executive” frontal lobe functions include: voluntary attention (we spend a lot of time teaching children what to pay attention to), memory, organization, planning, and strategy selection. Self-awareness and awareness of others are some of the social functions of the frontal lobes.
Since the frontal lobes take so long to mature (to beyond puberty), “…it is not surprising that adults must provide these functions [these executive functions] if they are to be present in the behavior of infants and children…. While the child’s frontal lobes are developing, the parents’ brains provide frontal lobe functions for the child.” (Wexler 2006, 109) When children spend a portion of their day in full and part day programs, the teaching-caregiving staff members provide the frontal lobe functions for the children in attendance.
For example, if a child wants to make a house or other structure indoors, she may not know how to get that to happen. The parent can guide the child by asking some questions which will aid in planning. The questions will direct the child’s attention to such things as what materials she might use, like a card table and a blanket, or a bunch of pillow making the walls on the floor. The parent can ask the child “who lives in the house?” What else needs to be inside? How can you make a door?
The forward-most area of the frontal lobes is referred to as the pre-frontal cortex. The pre-frontal cortex is located right behind the forehead and is “directly interconnected” (through long axons) with every other area of the brain, with all functional units. It is “singularly suited for coordinating and integrating the work of all the other brain structures....” It brings vision, hearing, language, emotion, meaning, etc. all together. It takes all the parts and coordinates them into a coherent idea. The pre-frontal cortex is the “conductor of the orchestra” and, as such, contains a map of the whole cortex. (Goldberg 2001, 35-6) Damage to the pre-frontal cortex due to head trauma can profoundly disrupt these “conductor” functions, and, thus, “thinking”.
Self-regulation is a frontal lobe function and “one particular aspect of self-regulation is predictive of all academic outcomes” especially early math ability. (Society for Research in Child Development 2007) It is termed the inhibitory control aspect of brain function , and it is used in planning, problem solving, and goal-directed activity. It helps us to stay focused on the task at hand and to inhibit being distracted by outside influences or other internal thoughts or urges. Self-regulation must be learned by doing, over and over again, and in many different situations throughout development. Remember that repetition strengthens existing connections and creates new ones.
Self-regulation involves the pre-frontal cortex, as this area is central and critical in coming up with goals and creating plans to achieve these goals. (Goldberg 2001, 24)
Martha Bronson, who is the author of a comprehensive book on self-regulation, begins to describe self-regulation with the following quote, giving us the broad perspective.
She says:
“Self-regulation begins with life itself. All living things have self-regulating and self-organizing mechanisms that guide their development and adaptation.”
Definition
Elena Bodrova and Deborah Leong, in their book Tools of the Mind, define self-regulation as children’s “ability to act in a deliberate, planned manner in governing much of their own behavior.” (2007, 127)
The self- regulation behaviors that emerge during early childhood allow children to gain control over their behavior and responses in such a way that it helps them to adapt successfully to familiar settings, like the home and early childhood program. During the first 6-7 years of life, children learn to control their thinking – their mental processes- and their emotions. They learn to problem solve. They can focus their attention and ignore distractions. They can set goals.
In humans, the type of self-regulation that a new baby has is “primarily reactive,” but as the child has experiences and matures, she becomes able to have thoughtful, conscious, planned out, control of her thoughts and actions. (Bronson 2000, 2) The early childhood period is the time when children make significant gains in self-regulation, and at each age, the “way” they control their behavior looks very different from that of the other ages. These abilities mature.
For example, an infant begins to regulate their arousal cycles and the emotional responses they have to events in the environment, like waiting to be fed. Toddlers are pushing for independence, but they can respond to requests. They like rituals, and they don’t like change. They can detect “errors” and “feel anxious if they violate rules.” (Bronson 2000, 197) During the preschool and kindergarten years, children “are increasingly capable of voluntary internal self-regulation.” (Bronson 2000, 198) By the end of kindergarten, children should typically be able to regulate themselves. In comparison, younger preschool children’s actions are “spontaneous reactions to the environment... without thinking about the consequences of their actions…. The self-regulated child acts deliberately and thus becomes the master of his own behavior,” say Bodrova and Leong. (2007, 127)
Trends in Self-Regulation
There are a couple of other developmental trends in self-regulation. One is that “other” regulation develops BEFORE self-regulation. “Vygotskians coined the term other-regulation to describe a situation in which a person is regulating another person or being regulated by someone else. This is distinguished from self-regulation in which one regulates oneself.” (Bodrova and Leong 2007, 81)
We can think of other-regulation as being the first step in self-regulation when the adult structures the task and then gradually lets the child take it over.
But, outside of expert-novice interaction, we see that other-regulation also includes the child’s “ability to regulate other people’s behaviors –and learning to be both the regulator and the object of regulation are equally important for the development of self-regulation.” This “picks up on the fact that people are better able to see the mistakes in other people’s behaviors than [they are] in their own.” (Bodrova and Leong 2007, 81) Thus, other-regulation is a step in the learning process.
Trends in Self-Regulation #2.
Another developmental characteristic that relates to self-regulation is that children are able to follow instructions to “do” something, before they can follow directions to “stop doing” something. It is not until the age of about 3 years that a child is able to voluntarily inhibit or stop a response. This makes it appear that they are finally “remembering” a rule, but it is really more about now being able to stop the behavior.
Self-regulation and School Success
Self-regulation is an essential skill for success in school. Various components or skills of self-regulation correlate with academic achievement. For example, in a study reported in the APA Monitor, school success was found to be correlated with skills beyond reading and math, which are obviously very important.
