Regulation: Managing Emotions and Attention
Alert & Zones of Regulation
Our Approach
When a child struggles with the ability to control their emotions and attention, it could result in:
- ongoing difficulties with concentration, such as being unable to follow directions, listen to a story, or focus on their school work
- decreased social skills that leave them uninterested in playing with other kids
- being easily upset, frustrated, or worried to the point that they are unable to move on.
These types of regulation difficulties can negatively impact a child’s ability to learn, maintain relationships, or succeed in their daily activities.
At OTW we build self-regulation using evidence-based approaches by providing a structured curriculum to help your child consciously regulate their actions. We use calming techniques, cognitive strategies and sensory-motor supports to assist with learning self-regulation. This will help your child to be calmer, focussed and to reach their potential.
How does it work?
The OTW self-regulation programs are ideal for children who have attention deficit issues, autism spectrum disorder, anxiety disorders or sensory processing disorder but is also beneficial to all people who wish to understand tools they can use to self-regulate to increase control and problem-solving abilities. We use calming techniques, cognitive strategies and sensory- motor supports to assist with learning self-regulation.
The Alert Program (for younger children), Zones of Regulation curriculum (for older ones), and Self-Reg strategies helps us identify the difference between misbehaviour and stress behaviour and support students to consciously regulate their actions. Young children with Autism can have particular difficulty understanding and controlling their emotions, especially ‘negative’ emotions like anxiety and anger. The most effective intervention may be The Stress and Anger Management Program, (STAMP) designed by autism expert Dr Tony Attwood PhD, and/ or the Shanker Self-reg ®framework.
Alert Program, Zones of Regulation, Self-reg and STAMP is available in group or individual format.
Steps we take.
We will:
- Help your child recognise what they are feeling (e.g. sad, angry, proud or calm) and to become aware of their arousal level (fast, slow, just right).
- As each child and family are individual, we provide options for your child and the family to explore what self-regulation tools work best for them. This is likely to be a individual mix of sensory (feeling), motor (moving) and cognitive (thinking) strategies. Families are supported to learn co-regulation strategies to enable and model calming tools.
- Provide a summary of what works for your child/family and use opportunities to practice implementing these new skills.
- Create ways to effectively transition the skills into daily life, so your child will be calmer, focused and ready to learn.