Resilience: Tips for Helping Preschoolers Regulate and Bounce Back

Ellie angrily pushes Zoe when she cuts her in the line for the ring toss game.  
Cooper cries and screams angry words when his time is up at the listening center.  
Do these scenarios remind you of some preschoolers in your classroom?  

Keep in mind, everyone experiences big emotions. On a late-night run to the store for my favorite caramel-toffee ice cream, I spotted a customer grabbing the last four cartons. I felt frustrated, disappointed, and mad for not getting to the store five minutes ago. I wanted to yell at this inconsiderate ice cream grabber. But I didn’t. I controlled the impulse and considered my options, heading home instead with a pint of raspberry sorbet.  

Have you wondered why this thinking process is so much harder for young children?  

Naturally, it has a lot to do with development and the fact that kids have fewer experiences than adults to draw upon. But fundamentally, the answer lies within the brain and how it’s wired. It’s challenging for young children to separate their feelings from their actions.  

When something happens and things don’t go their way, emotions like anger or frustration can emerge quickly. The fear or threat of losing her place in line sent Ellie’s brain into its survival state where her response was physical. The frustration and disappointment Cooper felt when asked to leave the listening center before he was ready sent his brain into an emotional state where he seemed to get stuck. These are both impulsive responses that can happen automatically when children experience something stressful. The brain’s Executive State is where they can manage the impulse and think about what they might do to solve the problem.  

Coaching children to their highest brain state is a skillful process that every teacher and caregiver must practice with intention and regularity.   

What Role Does Resilience Play?  

Things don’t always go our way. It is a fact of life. We may have to do things we don’t enjoy, might not get something that we want, or someone may hurt our feelings. It is why we should strive to arm every child with the ability to be resilient. It’s a superpower! When a rubber band gets stretched out of shape, it is resilience that enables it to return to normal. Similarly, when young children experience big feelings, their instinct is to react with big behaviors. But resilience enables the child to regulate those emotions and bounce back.   

Dr. Becky Bailey’s Conscious Discipline model defines “self-regulation” as the scientific term for resilience. But resilience is a developmental skill and mastery requires time and practice. That’s where teachers like you come into play.  

Here are seven things to keep in mind as you boost the essential superpower of resilience in the children that you teach.   

Be Patient  

Self-regulating requires that children balance emotions with many other skills like focus, impulse control, verbal skills, or reflection. It’s HARD! There’s a lot of learning involved and learning takes time. Remember to set reasonable expectations that are consistent with the developmental age and abilities of the child. Practice patience.  

Begin With Self  

Young children vary greatly in individual temperament traits. Some will demand more attention than others or present behaviors that are consistently more challenging. Tap into your own resilience. As adults, we must be keenly self-aware and examine our own emotional state in order to guide children in developing theirs. Children also learn from the behaviors that we model for them. Always begin with the self.  

Co-Regulate  

When children take their first steps or put on roller skates for the first time, we walk with them, hold their hand, or trot beside them as they become more skilled. This type of scaffolding is also critical in social learning. Provide a high level of support, cues, and modeling to help a struggling child regulate themself. As the child becomes more independently skilled, continue to monitor, but gradually withdraw support, offering less assistance as needed.   

Empathy: A Magical Teaching Tool  

When young children act out feelings instead of managing them, it’s tempting to immediately react to the behavior. Unfortunately, responding to a child’s behavior before you respond to their feelings never leads to long term solutions. Recognize, acknowledge, and name a child’s feelings. It’s good modeling, build’s self-awareness, and it assures the child that they’ve been heard. The distressed child can then move forward and access their thinking brain.  

Teach Children Calming Strategies  

Recognizing and naming feelings is essential as children learn to listen to their bodies and recognize the difference between feeling calm and feeling upset. Breathing techniques, calming tools, music, or yoga stretches are teachable strategies that help children manage big feelings instead of falling victim to them. Focus also on developing expressive language skills. Having words to express feelings reduces the likelihood of physically aggressive meltdowns.  

Connection Is Key  

The need for connection and belonging is real. It is reinforced through relationship building. When children feel a sense of connection, it engenders trust and promises them that they are loved, valued, and cared for. Until the need for connection is satisfied, the child isn’t positioned to be at their best or learn new skills.  

Give Yourself A Big High-Five!  

It’s amazing what you already do to promote regulatory skills. Routines and procedures, listening, taking turns, following directions, tackling new challenges—these are a few of the things built into your school day that boost these critical thinking skills. So, as you plan the next music activity, nature walk, or read-a-loud, take notice of how many ways you are inspiring young thinkers and resilient problem solvers. That deserves a big high-five!  

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About the Author:

Cheryl Smith Turner is a seasoned trainer and founder of REACH TLS, LLC., an educational consulting firm based in Atlanta, Georgia.  Cheryl provides educators with tools and strategies for creating a positive climate for learning.  She is a nationally certified trainer for child guidance and management strategies and is a featured presenter for a variety of national staff development organizations.  In Georgia, Cheryl is an state approved trainer III, a Professional Learning Communities (PLC) Facilitator and an approved trainer for Strengthening Families Georgia. Her content includes various topics related to social learning, emotional intelligence, child guidance, life skills and executive function, play-based learning and leadership.  Cheryl engages her audiences with a high-energy, interactive style that combines practical strategies and relevant content with a dash of humor and plenty of fun!  In her free time, Cheryl loves traveling and spending time with her grandkids!