Skills Associated with School Success
School success was also correlated with three self-regulation skills: paying attention, controlling hyperactive behavior, and being able to stay on task. Math skills turned out to have “the greatest predictive power of later ability, [but it was] followed by reading and attention.” (Packard, 2008, 10) Another study (this one done by Blair and Razza) found that self-regulation skills accounted for “greater variation” in academic success than did intelligence. Among those self-regulation skills were the “ability to alternately shift and focus attention, and to inhibit impulsive responding.” (Blair and Razza 2007) The researchers reported that self-regulation skills were associated with children’s emerging math and literacy abilities.
They found “…that all aspects of children’s self-regulation are uniquely related to their academic abilities, over and above intelligence. They also found that one particular aspect of self-regulation – Inhibitory Control termed the inhibitory control aspect of brain function used in planning, problem solving, and goal directed activity – is predictive of all academic outcomes but was particularly associated with early ability in math.”
And, since math has been found to be such a strong predictor of school success, we can conclude that self-regulation skills are too.
By the time children start elementary school, they are expected to be able to regulate their attention, their impulses, and their emotions to the extent that they are able to successfully participate in individual and group learning experiences and communicate with both their peers and their teachers.
Since children’s self-regulation skills make significant progress during the early childhood years, then, it stands to reason that parents must make “self-regulation” one of the key goals for their children. All children must be empowered with these “tools” to the best of their abilities.
“Behavioral inhibition is an executive process with a central role in self-regulation,” and “…it is a prerequisite for all other executive functioning.” (Bronson 2000, 151) This is where we should focus our work initially and then move out to other skills.
So, in that spirit, let’s take a closer look at the development of self-regulation and the management of impulsivity, and see what is going on in the brain. (Wexler 2006 and Goleman 2006)
Management of Impulsivity (OFC)
The orbitofrontal cortex is a brain structure or area in the prefrontal cortex that is located “behind and above the orbits of the eye.” (Goleman 2006, 64) It connects the top of the emotional centers in the brain and the bottom or lower side of the parts of the brain that do our thinking.
“The OFC connects directly, neuron to neuron, three major regions of the brain: the cortex (or ‘thinking brain’), the amygdala (the trigger point for many emotional reactions), and the brain stem ([referred to by Goleman as] the ‘reptilian’ zone for automatic responses).” (2006, 64)
The orbitofrontal cortex, is the place in the brain that allows us to control our impulsive behavior. Using the guidance technique of redirection (the stopping of a child’s inappropriate behavior and then showing the child how or where that behavior would be appropriate) – using redirection with a child has the effect of “strengthening the OFC’s emotional brake.” And this, then, supports the child in learning “how to better manage his impulsivity.” (Goleman 2006, 176)
Goleman says:
“Over the course of childhood the OFC will gradually mature anatomically. A neural growth spurt starts at around age five, allowing more of that circuitry to come online just in time to send the child off to school. That spurt continues apace to around age seven, greatly boosting the child’s self-control and making the second-grade classroom far less rambunctious than kindergarten. Each stage of intellectual, social, and emotional development in a growing child marks a similar step in the maturation of brain areas; this anatomical process continues into the mid-twenties.” (Goleman 2006, 176)
Supporting self-regulation in a developmentally appropriate manner
Guidance and activities to support self-regulation must be age appropriate and individually appropriate. It must be just challenging enough so learning can occur, but not too challenging that it becomes overly stressful.
ZPD In Vygotsky’s words, these efforts must be aimed at each child’s Zone of Proximal Development, the place between what the child can do independently and what he can do with assistance.
Finding ZPD
Let’s take the example of stress and resilience. “As Richard Davidson explains, ‘we can learn to be resilient by being exposed to a threat or stress at a level that allows us to manage it.’ If we are exposed to too little stress, nothing will be learned; too much and the wrong lesson might become embedded in the neural circuitry for fear.” (Goleman 2006, 185)
If a child gets scared and cannot let go of the heightened state – if he or she is “stuck in the fear-arousal mode for a distressingly prolonged period, then what’s being rehearsed is not resilience but the failure to recover.” This may lead to depression and anxiety later in life. (Goleman 2006, 185)
“In humans…, neuroscientists [have] conclude[d], if youngsters are exposed to stressors they learn to handle, this mastery becomes imprinted in their neural circuitry, leaving them more resilient when facing stress as adults. Repeating that sequence of fear-turning-into-calm apparently shapes the neural circuitry for resilience, building an essential emotional capacity.” (Goleman 2006, 185)
Steps of Setting Goals and Meeting Them –Prefrontal Cortex Activity
Young children begin to construct the executive functions of the prefrontal cortex through their play. When children play, especially when they play with others, they are creating neural models of what they want to play, usually with words, since language builds models. The frontal lobe, then, manipulates these models. (Goldberg 2001, 25) Take a look at the sequence of goal directed behavior on your handout; look at the left hand column of the chart. Says Goldberg: “the prefrontal cortex plays the central role in forming goals and objectives and then in devising plans of action required to attain these goals. It selects the cognitive skills and applies them in a correct order. Finally, the prefrontal cortex is responsible for evaluating our actions as success or failure relative to our intentions.” (2001, 24) If we take these steps in setting goals and objectives and apply them to play, it might look like this; I direct your attention to the right hand column, at the analogous steps in goal directed play.
Goal Directed Behavior
Goal Directed Play
1. Form goals and objectives
1. Decide what you want to do or play
2. Devise plans of action required to attain these goals
2. Decide how you will play this and with whom
3. Select the cognitive skills required to implement the plans
3. What do you know that applies to this? Figure out what you’ll need and what you’ll have to do to it or with it, and what the people will do.
