Exceptional Lives Community Member
on
August 22, 2020

What do you mean, ‘Self Regulation is the new IQ’?

Carrie Alvarado, PhD, OTR explains more about self-regulation following her presentation with ELI's Kitchen Conversations, Summer Style webinar series where we talked about mixing Occupational Therapy into summer fun at home. Find the full webinar (30 minutes) with closed captions and transcript here: /webinars

Parenting Support

 

OK and then I think somebody asked if I could just repeat what I said about self-regulation being the new IQ.

Um, don’t you just want to put that on a T-shirt? Isn’t that fantastic! That quote came from my neuroscience professor in grad school Jim Steven; Um, it really means that foundational skill that a child needs to develop, really starts as soon as a child is born, right? It starts with that parent co-regulating that child. That child experiences what it feels like to be in an organized and safe state and then they start to develop self-regulation, right? Um, they start to learn how to use their senses to make them feel better, to avoid senses that might make them start to feel a little overwhelmed, we all do that. Um, a self-regulated child is an organized child; they’re an available child and available for interaction and then available for engagement. Um, a regulated child can show us what they know. They can show what they are interested in. Um, we can see their skills, especially their cognitive capacities, really so much more clearly. Um, but if a child isn’t regulated the IQ doesn’t really mean squat, you know. How can we assess what the child knows? How can we assess um, where their childish interests lie? Um, so if we can get the child to really develop a more foundational stable capacity um, in the realm of self-regulation and more availability for co-regulation, then what we see is a child who’s more ready to make significant and rapid growth in whatever their areas of challenge are. So, I hope this helps. Thanks.

 

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