Self-Regulation Skills for Our Kids

When a person feels threatened, physically, mentally, emotionally, psychologically, there will be a response inside them. This will happen. No matter what age. Even a young baby recognizes danger and their system responds.

As a baby that response is very reactive. Crying, screaming, and even being inconsolable. They need outside sources of calm to help them regulate. We hold them, soothe them, feed them and such.

As a child grows, they build ways of dealing with perceived threats. These ways can be very self-regulated responses, giving room for a healthy handling of the situation or they can be dysregulated reactions, filled with survival skills and coping mechanisms. Coping mechanisms that do not address the problem, but rather just distract and shield one from the threat.

In other words, do children build healthy self-soothing skills or not? How do we teach these or encourage these? Is it ever too late for these to be learned and developed?