4. Coordinate these skills.
4. Start to organize and set it up.
5. Apply the skills in the correct order.
5. Play in a way that supports or fits with the theme or game.
6. Evaluate your actions as success or failure relative to your intentions.
6. Sustain the play in accord with the intent.
or
Have it end early due to it not coming together as intended.
Since what we “do” gets transformed into neural circuits in the brain: Which kind of experiences and activities can help children learn and practice self-control and self-regulation?
Guidance
Parents should try to use “positive speech” with their young children, telling them what “to” do, rather than what “not” to do. For example: “Keep the paint on the paper, please.” “Use two hands when you carry your plate to the sink.”
The use of redirection in guidance goes right along with this, giving the child an acceptable alternative or outlet for the unacceptable behavior. “Take the baseball outside if you want to throw it.” Or…“Use the nerf ball indoors if you want to throw a ball.” “Jump over here where there is a big open space.” “Sit down on the floor if you want to hold the puppy. I cannot let you carry it around.”
Redirection that is followed by a short explanation of “why” gives the child even more information that she can potentially use in a similar situation as she becomes more self-regulated. For example, “Keep the blocks over here by your building so no one will step on them as they walk by. Sometimes when people step on a block they can fall down and get hurt.”
Dramatic Play
Play has not always been respected. However, there have been those in the past who did see the value of play. Friedrich Froebel, in the 19th century, said play was the highest form of child development and was how children learned.
Lev Vygotsky, in the early part of the 20th century, wrote extensively about the value of play in children’s learning. He particularly saw the value in dramatic or pretend play where children take on roles and follow a theme, though improvisationally. According to Vygotskians, dramatic play provides major support or scaffolding for self-regulation.
When you are pretending you are a cat, you cannot answer the phone! You must lap milk from a bowl, not drink it from a glass! Thus, the child must inhibit doing just anything – and stay within the role. If a child is playing injured, he must not move until the ambulance comes. Pretend play has inherent rules in it that must be followed, or you are “not playing right”!
Constructive and Productive Play
Constructive play (like block building, painting, and drawing) or productive activities (such as drama and storytelling) all provide scaffolding for self-regulation, especially when done in groups. Children have a goal, they decide who does what, and then they begin to put their plans to work, and they assess and evaluate their progress in relation to their goal. These are the clearest examples of goal directed play- the easiest to see.
Games
Games and motor activities are especially good for helping the child learn cognitive, physical, and emotional inhibition. In board games, we learn to only move our “man” the number of spaces that came up on the dice or the dial. We play “Statue” or “Freeze” and learn how to inhibit the movement of our bodies.
In games, we learn to take turns, be a team member, and a “good loser”. When we learn to ride a tricycle (and then a bicycle!), we learn to pay attention to how our body is moving and to coordinate our movements purposefully. When we learn to skip rope, we really learn how to keep our focus!
Some Ideas
Let me suggest a few simple examples of activities that you could do with young children which promote skills of self-regulation. I hope these examples will give you ideas of other things to do. These have come from my personal work as a teacher of preschoolers and are each focused on a component of self-regulation.
Paying attention is an essential skill of self-regulation. Lotto matching games (the children’s equivalent of Bingo) require that the children pay close attention to the picture on the card that the “leader” is holding up and also pay close attention to all the pictures on their own card so they can detect a “match”. This also supports learning how to manage your emotions each time you realize that the picture being held up is NOT on your card.
Inhibiting movement is another important skill. As a teacher of a mixed–age group of 2 ½ -5 year olds, I started doing a drum game that entailed having the children “move the way the drum tells you to move.” I would change the beat from very slow to very fast, and change it by pattern or rhythm. I would also model moving to the beat. This is a terrific game for doing some very active, but controlled movement, and it also supports careful listening and paying attention.
Inhibiting speech and being able to shift and focus attention are two other elements of self-regulation. The song BINGO is a true “self-regulation song” if ever there was one! If you don’t know this one, I invite you to join in with those of us who do…you’ll get it!
Suggestions for Reflection:
For parents (and teachers) of young children:
Think about what your child does now that indicates or shows developing self-regulation. Think about it on all levels: physical, emotional, and cognitive.
Also think about what kinds of things you might do to support your child’s growing abilities to self-regulate. How do you support dramatic or pretend play? Do you play games with your child? Do siblings play games together?
Remember your frontal lobe functions as a parent and/or as a teacher. Try to think of the ways you already do this. What “tools of the mind” do you share with or teach to your child? We need to transfer to our children the “tricks of the trade” of being human. Be conscious of this.
And, finally, remember that you are a powerful role model for self-regulation and the executive functions. How do you model problem solving? In what types of situations does your child see you exhibit self-control? Planning? Setting goals? How do you model dealing with frustration? What tips or techniques could you teach your child?
Try to be “transparent” when you solve problems- big ones and little ones. Talk out loud about how you are thinking as you figure it out. They really ARE listening!
Sources:
Blair, Clancy and R.P. Razza. “Self-regulation Abilities, Beyond Intelligence, Play Major Role In Early Achievement.” Science Daily. Society for Research in Child Development, March 29, 2007. Retrieved November 14, 2008 from:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/03/070326095349.htm
Bodrova, Elena and Deborah J. Leong. Tools of the Mind: The Vygotskian Approach to Early Childhood Education. 2nd Ed. New Jersey: Pearson Education, Inc., 2007.
Bronson, Martha B. Self-Regulation in Early Childhood: Nature and Nurture. New York: The Guilford Press, 2000.
Dingfelder, S. “Teachers’ math talk may boost preschool math skills.” Monitor on Psychology. February 2006, 10.
Goldberg, Elkhonon. The Executive Brain: Frontal Lobes and the Civilized Mind. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001.
Goleman, Daniel. Social Intelligence: The New Science of Human Relationships. New York: Bantam Books, 2006.
