When Your Child Is Losing It and So Are You: Understanding Co-Regulation

This article is the fourth and final part of my Understanding Children’s Emotions and Behaviour series, exploring the brain’s survival system, fight, flight, freeze and fawn, shame, and co-regulation.

The theory behind emotional regulation often makes sense until we're activated ourselves. When your child is yelling at you, refusing to get dressed when you needed to leave ten minutes ago, hitting their sibling, or having a meltdown over something that seems completely disproportionate, we can feel our own nervous system starting to react. We become frustrated, our voice gets louder, we start repeating ourselves, and before long we're trying to convince an agitated child to calm down while becoming increasingly overwhelmed ourselves.

This is one of the reasons I think it is important to talk about co-regulation, rather than focusing only on how we teach children to regulate themselves.

Children learn regulation with us

Emotional regulation is often talked about as a skill children acquire through teaching strategies - we tell them to take a breath, use their words, make a good choice or go and calm themselves down. But self-regulation develops gradually, and it begins in relationships.

When babies are distressed, they rely on their adult caregivers to help regulate their physical and emotional states. We feed them when they are hungry, hold and rock them, change the environment when they are overwhelmed, and use our voice, facial expressions, touch and movement to communicate safety.

Children become increasingly independent as they grow, but they don't suddenly stop needing this support. The skills involved in regulating ourselves are actually quite complex. A child needs to notice what is happening in their body, recognise and make sense of an emotion, tolerate the feeling, manage impulses, access language, consider different options and then choose what to do. Those capacities develop gradually throughout childhood and adolescence.

Often, because children are increasingly verbal, we can fall into the trap of overestimating their capacity for thought and reason when they are upset. A child may sound incredibly grown-up when they're calm, but when their survival system is highly activated, they have much less access to the thinking and regulatory capacities they ordinarily rely on. If we think back to our lizard brain and wizard brain, this is exactly when the wizard brain becomes harder to reach.

Co-regulation is the process of supporting children through emotional and physiological states that they cannot yet reliably manage alone. Through repeated experiences of being supported when they are overwhelmed, children gradually build greater awareness of their own internal states and a better understanding of what helps them manage those states.

Over time, someone helps me through this can gradually become I recognise what is happening to me, and I have some idea what I can do.

Regulation doesn't mean calm or compliant

This is an important distinction because otherwise emotional regulation can easily become another way of describing the behaviour adults would prefer to see.

A regulated child isn't necessarily happy, calm or agreeable. They can be angry about a boundary, disappointed that something didn't go their way, worried about going to school or frustrated with their sibling and still be regulated.

We aren't trying to teach children not to have big emotions. We're helping them develop the capacity to experience those emotions without becoming completely overwhelmed by them, and gradually to communicate, seek support and make choices about what they do with those feelings.

Our nervous system is part of the interaction too

Parents aren't neutral observers of their child's behaviour. We bring our own stress, experiences, expectations and emotional responses into the interaction. A child taking fifteen minutes to put their shoes on might be mildly annoying on a Sunday afternoon and absolutely infuriating when everyone is late for school and you have an appointment at nine.

There are also particular behaviours that tend to get under our skin or trigger our own histories. Being ignored might leave us feeling powerless. Defiance might feel disrespectful, especially when others are around to watch. A child's anxiety can activate our own and create an urgent need to make the problem disappear. Being yelled at can make us angry.

Once our own alarm system is activated, some of the same things we've been talking about throughout this series happen to us. We become less flexible and more reactive. We use more words, repeat instructions, raise our voice, demand answers or reach for consequences because we desperately want the behaviour to stop.

Sometimes we need to regulate ourselves first

This is why it helps to become familiar with our own signs of escalation.

We don't need to achieve some perfect state of calm before responding to our children. But if we notice that our own activation is becoming part of the interaction, and everybody is safe, creating a little space can help.

You might take a few slower breaths, have a cold glass of water, splash your face with cold water, unclench your jaw, step somewhere quieter for a moment, or simply stop talking long enough to notice what is happening in your body.

You can also tell your child what you're doing: “I'm getting overwhelmed and I'm going to take a few minutes to calm down. Then I'll come back.”

