Co-regulation and Daily Routine
Shinjita Joshi-Pant
I remember joining LIFESMART group, thinking of it as another resource-group. Then I started reading Dr. Rama’s daily posts explaining about the meaning of LIFESMART.
The first component, “Learn Daily”, was our core-struggle. Then she talked of co-regulation with respect to guided participation. I asked more about it and it made sense as I felt the disconnect between our children and us as well as the lack of motivation to do anything except their favorite activity (without being robotic about it), were the major reasons to not being consistent.
So, when Dr. Rama suggested the idea of 100-day-projects, I chose “Coregulation”. You must be wondering, What is Coregulation?
Co-regulation is
- social-referencing,
- back and forth communication, mostly non-verbal like gestures, body language, facial expressions.
- guessing the pattern then following it and act accordingly.
In a nutshell, its being “in-sync”, moment-to-moment, and learn to trust.
-Linda Murphy (Coregulation Handbook)
How to practice it ? (eg hanging clothes in clothesline)
- Assign clear defined roles
(Child : give clothes one at a time to Mommy, Mommy : hang it on clothesline)
- Establish a pattern
(Child gives : Mommy hangs :: to-and-fro)
- Add variation(s)
(Speed up/down)
- Give challenges
(Clothesline is up high not upto our level)
Almost all our daily activities can be practiced with these rules.
Things to keep in mind :
- Wait for 45-sec for the child to do his/her role.
- Don’t focus on the skill but on the process.
- Refrain from prompting or instructing.
- Try to maintain eye-contact not by asking for it but with actions.
- Don’t force any role in an activity if the child doesn’t want to do that, go with the flow.
- Create competent roles for each other, we want to end the activity on a positive note.
Changes I noticed :
Myself :
- Practicing Co-regulation has made me calmer esp. during those activities. It’s regulating me too.
- I have learnt to wait for her responses.
- It took me out from the crisis mode.
- I have stopped looking for different kinds of therapies, after 11years of trail-and-error of so many therapies, I’m content and putting my 100% into it and have joined the formal RDI training.
My daughter :
- Very less prompting needed as the roles are clearly defined.
- Slowly few behaviors started fading away
- Spontaneous speech even-if it is 2/3 words.
- More confident in her demeanor.
After that, I took up 100-days-of-Movement, and now have a daily rhythm of both the activities combined as well as academics.
I would suggest everyone who reads it to know more about co-regulation and think of starting it. The proof lies in the pudding. We have a separate thread on co-regulation on our Telegram-channel. It’s a process which helps not only our kids but parents too.