Packard, E. “Pre-K math and reading predict later success.” Monitor on Psychology, January 2008.
Perry, Bruce Duncan. M.D., Ph.D. “Self-Regulation: The Second Core Strength.”
First published in Early Childhood Today. Retrieved November 14, 2008 from: http://teacher.scholastic.com/professional/bruceperry/self_regulation.htm
Pica, Rae. Great Games for Young Children: Over 100 Games to Develop Self-Confidence, Problem-Solving Skills, and Cooperation. Beltsville, MD: Gryphon House, 2006.
Society for Research in Child Development. “Self-regulation Abilities, Beyond Intelligence, lay Major Role in Early Achievement.” Science Daily. Retrieved November 14, 2008, from http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/03/070326095349.htm
Storch, Maja. “Taking the Reins.” Scientific American Mind. Vol. 16, No 2, 2005, 88-89.
Wexler, Bruce E. Brain and Culture: Neurobiology, Ideology, and Social Change. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2006.
Kathy A. Bobula, Ph.D. 2012
Kathy A. Bobula, Ph.D.
Opening:
I’m going to start out with presenting some basic facts about how the brain works so that we have a common vocabulary. I’ll introduce you to a couple of principles or concepts about how the brain works. Then we’ll focus in on the frontal lobe and what psychologists call the “executive functions” which include self-regulation. We’ll take a look at what some research has found about self-regulation and its relation to success in school as well as in life in general. Then finally, we’ll explore some applications of this information to ways we can support self-regulation abilities in young children.
Let’s start by taking a look at some brain basics. The brain is composed of a variety of cell types, which can be classified as neurons and glial cells. Glial cells provide numerous support functions for the neurons. The neurons are the communication cells of the brain.
Here is a neuron. (Explain the parts of the neuron and how it works.) Looking closer at the place where one neuron “talks” to another neuron, we need to look at the synapse. (Explain the synapse)
Neurons are created at a rapid rate throughout fetal life and through the first 2 years after birth. This creation of new neurons, called neurogenesis, slows down considerably throughout the rest of development, though new neurons are created in certain structures of the brain throughout the whole life span.
Neurons are connected to each other in vast and intricate networks. DNA lays down the basic structure or architecture of the brain and sets up connections between neurons. Most of this happens before the baby is born, but the brain is not actually done developing at that point. Now that the baby is out in the world, the brain needs to find out what the baby needs to know…who these people are, what language do they speak, what food do they eat, and so on. For the next two decades, the development of the rest the brain’s architecture will be based on the experiences that the baby has. This is how the brain develops itself.
When a baby is born, the people who surround that child begin to transfer the cultural information they know (their language, their perceptions, their values) to this new human. In this way, the new baby does not have to “discover” all the accumulated human knowledge of our entire history in what would be a “hit or miss” manner. Instead, we deliberately expose the baby to the sights, sounds, smells, and people of their world, and the baby’s brain modifies its architecture accordingly.
For the brain to continue to develop itself, the baby needs to learn what is known to his parents, relatives, and other people. During the first year of life, for example, a hearing infant will strengthen the connections in the hearing centers of the brain that process the sounds that are in his culture’s language. At the same time, his brain will discard the brain connections it would have used for sounds unique to other languages. The baby starts out able to discriminate – to hear – the sounds of any of the world’s languages. But, through interaction with his caregivers, the baby’s brain strengthens the connections for the sounds he hears, and “prunes out” connections for the sounds he doesn’t hear.
DNA lays down a “boiler plate” structure for the brain that has way too many connections and even too many cells. Once the baby is born, the baby’s brain begins to modify and adapt its structure based on the experiences he or she has in the world, especially with other people. This modification happens by strengthening and adding connections between neurons that are used, as well as by “pruning” away connections that are not being used. In this way, using the case of language as an example, the baby learns what sounds to pay attention to, and which ones to ignore, and gradually begins to associate meaning with the sounds. Thus, the brain has been significantly changed by 11-12 months of age.
The whole process of the brain developing and modifying itself takes about twenty years – from birth to early adulthood. Then the brain stabilizes its structure and makes more minor (though constant) modifications throughout adulthood, based on experiences. We never stop learning and so our brains never stop changing. In fact, it appears that even the “aging brain adapts to its own decline.” (Reuter-Lorenz and Mikels, 256)
Now, let’s look at a couple of the most critical concepts or principles of brain function.
First Concept: What we “do” gets transformed into neural circuits in our brains.
Each time networks of neurons activate-- the connections between the cells become stronger and the connections increase in number. Remember in the picture of the neuron how the axon ended with multiple terminal branches and terminal buttons? Well, when neurons are stimulated frequently, the axon grows more terminal branches, thus increasing the number of connections possible with other neurons. Connections that are used also fill up more of the synaptic vesicles with neurotransmitter, so more is available to be released.
Likewise, we have the flip-flop situation: when neural connections go unused, they weaken or are let go entirely. Thus the phrase, use it or lose it.
So, what does this mean? It means that experience shapes the brain by determining which connections to keep and which connections to “prune” out. The brain keeps those that are used—for better or for worse! Let’s take a look at that.
On the “for better” side of use it or lose it, when preschool children build with blocks, for example, they observe relationships between, say “height” and “stability.” (The higher you build, the more issues you have with stability.) These observations are stored as patterns of connections between neurons that are based on their observations. They can access this information at a later time when they build with blocks again or when they observe a skyscraper in construction. They will even be able to bring up a picture of the blocks in their mind. It’s like an information bank account.
Connections in the brain that are used get kept. This is how knowledge is constructed.
