Preschool children (4 to 6 years old)

Self management

Social awareness

Self-control

Express emotions

Take turns during conversations

Behave appropriately

strategies or good practices

(Indicate the key resources used)

• Instant gratification (Prefer to get what they want faster)

• Language barrier: Unable to have the right vocabulary to communicate or understand expectations clearly

• Developmental milestones: Children are still more self-centered.

Teacher:

• Lack of skills to facilitate

• Need to communicate consequence and expectation to children (pre-empt for teacher's facilitation)

Others:

• Time: Insufficient time to address issues

• Habit: Behaviour at home is the same and therefore it poses a challenge at school as well.

https://www.edutopia.org/article/simple-ways-to-help-young-kids-develop-self-control-donna-wilson-marcus-conyers

https://theeducationhub.org.nz/supporting-childrens-self-management-skills/#:~:text=Children%20may%20struggle%20with%20self,require%20high%20levels%20of%20support.

But the environment plays a role as well. When parents give in to tantrums or work overtime to soothe their children when they get upset and act out, kids have a hard time developing self-discipline. “In those situations, the child is basically looking to the parents to be external self-regulators,” Dr. Rouse says. “If that’s a pattern that happens again and again, and a child is able to ‘outsource’ self-regulation, then that’s something that might develop as a habit.”

https://childmind.org/article/can-help-kids-self-regulation/

-Encourage Them To Communicate. ...

-Teach Them To Share. ...

-Help Them Develop Empathy. ...

-Teach Them To Resolve Conflicts. ...

-Encourage Them To ---Make Friends. ...

-Model Good Social Behavior. ...

-Encourage Them To Ask Questions. ...

-Provide Positive Reinforcement.

https://www.beginlearning.com/parent-resources/social-skills-for-kids/

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0163638317300899

Behavioral: more positive parenting has been suggested to have a protective effect on problem behavior development, especially for children with a difficult temperament. Self-control (i.e., effortful control) moderated the link between positive – but not negative – parenting and child problem behavior

Externalizing problems often emerge during the preschool period, typically include aggressive and noncompliant behaviors, and are thought to be maintained largely through coercive parent–child interactions.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0193397303000431

Brain Development

• Self control in children is influenced by the development of the brain.

• Several brain regions support the skills relevant to self-control. For effective self-control, these regions all need to be interconnected and must communicate with each other. The child’s behavior is determined by a system of checks and balances between different parts of the brain working together.

• Children's brains are still developing. Early childhood environment helps to shape self-control pathways in the developing brain.

Reasons for Differences in Self-control in Children

1. Family and culture

• Sensitive parenting in early childhood that supports autonomy helps children to develop self-control strategies.

• Experience with multiple languages also can affect the development of self-control. Bilingual children do better than monolingual children on attention control tasks that require shifting attention from one feature to another.

• Children growing up in cultures that place a high emphasis on the importance of self-control tend to develop self-control abilities faster.

  
  

2. Temperament

• These temperamental differences are brain based. Individuals who have more brain activity occurring in the left frontal area of their brain tend to be eager to approach and explore unfamiliar situations and objects. In contrast, those who have more activity in the right frontal area tend to (a) avoid unfamiliar situations and objects and ( b) be more fearful, cautious, and easily distressed.

Syah

Why they are unable to exercise self-control, express emotions appropriately, take turns during conversations and behave appropriately?

Sensory Processing Disorder. (https://www.understood.org/en/articles/trouble-with-self-regulation-what-you-need-to-know ) In most cases, these children have one or more senses that either react too much or too little to stimulation. This disorder can cause problems with a child's development and behavior. (https://www.healthline.com/health/sensory-overload ) How sensory processing issues affect children in school - (https://childmind.org/article/how-sensory-processing-issues-affect-kids-in-school/ )

Hidayah

Furthermore, research in the past decade also suggests that self-regulation and play are linked developmentally.

When children are engaged in play, they develop and practice skills that are essential to self-regulated learning.

• 1. Play: engaging children in activities that are inherently fun, engaging and has potential to engage EF and/or SR, consisting of (i) mediated structured play or (ii) semi-structured creative play approaches.

• 2. Social-Emotional: enhancing children’s awareness of themselves and their interconnectedness with others, consisting of (iii) mindfulness or (iv) social-emotional learning (SEL) programs.

• 3. Curricula and Pedagogy: supplementing teacher knowledge and capacity to embed SR/EF training in domain specific contexts, consisting of (v) curricula, (vi) multicomponent training, (vii) music, (viii) mathematics, (ix) language training or (x) integrated arts programming.

• 4. Non-routine Activities: engaging children in novel activities or unique adaptations to everyday activity that are purposefully designed to promote SR/EF learning, consisting of (xi) task training (including digitalised) and (xii) physical activity.

1. Classroom accommodations for sensory processing challenges (understood.org)

2. 12 Self-Regulation Strategies for Young Children | Heart-Mind Online (heartmindonline.org) – Name It to Tame It Process (Notice, Name and Respond)

3. Actionable Classroom Strategies for Reinforcing Appropriate Behavior - Illuminate Education

   (Start from a foundation of positivity, empathy, and care)

To what extend do the idea(s) fit our MK's/children's context?

To a certain extent the ideas fit MK children’s context as it depends on the way of facilitation / execution by teachers - language and tone used with the children and the profile of each child.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sel.2024.100030

Teachers may unintentionally and without awareness communicate differential performance expectations by providing more acknowledgment to students they have higher expectations of and less acknowledgment for those they have lower expectations of (Glock et al., 2019, Scott et al., 2019). Ironically, lower expectations may also result in the teacher promoting or engaging in less elaboration, offering fewer access points from which students can make rich connections and form effective associations (Pellegrino, 2020).

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused a rise in stress, mental health concerns, and externalizing behaviors in children and their caregivers across the globe and illuminated the need to reduce stress levels and support self-regulation skills in even the youngest of children.

Self-regulation is defined as the deliberate use of skills to respond to demands of the environment in a contextually appropriate way and to achieve desired goals (Montroy et al., 2014). Self-regulation is the ability to control one’s emotions, body, and attention in

order to function and achieve goals and well-being.

Steps to uncover self-regulation:

arousal to external

stimuli, intentional awareness of this arousal, and deliberate

thoughtful response that balances cognition and emotion to

act towards a desired goal.

Parents and caregivers play an important role in supporting children’s healthy development.

Research shows that family risk factors, particularly maternal risk factors such as substance use, mental health conditions and domestic violence exposure, can impact parents’ ability to support children’s development, and may contribute to behavioral problems among young children as early as age 3.

Poor attachment, especially maternal attachment, can negatively impact children’s social-emotional health, and development.

But trouble with self-control isn’t always just a matter of catching up. It can be a sign of the frustration and anxiety that come with struggling in school. ADHD can also cause challenges with self-control.

And sometimes what looks like a lack of self-control is actually a lack of social skills. It’s hard for kids to follow social rules if they don’t know when they’re breaking them.