Libby Public School Series: Self Regulation How does your engine run part 2 "TRIGGERS"

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"We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are"                                                                                                              

In part one I talked about the engine levels, high, low and just right to label levels of self regulation. Once you are able to recognize your own level of self regulation and that of your child, you can learn to recognize what causes the changes in self regulation and how can you change from high or low to just right. Today in part two I will be telling you more about recognizing triggers and part three will talk about strategies to change engine levels. https://www.alertprogram.com/


What we see when children are unregulated ( high or low) is behavior. Behavior tends to be viewed as negative, however behavior is a form of communication and action to meet a need and can be positive or negative. For every action there is a reaction.  Behaviors related to dys-regulation often are an external presentation of an internal conflict. Below is a short video that describes the brains regulation using a hand model.



Before you can help or teach a child to regulate themselves, you need to have an idea what causes the child to be  are dis-regulated. Regardless of the Trigger, (a stimulus that overwhelms the neuro-physiological and social emotional systems) the sequence of dis regulation tends to be same(baseline emotion - trigger - response emotion - dis-regulation). A stimulus that may trigger one person may not trigger another. Why is this? There are many factors that determine if a stimulus becomes a trigger or not, such as the baseline status of the nervous system, the environment and setting, the social emotional  history and support network,  or conscious and unconscious memories of events..

To try to figure out triggers you can use the following steps to get more insight, it is not full proof however you will be able to figure out quite a few of them. At school we use an ABC (Antecedent -Behavior - Consequence) form
  1. What was happening leading up to the child becoming dis-regulated (Antecedent)
    1. Setting (1:1, small group, large group, familiar people, strangers)
    2. Environment (inside, outside, home, school, store, car, grandparents house)
    3. Activity (structured vs unstructured, e.g play vs school work, dinner, bathing, playing)
  2. What was the moment of dis-regulation
    1. Describe what happened e.g. When the other child took the toy away, when mom said it was time to do school work
  3. What did the behavior look like. Fight - Flight - Freeze  (Behavior) 
    1. High; behaviors that tend to attract a lot of attention and are often a form of seeking control and attention (yelling, cussing, running, hitting, breaking things, overly active; running, twirling touching things)
    2. Low; behaviors that tend to make the child want to be unnoticed (hiding, being very quiet, passive aggressive, excess sleepiness or actual sleeping, lack of initiation and persistence)
  4.  What happened because of the behavior (Consequence)
    1. With consequence we are not talking about discipline or punishment. What was the direct result or a natural consequence because of the behavior( the child was removed from the classroom, the child got hurt because they fall of the chair when getting upset, the child did not get their work done, the child was cold because he or she refused to put on a coat and left the house without.
    2. Another way to quantify this would be attaching a hypothesized function; Avoid task demand, gain or avoid attention, gain or avoid sensory stimuli, compulsive.


Tommy is a 3rd grader, he lives with his mom and grandma and has been struggling in school. He has been getting into fights at recess and in class struggles to pay attention. Tommy is back in class after lunch recess, where he got into an altercation with a class mate (the teacher is not aware of this). The teacher is setting up a partner activity, when all of a sudden he gets up and storms out of the classroom.

1. Antecedent;
Setting: large group
Environment: playground and class
Activity: Large group unstructured recess, transitioned to structured class time
2. Moment of dis-regulation; The Teacher asked the kids to team up with a partner
3.Behavior: Get up and ran out of class - flight
4. Consequence: By leaving Tommy missed out on a learning opportunity. Avoiding task demand and thus not having to interact socially with other student(s)

 Trigger; The teacher asked Tommy to pair up with a partner.  A Fear of social interaction with the class mate whom he had gotten into a fight with. On the outside it may just look like a child who is refusing to listen and do his schoolwork and thus interrupting the whole class.

Recognizing Triggers in yourself and your child or for your child to recognize them in his or herself, can be empowering allowing you to expect and anticipate certain hurdles or being able to avoid times of dis-regulation by limiting or avoiding some triggers. I invite you to step back and look at some of the struggles you or your child has at home through the ABC lens answering the 4 questions that we discussed and see if it gives you more insight in the why your child might get dis-regulated. In Part three I will be discussing strategies to try at home to re-regulate.


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