Since what we “do” gets wired into the circuits of our brains, even the very “act of being engaged” lays down a pattern, so the child can become engaged again with greater ease. Becoming engaged comes to be automatic! It is up to parents and teachers of young children to ensure that children are safe in their setting – both physically and psychologically. The warm and supportive relationship that the parents have with their children is critical for supporting learning. In the context of the attachment that forms and the safety that brings, the child can become engaged again and again.
Now, let’s look at an example from the “for worse” side of the Use It or Lose It principle. If a child, for example, is the victim of bias (be it ethnic or racial bias, gender bias, ability bias, or so on), this child will have to spend a lot of time and energy trying to cope with the people who are expressing that bias. Some children who are victimized may become hyper-vigilant to other people’s reactions or behavior for the sake of self-protection. Because this is what the child is “doing,” this exaggerated stress response can lay down patterns in the brain, so that it becomes automatic. Since hyper-vigilance usually comes with elevated and sometimes chronic anxiety, it takes a toll on both the child’s learning and health.
What we “do” will come to be wired into the neural circuits of the brain, for better or for worse. The hours spent playing video games or watching television grab a lot of cortical space and strengthen our ability and preference to learn in these ways, at the expense of space that could be used for, say, reading or listening. Learning from a book or a lecture becomes hard. In the world of the cortex, there is a constant competition for “real estate” – for connection. Use it or lose it. This concept goes hand-in-hand with the next.
Second Concept: Repetition forms stronger and more elaborate memories.
Simply put, the more we “do” something, the more numerous are the connections between neurons, and the stronger the connections are neurologically. This is especially true if we repeat activities on multiple occasions, on different days, or over time. We get better at it, understand it more, and can apply it. Remember the old saying, “Practice makes perfect?” Well, we may not be aiming for perfection, but practice does yield ability and expertise.
Take concepts of number for example. In one study, researchers found that Early Childhood teachers who “use numbers in their everyday speech may aid their students’ math abilities.” (Dingfelder, 2006, 10) For example, in getting ready to go outside, a teacher could say, “You two get your coats on, please,” instead of saying, “You guys get your coats on, please.” Hearing number references throughout the day within the context of the normal activities helps the child build more elaborate concepts of number and number relationships. This certainly applies to the home also – parents can embed numbers in their interactions with their children in the same way.
Elkhonon Goldberg, a neuroscientist and author, states that “unlike instinctive behavior, learning, by definition, is change…. At an early stage of every learning process the organism is faced with novelty and the end stage of the learning process can be thought of as routinization or familiarity. The transition from novelty to routinization is the universal cycle of our inner world.” (2001, 44) In fact, novelty is processed more strongly in the right hemisphere and cognitive routines are processed more strongly in the left hemisphere, though it may be the opposite in left-handers. According to Goldberg, as the neural activation moves its concentration from the right hemisphere to the left, there is “an overall decrease of prefrontal activation.”
This means that skills that have become automatic or routine from practice or repetition don’t take up as much cortical space or energy as do novel experiences. Automatic skills and knowledge can be combined in new ways, which usually takes the child to a more mature way of thinking or behaving. So, having what we call “open ended” materials, such as paper, crayons, scissors, glue, tape, as well as blocks, Legos, or other construction toys, available for children every day allows them to advance their thinking and problem solving when using these familiar materials, in contrast to getting a lot of new toys frequently, to which they must become accustomed. Repetition forms stronger and more elaborate memories.
Now, with the concepts of “Use it or lose it” and “Repetition makes stronger connections” let’s zoom in on the Frontal Lobes of the Brain
The frontal lobes of the brain take the longest to develop, and require a lot of practice to mature.
The frontal lobes are the forward most part of the brain and are especially large in humans. The frontal lobes, occipital lobes, temporal lobes and parietal lobes make up the majority of the brain’s cortex. The cortex is the outer layer in the brain that has deep folds and looks like a cauliflower. As you recall, the cortex is divided into two hemispheres, a right hemisphere and a left hemisphere. The frontal lobes of the cortex allow us to move, think, and talk, among many other things. The frontal lobes of the cortex are of particular interest to those of us in child development and early childhood education.
In his book on the frontal lobes of the brain, Elkhonon Goldberg introduced this area of the brain in the following way. He said:
“Frontal lobes perform the most advanced and complex functions in all of the brain, the so-called executive functions. They are linked to intentionality, purposefulness, and complex decision making. They reach significant development only in humans; arguably, they make us human.” (2001, 2)
The frontal lobes of the cortex include areas that are responsible for the initiation of motor movement as well as these higher order “executive” functions. Bruce Wexler adds that the “late maturing frontal lobe regions play critical roles in language function in general and word generation in particular.” (2006, 105)
The “executive” frontal lobe functions include: voluntary attention (we spend a lot of time teaching children what to pay attention to), memory, organization, planning, and strategy selection. Self-awareness and awareness of others are some of the social functions of the frontal lobes.
Since the frontal lobes take so long to mature (to beyond puberty), “…it is not surprising that adults must provide these functions [these executive functions] if they are to be present in the behavior of infants and children…. While the child’s frontal lobes are developing, the parents’ brains provide frontal lobe functions for the child.” (Wexler 2006, 109) When children spend a portion of their day in full and part day programs, the teaching-caregiving staff members provide the frontal lobe functions for the children in attendance.
For example, if a child wants to make a house or other structure indoors, she may not know how to get that to happen. The parent can guide the child by asking some questions which will aid in planning. The questions will direct the child’s attention to such things as what materials she might use, like a card table and a blanket, or a bunch of pillow making the walls on the floor. The parent can ask the child “who lives in the house?” What else needs to be inside? How can you make a door?
