Parenting Through Stages of Development – A Parent Hope Project podcast series

Self-regulation and the capacity to delay gratification starts in infancy – for young children it happens at an instinctive biological level rather than as a cognitive capacity. This is not the popular message in the current parenting discourse. There’s a lot of talk about parents calming their child, and about co-regulation for young children. Sounds reasonable??

My concern about this term is it can add to a parent overfocusing on their child in trying to settle the child. The parent easily loses their own clarity in this effort to change the child. The child becomes sensitised to the parent’s focus which easily takes away from the child drawing on their basic capacities to distract in the face of upset. All self-regulation happens in relationships. The best relationship environment for children’s self-regulation is when parents and carers focus on managing themselves not the child. Parents work at staying present, tolerating the child’s upset and re-gathering their principles.

Dr Jenny Brown

Listen to more – with the example of toddler tantrums in our new podcast series: PARENTING THROUGH STAGES OF DEVELOPMENT – follow on your podcast app.