Supporting Dysregulated Behaviour
Dysregulated behaviour is a response that we may observe in our children when they are struggling to regulate their emotions and big feelings. This resource is brought to you in partnership with The ADHD Foundation Neurodiversity Charity.
What are the characteristics of dysregulated behaviour?
There are many different characteristics with identifying dysregulated behaviour in our children, including:
- Physical reactions: running, hitting out, self-injurious behaviour.
- Withdrawal behaviours: becoming quiet, selective mutism, hiding.
- Impulsivity: behaving before thinking, reacting quickly and being upset afterwards.
- Attention and focus difficulties: struggling to concentrate on tasks, frequently distracted and unfinished actions.
- Social responses: becoming clingy, seeking reassurance.
Understanding the language of behaviour and emotions
It’s important that we support children to first understand the language of emotions. We can do this by using emotion coaching statements. These are statements that we make when we observe our child experiencing an emotion and we label it, for example we could say “I think that you are feeling sad.”
Labelling emotions to help your child understand
For younger children label the first 4 core emotions when you observe them – happy, sad, worried and angry.
For older children, or those that show they are ready, we can broaden the language that we use. We may for example, use worried as well as anxious.
Once we have spent time labelling the emotions, we can then label the emotion and the physical reaction.
At this next step, we now extend our emotion coaching statements where we label both the emotion and the physical reaction. For example we may say “I think that you’re happy because you have a big smile on your face” or “I think that you are worried because you are biting your bottom lip.”
Understanding reactions and responses to emotions
After doing this for a period of time (it may take a number of weeks), we move on to the final step of labelling the emotion, the physical reaction and then guide our child to the regulation tool that might help. For example we may say to our child “I think you are feeling worried because you are clenching your fists. Let’s go and use the resistance bands to manage that feeling.”
Your child’s physical response will determine what type of regulation strategy may work. Below are some ideas of regulation strategies for physical and emotional responses.
Learn more about dysregulated behaviour in our webinar
Emma Weaver, Deputy CEO of The ADHD Foundation Neurodiversity Charity, explores more ideas and tips for supporting dysregulated behaviour.