Principal’s Post on Empowering Young Women
Since 1935, Our Lady of Mercy Catholic College has held a legacy of instilling the values of leadership, excellence and service, nurturing confident young women. We empower our girls to make their make on society with confidence and compassion.
Why Self-Regulation is an Essential Skill | Dr Judith Locke
Judith Locke is a clinical psychologist, former teacher, and author known for her practical advice on parenting and resilience. Her books, The Bonsai Child (2015) and The Bonsai Student (2020), offer insights into raising confident, resilient children and fostering independence in students. Locke’s evidence-based approach emphasises the importance of setting boundaries, encouraging responsibility, and allowing children to face challenges to develop resilience. In September 2024, Locke released her latest book, co-authored by Dr Danielle Einstein, Raising Anxiety with a focus on understanding and managing anxiety in children. The following excerpt from The Bonsai Student focuses on self-regulation, one of the five essential skills children need to successfully negotiate their school years and beyond. Self-Regulation Self-regulation is the ability to resist doing something that is immediately pleasant or satisfying for a greater future gain. It’s the ability to delay our gratification. In its simplest form it is turning off the TV to go to bed at a decent hour even though you want to watch another Netflix episode, or organising your lunch the night before when you know you have an early start the following day. It might even be changing the bedlinen before you go on holiday so you have the pleasure of coming home to fresh sheets. In the long term, it is committing to a budget so you are able to afford the deposit on a house, putting in years of study to eventually earn a degree, or doing the hard yards to build your successful business. Self-regulation is focusing on the future rather than only on the moment. It requires maturity and self-discipline to ignore your immediate preference or mood to prioritise the long-term goals which will give you a better life. Self-regulated people don’t need to be killjoys, but they are typically able to resist momentary hedonism to focus on actions that will help them in the long run. Bonsai Parenting and Self-Regulation Bonsai parents do two things which block children from developing self-regulation. The first is constantly reminding them of what they need to do. When parents do this, they don’t allow their children to take responsibility for organising themselves. The parent resembles Cogsworth, the clock in Beauty and the Beast, constantly chiming for the child: ‘don’t forget to do your homework’, ‘you need to have a shower now’ or ‘have you got your swimming gear?’ even at ages when the child or teen should remember these things for themself. Parents say they do this out of concern that their child will get in trouble for not doing their homework or fear their child will be upset when they have to miss their swimming class. |
When a parent always reminds their child to do things, the child doesn’t think they ever need to remember – because it’s clearly not their job.
Constant parental reminders mean the child never learns how to remember. The other problem with regular reminders is that your actions protect them from experiencing the consequence of not planning what they need to do. For example, having to sit out the swimming class might sting enough that the child puts in more effort to remember their swimming gear the next time, or makes sure they check their timetable when they pack their bag. Doing a lunchtime detention on their own while their friends are in the playground is a powerful incentive for a child to get their homework done on time in future.
Parents often feel their reminders are justified because of their fear that the child won’t do well at school and that this will adversely affect their future. But unless they plan to stop their reminders and nagging at some point, they set themselves up to be a permanent alarm clock. These parents will have to remind their adult child to complete their university assignments by the due date, meet the deadlines on their work projects, and pay their credit card on time. Clearly, parents have to step back at some stage, so their children step up for themselves. The later they leave it, the more difficult it will be for their child.
The second thing bonsai parents do that blocks children’s development of self-regulation is to constantly question them on how they feel about upcoming activities. Now, there is nothing wrong with discussing feelings, but these days many parents tap into their children’s moods too much. Sure, ask your child briefly how they feel about their music exam or starting at a new school, but be aware that the longer your conversations about feelings go on, the more you tap into their moods and not their goals.
Let’s take going to the gym as an example. For most of us, the only way we ever go to the gym is if we never ask ourselves if we feel like going to the gym. Unless you’ve been truly blessed by the Motivation Fairy, thinking too long about your mood actually works against doing anything that is hard work now towards a long-term goal. To get yourself to do something uncomfortable, you’re better not to even think about what you feel like doing but tap into what the activity will do for you in future – get you fit, help you zip up those jeans again, let you walk upstairs without panting.
Research suggests that going over and over how we feel before uncomfortable situations serves to amplify our emotions and makes us less likely to effect necessary change in our lives. Sure, we might believe we are truly supportive when we allow loved ones to tell us at length about their feelings about going to school or work on Monday, but letting them dwell too much on their mood without reminding them of the big picture can end by making the feelings more intense. As a result, they dread the activity even more.
How to Know if Your Child Lacks Self-Regulation
If you constantly have to remind your child to do things, from gentle prompting through to outright nagging, it’s likely they lack self-regulation. Another clear indicator is if they show poor compliance with your instructions or constantly fail to follow household rules. Other signs are:
– They cannot manage their moods. I don’t mean just on occasion, such as that one family photo when they were cranky and refused to smile, but regularly and to the extent that their temperament affects the rest of the family.
– They rapidly escalate and amplify their bad moods. Once they are on the train to Tantrum or Thunder Face, you can rarely head them off at the pass, and it feels like this train leaves the station every hour.
– They need you to sweeten the deal before they will comply with your requests. When you ask them to put back the stuffed toy they demand you buy for them in the department store, they won’t do it until you offer a sweetener like an ice-cream or trip to the park on the way home.
– They tend to blame you for things. It’s your fault they are late because you didn’t get them up on time to get ready, even though you went into their bedroom three times and pleaded with them to get up so everyone wouldn’t be late to work and school.
– They have poor impulse control. When they are doing something pleasurable, such as playing video games, they find it hard to stop or they refuse to stop, which easily escalates into a tantrum or a resentful fit of the sulks.
What to Do If Your Child Lacks Self-Regulation
It is perfectly normal if your young child lacks self-regulation. Children don’t have good skills in delayed gratification in their early years, and adults have to help them develop their self-discipline when children are between three and seven years old. By the time they are seven, your child should be able to do what you say most of the time and their anger or tantrums should not be frequent or endless. You can still help them to develop their self-regulation after the age of seven, but by then it will be much harder for them and for you.
The first step is to become more of an authority figure in the home. You can do this by giving clear and calm instructions when you ask them to do things. This way you will not disturb their equanimity or give them cause to doubt your confidence in your authority. Predictable routines help too; your child is less likely to challenge you if their routine is the same every day. Set up routines in busy times, such as a bedtime ritual: the family has dinner, your child cleans their teeth, you read a story together and then it’s bedtime, every single night if possible.
Rules are another form of routine where your child understands what is expected of them. Effective rules have predictable and unchanging consequences for poor choices, such as Time Out if they are young, or Chore Sets if they are older. (Both of these are explained fully in The Bonsai Child.) Consistency is the key: the more consistent you are, the easier it becomes for them to see that your response is always the same and that it always works out better for them to do what is expected of them, even though they may not feel like doing it at that moment.
Over time, give your child fewer reminders of what they need to do. Let them know you are ceasing to be the alarm clock, and they need to step up and remember things themselves. Let them know that when you do this, they will bear the brunt of any failure to be organised and you will not step in and fix things for them at the last minute or get them out of a school consequence.
When your child reports uncomfortable feelings about upcoming events, discuss the situation briefly, acknowledge how they feel, and normalise their apprehension by telling them it’s natural to feel nervous before doing something new. Also remind them of the benefits of taking on the challenge and not dwelling on their difficult emotions for too long. Better still, have your child tap into the reasons why meeting the challenge will be helpful for them and how their confidence will grow when they complete the activity and realise they can cope, regardless of how they felt beforehand or how well they performed the task in the end.