What Educators Need to Know About Self-Regulation
› Children need support and guidance to build self-regulation skills. Instead of expecting children to begin to self-regulate on their own, educators should scaffold children to develop this skill. Without support in this area, children may actually practice being impulsive instead of learning how to manage their behaviors. Supporting each child in a setting to increase their self-regulation capacity is beneficial for the entire learning community.
› Struggling with self-regulation can have a variety of underlying causes. It is important to gather and use information to consider possible reasons behind unregulated behaviors in order to determine the most appropriate next steps and supports.
› Grabbing an object from or pushing another child and similar behaviors often result from a lack of selfregulation. Instead of labeling a child as aggressive, educators can provide support by working on the child’ s self-regulation skills at other times of the day and diffusing moments when they show a lack of self-regulation.
› When children’ s self-regulation skills are still emerging, they may act first and then think later. Even when children know what they should do( wait for a turn), they have difficulty inhibiting their reactive behaviors( grabbing the toy they want). They act first, then think later about what they should have done.
› Children develop self-regulation when they have opportunities to grow in both home and early learning settings. Rather than attributing a child’ s behavior to something their families did or did not do, educators can focus on improving self-regulation in the learning setting. When children are supported to develop self-regulation in one setting, they may also become more self-regulated in other settings. Educators can also partner with families by talking about self-regulation development and its importance, reflecting on the child’ s current abilities, gathering families’ observations and questions about their children, and sharing what they are working on with all families( not just those of children who are having difficulty self-regulating).
› To develop self-regulation, children need opportunities to exercise agency. It is important to give children opportunities to exercise agency and make choices within a supportive, structured environment. When children have no agency, they become dependent on adult direction. In these cases, a classroom may look regulated, but children may be regulated by the teacher being there. That changes when the teacher is not there.
26 Educating Young Children
Spring 2026