Experiences emotions with great intensity and might need support to calm

Your baby is developing their awareness of themselves, starting to want to do things for themselves and beginning to be able to think about different possibilities. This can lead to moments of disappointment or frustration and your baby will experience these emotions with great intensity. Your baby’s social and emotional skills are closely linked to their cognitive development. They will gradually develop the cognitive skills to think through situations that are disappointing or frustrating. Now, they will feel their emotions intensely but will not have the skills to think through the situation and regulate their emotions.  

Coregulation and Self-regulation 

You might have heard about self-regulation, perhaps linked to our emotions or to the ‘marshmallow experiment’, so having to wait for something in order to receive a greater reward. Self-regulation might sound simple, it is how we remain calm when something goes wrong at work, or how we can contain our sadness until we are with a close friend or family member. Self-regulation is one of our executive functions and these functions are linked to the development of our brain’s prefrontal cortex, which is one of the last areas of our brain to develop. Development of the prefrontal cortex continues into adulthood and the development of self-regulation continues for years.  

Your baby will need to develop the skills to regulate their emotions, and this development is linked to the development of their prefrontal cortex. You can support them to develop these skills through ‘coregulation,’ coregulation simply means that someone else supports you to regulate your emotions. This is something we all need at times, but for your baby, it is essential to support them to develop the skills to regulate their emotions.  

Coregulation can involve different actions, but starts with you remaining calm as you respond to your child’s emotions. The first step in supporting your child to develop the skills to self-regulate is thinking about how you respond to your emotions. Parenting can be stressful, and when your baby behaves in a way that is not what you would want this can be stressful for you. [1] If you view your baby’s crying as a problem to be solved this can help you to regulate your emotions and support your baby to regulate too.  

When you are calm yourself, you can think about ways to support your baby. One way to help them to develop their skills to regulate is known as structuring. [2] In this approach, your aim is to guide your baby to access and develop their cognitive skills in order to regulate their emotions, particularly when they need to wait for something. You name the emotion that your child is experiencing, support them to think about what they will do next and with the sequence of what is going to happen, and suggest ways to redirect their attention. For example, you might comment, “You’re sad because you cannot play with the blocks now. When we get back from the shop you can play. I know would you like to hold my bag.”  

What next? 

Your baby will continue to develop their self-awareness and as they do this, they might want to do more things for themselves. This will sometimes be frustrating for them, and they will continue to need your support to recognise and regulate their emotions. As their language develops, they might be able to express their disappointment verbally and this might be another way in which you can support them to develop self-regulation.  

References 

[1] Gudmunson, J.A & Leerkes, E.M. (2012). Links between mothers’ coping styles, toddler reactivity, and sensitivity to toddler’s negative emotions. Infant Behavior and Development. 35, 158-166.  

[2] Ravindran, N., Genaro, B.G., & Cole, P.M. (2021) Parental structuring in response to toddler negative emotion predicts children’s later use of distraction as a self-regulation strategy for waiting. Child Development. 92(5), 1969-1983.