helping young people learn self regulation

Brad Chapin and Matthew Penner wrote Helping Young People Learn Self-Regulation: Lessons, Activities and Worksheets for Teaching the Essentials of Responsible Decision Making & Self-Control as a set of instructions to teach young people how to better manage their emotions and behaviors. The book is in three parts: a lengthy introduction that explains the purpose and intent of the text, a series of lesson plans with worksheets to address physical, and emotional strategies for self-regulation and an appendix. The book originally comes with a CD, but my used copy did not.

I appreciate the approach that the authors take- focusing on the progression from physical to emotional to cognitive strategies and the idea that you cannot really teach later skills before physical ones are in hand. Their strategies seem like they would be effective for young people. It is worksheet dependent. Students who cannot compose or read would need modifications to the tasks. They include instructions for using the approach with both individual and small group settings. Students with extreme issues would probably need more support than the 8 week cycle they present. Ideally if a child were going through the program, home and school would be notified of the skill that the child was working on, how to do it and reminders to practice it. This would be particularly important as children might not buy in and be willing to practice on their own.

The book is short, a mere 109 pages including the appendix and references. It is easily read and the instructions are spelled out well so that just about anyone could use the approach.