Each week we will be sharing a tip from our school psychologist, Mrs. Rollins.

This week we are talking about – Antecedents and Emotion Regulation

Antecedent is a fancy word for what event happens before another event happens. The connection between antecedents and behavior is really important in supporting our students during emotional struggles. Understanding what happened right before an emotional outburst or even a series of events that could have contributed can be key to helping our students better regulate their emotions.

Understanding antecedents can often lead to a simple solution of not having your child experience that event, so for example, if your student has a hard time regulating emotions after eating a large amount of sugar, limiting sugary foods can really help. However, there are some events you can’t always avoid like going to school, eating nutritious food, fire drills, being in large groups of people, taking an important medication, etc.

When we want to help our children better regulate through hard emotions, we sometimes think being happy is the same as avoiding unhappy experiences. However, teaching our children to sit with, process and then regulate through difficult emotions helps them to be happy more often because it gives them a path through turbulent thoughts and feelings. Here are some suggestions on helping your student through emotional moments:

Note the antecedents – think and reflect on what happens before an emotional outburst. Depending on their communication abilities, your child can help you figure it out. Don’t be afraid to be wrong. If your suggestion is wrong, your child may join the discussion just to correct you.

Normalize feelings – feelings are ok and valid. Sometimes the expression of feelings is not ok, especially when it involves hurting themselves or others, but the feelings are ok. Help your child understand where their feelings came from so you can look at what to do about them.

Explore alternative ways to express emotions – talk with your child about how and when they can express different emotions. Be flexible in expression within reasonable boundaries. For example, when my daughter gets excited, she likes to scream. Rather than never letting her scream, screaming outside while playing is ok, but not inside. This is a reasonable expectation and boundary.

Apologize and Reconnect – sometimes our bad mood gets reflected back at us by our kids and we don’t always handle those moments well. Apologizing helps so much. If my son doesn’t want to go to bed and endlessly screams at me, I might leave him alone because it’s too much. If I come back, help him calm, apologize, offer empathy, say we’ll try again tomorrow, skip most of our routine, but end by cuddling while singing songs, then we are both regulated and our connection is still strong.

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