The forward-most area of the frontal lobes is referred to as the pre-frontal cortex. The pre-frontal cortex is located right behind the forehead and is “directly interconnected” (through long axons) with every other area of the brain, with all functional units. It is “singularly suited for coordinating and integrating the work of all the other brain structures....” It brings vision, hearing, language, emotion, meaning, etc. all together. It takes all the parts and coordinates them into a coherent idea. The pre-frontal cortex is the “conductor of the orchestra” and, as such, contains a map of the whole cortex. (Goldberg 2001, 35-6) Damage to the pre-frontal cortex due to head trauma can profoundly disrupt these “conductor” functions, and, thus, “thinking”.
Self-regulation is a frontal lobe function and “one particular aspect of self-regulation is predictive of all academic outcomes” especially early math ability. (Society for Research in Child Development 2007) It is termed the inhibitory control aspect of brain function , and it is used in planning, problem solving, and goal-directed activity. It helps us to stay focused on the task at hand and to inhibit being distracted by outside influences or other internal thoughts or urges. Self-regulation must be learned by doing, over and over again, and in many different situations throughout development. Remember that repetition strengthens existing connections and creates new ones.
Self-regulation involves the pre-frontal cortex, as this area is central and critical in coming up with goals and creating plans to achieve these goals. (Goldberg 2001, 24)
Martha Bronson, who is the author of a comprehensive book on self-regulation, begins to describe self-regulation with the following quote, giving us the broad perspective.
She says:
“Self-regulation begins with life itself. All living things have self-regulating and self-organizing mechanisms that guide their development and adaptation.”
Definition
Elena Bodrova and Deborah Leong, in their book Tools of the Mind, define self-regulation as children’s “ability to act in a deliberate, planned manner in governing much of their own behavior.” (2007, 127)
The self- regulation behaviors that emerge during early childhood allow children to gain control over their behavior and responses in such a way that it helps them to adapt successfully to familiar settings, like the home and early childhood program. During the first 6-7 years of life, children learn to control their thinking – their mental processes- and their emotions. They learn to problem solve. They can focus their attention and ignore distractions. They can set goals.
In humans, the type of self-regulation that a new baby has is “primarily reactive,” but as the child has experiences and matures, she becomes able to have thoughtful, conscious, planned out, control of her thoughts and actions. (Bronson 2000, 2) The early childhood period is the time when children make significant gains in self-regulation, and at each age, the “way” they control their behavior looks very different from that of the other ages. These abilities mature.
For example, an infant begins to regulate their arousal cycles and the emotional responses they have to events in the environment, like waiting to be fed. Toddlers are pushing for independence, but they can respond to requests. They like rituals, and they don’t like change. They can detect “errors” and “feel anxious if they violate rules.” (Bronson 2000, 197) During the preschool and kindergarten years, children “are increasingly capable of voluntary internal self-regulation.” (Bronson 2000, 198) By the end of kindergarten, children should typically be able to regulate themselves. In comparison, younger preschool children’s actions are “spontaneous reactions to the environment... without thinking about the consequences of their actions…. The self-regulated child acts deliberately and thus becomes the master of his own behavior,” say Bodrova and Leong. (2007, 127)
Trends in Self-Regulation
There are a couple of other developmental trends in self-regulation. One is that “other” regulation develops BEFORE self-regulation. “Vygotskians coined the term other-regulation to describe a situation in which a person is regulating another person or being regulated by someone else. This is distinguished from self-regulation in which one regulates oneself.” (Bodrova and Leong 2007, 81)
We can think of other-regulation as being the first step in self-regulation when the adult structures the task and then gradually lets the child take it over.
But, outside of expert-novice interaction, we see that other-regulation also includes the child’s “ability to regulate other people’s behaviors –and learning to be both the regulator and the object of regulation are equally important for the development of self-regulation.” This “picks up on the fact that people are better able to see the mistakes in other people’s behaviors than [they are] in their own.” (Bodrova and Leong 2007, 81) Thus, other-regulation is a step in the learning process.
Trends in Self-Regulation #2.
Another developmental characteristic that relates to self-regulation is that children are able to follow instructions to “do” something, before they can follow directions to “stop doing” something. It is not until the age of about 3 years that a child is able to voluntarily inhibit or stop a response. This makes it appear that they are finally “remembering” a rule, but it is really more about now being able to stop the behavior.
Self-regulation and School Success
Self-regulation is an essential skill for success in school. Various components or skills of self-regulation correlate with academic achievement. For example, in a study reported in the APA Monitor, school success was found to be correlated with skills beyond reading and math, which are obviously very important.
Skills Associated with School Success
School success was also correlated with three self-regulation skills: paying attention, controlling hyperactive behavior, and being able to stay on task. Math skills turned out to have “the greatest predictive power of later ability, [but it was] followed by reading and attention.” (Packard, 2008, 10) Another study (this one done by Blair and Razza) found that self-regulation skills accounted for “greater variation” in academic success than did intelligence. Among those self-regulation skills were the “ability to alternately shift and focus attention, and to inhibit impulsive responding.” (Blair and Razza 2007) The researchers reported that self-regulation skills were associated with children’s emerging math and literacy abilities.
They found “…that all aspects of children’s self-regulation are uniquely related to their academic abilities, over and above intelligence. They also found that one particular aspect of self-regulation – Inhibitory Control termed the inhibitory control aspect of brain function used in planning, problem solving, and goal directed activity – is predictive of all academic outcomes but was particularly associated with early ability in math.”
And, since math has been found to be such a strong predictor of school success, we can conclude that self-regulation skills are too.
By the time children start elementary school, they are expected to be able to regulate their attention, their impulses, and their emotions to the extent that they are able to successfully participate in individual and group learning experiences and communicate with both their peers and their teachers.