I like this because it doesn't require us to pretend adults don't become dysregulated. Instead, we're showing children what it looks like to recognise an emotional state and take responsibility for managing it.

Of course, sometimes we can't step away. A child might be unsafe, we might be in public, or there might simply be nowhere to go. Even deliberately slowing our voice, reducing what we're saying or noticing our breathing can help us avoid adding more intensity to the interaction.

When children are overwhelmed, less is often more

One of the most common things adults do when children are overwhelmed is talk. A lot.

We explain why the behaviour isn't okay, remind them what they're supposed to do, ask what they were thinking, suggest strategies, explain the consequences and tell them to calm down. Usually we're trying to help, but we're asking the child to use exactly the thinking capacities - hello, Wizard Brain! - that are least available to them in that moment.

When a child is highly activated, we need to prioritise immediate safety, a clear boundary where one is needed, and reducing the intensity of the interaction. That might be as simple as “I won't let you hit,” “I'm here,” or “We'll talk about this when things feel a bit easier.”

We aren't abandoning the teaching - we're choosing a better time to do it, when the child is more likely to be able to listen and learn.

What does co-regulation actually look like?

There isn't one strategy that regulates every child. Some children seek physical closeness when overwhelmed, while others need space. Some regulate through movement or sensory input, while others need less stimulation and fewer words. Some want to talk; others might draw, play, listen to music or simply have an adult nearby without being expected to communicate.

Age, temperament, sensory needs, neurodevelopment, previous experiences and the situation will all influence what helps. What a child needs may also change depending on how overwhelmed they are and the situation they are in.

This is where knowing the individual child matters more than having the perfect list of regulation strategies. Over time, we can notice what tends to help this child, what makes things worse, and eventually help them recognise those patterns for themselves.

We can co-regulate and still hold boundaries

Co-regulation doesn't require us to remove a boundary because our child is distressed by it. We can understand why something feels difficult for them, support them through the feelings that follow, and still be clear about what needs to happen.

If a child is hitting, we need to stop the hitting. If the answer to another hour of gaming is no, we can acknowledge how angry or disappointed they are without changing the answer. We might say, “I know you're really angry that it's time to turn the game off. You wanted to keep playing, and it's hard to stop. I'm not going to let you throw the controller.”

Part of developing regulation is learning that feelings such as anger, frustration and disappointment are uncomfortable, but manageable. Children need opportunities to experience these feelings with support, rather than learning that regulation means the feeling has to disappear or the situation needs to change before they can be okay.

The teaching comes later

Once everyone is more regulated, we have much more opportunity to think together about what happened. We can help children notice what was happening before things became difficult, what they felt in their body, what made the situation worse and what helped. This might happen through conversation, drawing, stories or play, depending on the child.

And we will get it wrong

Co-regulation is not about being endlessly patient or perfectly regulated ourselves. Parents lose their temper. We raise our voices, push a conversation too far, misunderstand what is happening or respond in ways we wish we hadn't.

We can come back and take responsibility for our part: “I was really frustrated before and I yelled. I shouldn't have spoken to you like that. I'm sorry.”

Children need to experience relationships where people get things wrong, take responsibility, repair and reconnect. They learn that conflict doesn't necessarily mean disconnection, and that mistakes can be worked through.

From co-regulation to self-regulation

Ultimately, we're helping children develop an understanding of their own nervous system: what it feels like when they're becoming overwhelmed, the situations that tend to activate them, how they tend to respond and what helps.

As they grow, they can take increasing responsibility for that process. They might recognise that they need some space, ask for help before reaching breaking point, choose a strategy that works for them, or come back to a difficult conversation once they're ready.

That development isn't linear. A child who manages something independently one day may need considerable support another day because they're tired, hungry, stressed, unwell or simply having a hard day. Over time, through continued experiences of co-regulation and increasing opportunities to understand and manage their own internal states, children gradually develop a greater capacity for self-regulation.

Understanding Children’s Emotions and Behaviour

This is the final article in the series. You can also read the others.

Explore the Understanding Children's Emotions and Behaviour series