Self-Regulation during Early Childhood Development

Today in my Professional foundations in early childhood class, we got to hear from a grad student that had done her research project in preschools around the Corvallis area on self-regulation. Her presentation is something that I want to write down and remember when it comes to raising my own children. For a little back ground information...self regulation involves two different components, behavior regulation and emotional regulation. The study that this student preformed was specifically on behavioral regulation. This involves a child's attention span, their working memory (being able to complete multiple tasks), and their inhibitory control. The research showed that how well a child preformed these tasks had positive correlation to more academic success.

The actual experiment involved a sample of 74 children and were all four years of age. The experiment involved a pretest, an intervention, and a post test. The pretest was Called HSKT or Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes, and to preform this test the teacher would start with just Head and Toes. She explained to the child, that when she said to touch your head the child should then touch their head (demonstrate this) and when she said to touch your toes you would touch your toes (demonstrate). The child would then go through a few rounds playing this game. Then the student said she would say something along the lines of, "Okay now we are going to make it tricky and really fun." She then told the child to listen very carefully cause it was important that they follow directions. If she said to touch your head then this meant the child should touch their toes (demonstrate), and if she said to touch your toes that meant the child should touch their head (demonstrate). After a few rounds of this the student does the exact same processes with the shoulders and knees. Once the child has all the directions, they then put the entire HSKT together. To score this, for example if the teacher says heads and the child touches their head that is a score of zero, if the child reaches for their head (goes in the wrong direction) and then changes and touches their toes that is a score of one, if the child does not move in wrong direction first and just moves to their toes that is a score of two. Each of the 74 children were tested and scored.

Now here comes the interesting part that I hope to implement in my children's lives. They split the children into two groups, a control group and experimental group. The experimental group met for 8 weeks, twice during the week, for thirty minutes and the student played all sorts of games with them, in a circle time setting. They played games such as; Red light Green light, but with all different colors and even shapes, the freeze game where music would play and when the music stopped they had to freeze, (another trick to the freeze game involved dancing fast when it was a slow song, and dancing slow during a fast song, we had to try it in class super tricky even now!), funny faces, drum beats.

Some of the outcomes when the children were retested were that children in the treatment group (played the games) showed a increased ability to remember direction, pay attention, and were able to control their bodies better than those of the control group. Their self regulation increased!!!

I found this study so interesting or important to me because, I think that there are so many simple things that we can do for our children to help them grow that many parents don't know about. Like for me, before this class I wouldn't have known how important small interactive games can help my children self regulate and also improve their academic success in the long run. The student teacher also mentioned something that hit me hard to, because she was talking about the grade that I wish to teach, kindergarten, and that half the students teachers report not being able to follow simple direction, Work in groups and individually, and have proper social skills. I hope that I can be a mom that prepares her children for success in schools. Although, I do believe that you can read and study as much as you want to prepare for parenting, but the real experience comes from when your in the moment with your child. Cant Wait :)