Since children’s self-regulation skills make significant progress during the early childhood years, then, it stands to reason that parents must make “self-regulation” one of the key goals for their children. All children must be empowered with these “tools” to the best of their abilities.
“Behavioral inhibition is an executive process with a central role in self-regulation,” and “…it is a prerequisite for all other executive functioning.” (Bronson 2000, 151) This is where we should focus our work initially and then move out to other skills.
So, in that spirit, let’s take a closer look at the development of self-regulation and the management of impulsivity, and see what is going on in the brain. (Wexler 2006 and Goleman 2006)
Management of Impulsivity (OFC)
The orbitofrontal cortex is a brain structure or area in the prefrontal cortex that is located “behind and above the orbits of the eye.” (Goleman 2006, 64) It connects the top of the emotional centers in the brain and the bottom or lower side of the parts of the brain that do our thinking.
“The OFC connects directly, neuron to neuron, three major regions of the brain: the cortex (or ‘thinking brain’), the amygdala (the trigger point for many emotional reactions), and the brain stem ([referred to by Goleman as] the ‘reptilian’ zone for automatic responses).” (2006, 64)
The orbitofrontal cortex, is the place in the brain that allows us to control our impulsive behavior. Using the guidance technique of redirection (the stopping of a child’s inappropriate behavior and then showing the child how or where that behavior would be appropriate) – using redirection with a child has the effect of “strengthening the OFC’s emotional brake.” And this, then, supports the child in learning “how to better manage his impulsivity.” (Goleman 2006, 176)
Goleman says:
“Over the course of childhood the OFC will gradually mature anatomically. A neural growth spurt starts at around age five, allowing more of that circuitry to come online just in time to send the child off to school. That spurt continues apace to around age seven, greatly boosting the child’s self-control and making the second-grade classroom far less rambunctious than kindergarten. Each stage of intellectual, social, and emotional development in a growing child marks a similar step in the maturation of brain areas; this anatomical process continues into the mid-twenties.” (Goleman 2006, 176)
Supporting self-regulation in a developmentally appropriate manner
Guidance and activities to support self-regulation must be age appropriate and individually appropriate. It must be just challenging enough so learning can occur, but not too challenging that it becomes overly stressful.
ZPD In Vygotsky’s words, these efforts must be aimed at each child’s Zone of Proximal Development, the place between what the child can do independently and what he can do with assistance.
Finding ZPD
Let’s take the example of stress and resilience. “As Richard Davidson explains, ‘we can learn to be resilient by being exposed to a threat or stress at a level that allows us to manage it.’ If we are exposed to too little stress, nothing will be learned; too much and the wrong lesson might become embedded in the neural circuitry for fear.” (Goleman 2006, 185)
If a child gets scared and cannot let go of the heightened state – if he or she is “stuck in the fear-arousal mode for a distressingly prolonged period, then what’s being rehearsed is not resilience but the failure to recover.” This may lead to depression and anxiety later in life. (Goleman 2006, 185)
“In humans…, neuroscientists [have] conclude[d], if youngsters are exposed to stressors they learn to handle, this mastery becomes imprinted in their neural circuitry, leaving them more resilient when facing stress as adults. Repeating that sequence of fear-turning-into-calm apparently shapes the neural circuitry for resilience, building an essential emotional capacity.” (Goleman 2006, 185)
Steps of Setting Goals and Meeting Them –Prefrontal Cortex Activity
Young children begin to construct the executive functions of the prefrontal cortex through their play. When children play, especially when they play with others, they are creating neural models of what they want to play, usually with words, since language builds models. The frontal lobe, then, manipulates these models. (Goldberg 2001, 25) Take a look at the sequence of goal directed behavior on your handout; look at the left hand column of the chart. Says Goldberg: “the prefrontal cortex plays the central role in forming goals and objectives and then in devising plans of action required to attain these goals. It selects the cognitive skills and applies them in a correct order. Finally, the prefrontal cortex is responsible for evaluating our actions as success or failure relative to our intentions.” (2001, 24) If we take these steps in setting goals and objectives and apply them to play, it might look like this; I direct your attention to the right hand column, at the analogous steps in goal directed play.
Goal Directed Behavior
Goal Directed Play
1. Form goals and objectives
1. Decide what you want to do or play
2. Devise plans of action required to attain these goals
2. Decide how you will play this and with whom
3. Select the cognitive skills required to implement the plans
3. What do you know that applies to this? Figure out what you’ll need and what you’ll have to do to it or with it, and what the people will do.
4. Coordinate these skills.
4. Start to organize and set it up.
5. Apply the skills in the correct order.
5. Play in a way that supports or fits with the theme or game.
6. Evaluate your actions as success or failure relative to your intentions.
6. Sustain the play in accord with the intent.
or
Have it end early due to it not coming together as intended.
Since what we “do” gets transformed into neural circuits in the brain: Which kind of experiences and activities can help children learn and practice self-control and self-regulation?
Guidance
Parents should try to use “positive speech” with their young children, telling them what “to” do, rather than what “not” to do. For example: “Keep the paint on the paper, please.” “Use two hands when you carry your plate to the sink.”
The use of redirection in guidance goes right along with this, giving the child an acceptable alternative or outlet for the unacceptable behavior. “Take the baseball outside if you want to throw it.” Or…“Use the nerf ball indoors if you want to throw a ball.” “Jump over here where there is a big open space.” “Sit down on the floor if you want to hold the puppy. I cannot let you carry it around.”
Redirection that is followed by a short explanation of “why” gives the child even more information that she can potentially use in a similar situation as she becomes more self-regulated. For example, “Keep the blocks over here by your building so no one will step on them as they walk by. Sometimes when people step on a block they can fall down and get hurt.”
