I’ve been thinking a lot about the difference between self-control and self-regulation lately. There was a time when I truly believed that all children were in control of all of their behaviour. I believed that misbehaviour was a purposeful choice, and that if I took away enough recesses, offered enough undesirable consequences and made the child want to make good choices, then we’d be set. It was all about attitude and desire to do good.
Now, I have a better understanding of the difference between self-control (having complete control over a behaviour) and self-regulation (being calm enough to make a purposeful decision about behaviour.)
In this article for Psychology Today, Dr. Stuart Shanker says, “Self-control is about inhibiting strong impulses; self-regulation, reducing the frequency and intensity of strong impulses by managing stress-load and recovery. In fact, self-regulation is what makes self-control possible, or, in many cases, unnecessary. ”
So what does that look like? Food is something that makes sense to me, and something that I use for both adaptive and maladaptive stress control. On Halloween night, my children went Trick-or-Treating with their dad. I stayed at home writing my progress reports and handing out candy. Writing reports is a bit stressful because it takes a fair bit of concentration to make sure I have all of my data organized, my thoughts organized, and can get it all onto paper in an organized way. On this night, I was frequently interrupted in my writing. I had planned for this, so it was OK. I could hand out candy AND think about my writing at the same time. There were a lot more people coming to the door than I had anticipated. And then I realized the doorbell wasn’t working properly, and I wasn’t sure I was hearing all the kids at the door. It was stressful! I started eating candy. (3 for you, 1 for me….you’ve all been there!) I can say no to candy; if you sat a bowl of it in front of me right now, I’d eat one. Okay…I’d eat two. But I would stop there. On that night, however, when I was feeling a bit stressed, I lost count of all the candy I had eaten long before the family arrived at home. Because I was dysregulated, I was making poor choices. But it wasn’t actually about poor choices…I was just eating the candy without ever thinking about it.
I could have exercised some fake self-control by hiding the candy. (Since I would know my hiding place, this wouldn’t actually slow me down that much.) What I really needed to do, however, was stop the stress. As soon as my children came home, I closed the computer and stopped thinking about reports. My children shared their stories about the night, and we sorted candy. We blew out the candles in the pumpkins and turned off the light, ending the ringing of the bell. Before long, I realized it had been an hour since my last piece of chocolate. I wasn’t stressed anymore. I wasn’t eating any more. On the way to bed I thought about having another Kit Kat, but was able to exercise some self-control and wait until the next day at breakfast. 😉
As I consider more of the times when I have been stressed and have then “lost control” of myself, I think more and more about how finding a way to calm my stress would have completely changed my reaction. Stressed because an art lesson has left the floor covered in paint? Don’t bark at the kids to get it cleaned up – turn on a happy cleaning song! A child has just torn up his math work? Understand that the math has sent him into a stress cycle and the only way out was to get rid of it. Instead of, “Keep it up and you’ll lose another recess!” I should be saying, “Why is this child acting like this now? What can I do to help him/her through this difficulty?’
Seeing children differently, reframing their behaviour as stress behaviour rather than intentional misbehaviour, is a game changer. Seeing my own behaviour the same way is too.