Dramatic Play
Play has not always been respected. However, there have been those in the past who did see the value of play. Friedrich Froebel, in the 19th century, said play was the highest form of child development and was how children learned.
Lev Vygotsky, in the early part of the 20th century, wrote extensively about the value of play in children’s learning. He particularly saw the value in dramatic or pretend play where children take on roles and follow a theme, though improvisationally. According to Vygotskians, dramatic play provides major support or scaffolding for self-regulation.
When you are pretending you are a cat, you cannot answer the phone! You must lap milk from a bowl, not drink it from a glass! Thus, the child must inhibit doing just anything – and stay within the role. If a child is playing injured, he must not move until the ambulance comes. Pretend play has inherent rules in it that must be followed, or you are “not playing right”!
Constructive and Productive Play
Constructive play (like block building, painting, and drawing) or productive activities (such as drama and storytelling) all provide scaffolding for self-regulation, especially when done in groups. Children have a goal, they decide who does what, and then they begin to put their plans to work, and they assess and evaluate their progress in relation to their goal. These are the clearest examples of goal directed play- the easiest to see.
Games
Games and motor activities are especially good for helping the child learn cognitive, physical, and emotional inhibition. In board games, we learn to only move our “man” the number of spaces that came up on the dice or the dial. We play “Statue” or “Freeze” and learn how to inhibit the movement of our bodies.
In games, we learn to take turns, be a team member, and a “good loser”. When we learn to ride a tricycle (and then a bicycle!), we learn to pay attention to how our body is moving and to coordinate our movements purposefully. When we learn to skip rope, we really learn how to keep our focus!
Some Ideas
Let me suggest a few simple examples of activities that you could do with young children which promote skills of self-regulation. I hope these examples will give you ideas of other things to do. These have come from my personal work as a teacher of preschoolers and are each focused on a component of self-regulation.
Paying attention is an essential skill of self-regulation. Lotto matching games (the children’s equivalent of Bingo) require that the children pay close attention to the picture on the card that the “leader” is holding up and also pay close attention to all the pictures on their own card so they can detect a “match”. This also supports learning how to manage your emotions each time you realize that the picture being held up is NOT on your card.
Inhibiting movement is another important skill. As a teacher of a mixed–age group of 2 ½ -5 year olds, I started doing a drum game that entailed having the children “move the way the drum tells you to move.” I would change the beat from very slow to very fast, and change it by pattern or rhythm. I would also model moving to the beat. This is a terrific game for doing some very active, but controlled movement, and it also supports careful listening and paying attention.
Inhibiting speech and being able to shift and focus attention are two other elements of self-regulation. The song BINGO is a true “self-regulation song” if ever there was one! If you don’t know this one, I invite you to join in with those of us who do…you’ll get it!
Suggestions for Reflection:
For parents (and teachers) of young children:
Think about what your child does now that indicates or shows developing self-regulation. Think about it on all levels: physical, emotional, and cognitive.
Also think about what kinds of things you might do to support your child’s growing abilities to self-regulate. How do you support dramatic or pretend play? Do you play games with your child? Do siblings play games together?
Remember your frontal lobe functions as a parent and/or as a teacher. Try to think of the ways you already do this. What “tools of the mind” do you share with or teach to your child? We need to transfer to our children the “tricks of the trade” of being human. Be conscious of this.
And, finally, remember that you are a powerful role model for self-regulation and the executive functions. How do you model problem solving? In what types of situations does your child see you exhibit self-control? Planning? Setting goals? How do you model dealing with frustration? What tips or techniques could you teach your child?
Try to be “transparent” when you solve problems- big ones and little ones. Talk out loud about how you are thinking as you figure it out. They really ARE listening!
Sources:
Blair, Clancy and R.P. Razza. “Self-regulation Abilities, Beyond Intelligence, Play Major Role In Early Achievement.” Science Daily. Society for Research in Child Development, March 29, 2007. Retrieved November 14, 2008 from:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/03/070326095349.htm
Bodrova, Elena and Deborah J. Leong. Tools of the Mind: The Vygotskian Approach to Early Childhood Education. 2nd Ed. New Jersey: Pearson Education, Inc., 2007.
Bronson, Martha B. Self-Regulation in Early Childhood: Nature and Nurture. New York: The Guilford Press, 2000.
Dingfelder, S. “Teachers’ math talk may boost preschool math skills.” Monitor on Psychology. February 2006, 10.
Goldberg, Elkhonon. The Executive Brain: Frontal Lobes and the Civilized Mind. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001.
Goleman, Daniel. Social Intelligence: The New Science of Human Relationships. New York: Bantam Books, 2006.
Packard, E. “Pre-K math and reading predict later success.” Monitor on Psychology, January 2008.
Perry, Bruce Duncan. M.D., Ph.D. “Self-Regulation: The Second Core Strength.”
First published in Early Childhood Today. Retrieved November 14, 2008 from: http://teacher.scholastic.com/professional/bruceperry/self_regulation.htm
Pica, Rae. Great Games for Young Children: Over 100 Games to Develop Self-Confidence, Problem-Solving Skills, and Cooperation. Beltsville, MD: Gryphon House, 2006.
Society for Research in Child Development. “Self-regulation Abilities, Beyond Intelligence, lay Major Role in Early Achievement.” Science Daily. Retrieved November 14, 2008, from http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/03/070326095349.htm
Storch, Maja. “Taking the Reins.” Scientific American Mind. Vol. 16, No 2, 2005, 88-89.
Wexler, Bruce E. Brain and Culture: Neurobiology, Ideology, and Social Change. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2006.
Kathy A. Bobula, Ph.D. 2012