Children's Activity: Regulation Colouring Sheet - Dandelion Training & Development

If you have followed our article and podcast about self-regulation (if you missed it find it here) then you will know we have been talking about developing children’s emotional literacy, their ability to recognise and respond to their emotions. As part of this, supporting children to know which strategies they can use when they feel overwhelmed develops their emotional tool kit.

Why is self-regulation so important?

Self-regulation means that as a child (and later as an adult) we can:

Recognise our emotions
Respond to them and calm ourselves
It develops our resilience
It increases confidence
It increases self-esteem
To resist highly emotional overwhelming responses to triggers
To be able to control emotions or redirect them to positive actions
To return to the parasympathetic nervous system (and away from fight or flight)
To be able to adjust to changes in situations
To be able to manage unpredictability

Regulation Colouring Sheet

Supporting children to identify the techniques that help them to calm down, offers them a tool box to respond to their emotions, especially if they can feel them entering fight or flight mode (find our article here). This week we are sharing a colouring sheet containing different regulation activities that children can use to calm their central nervous systems.

Download it here

Steps:

Download the colouring sheet here
Print it off
Talk through the images
Colour them in
Practice different strategies and find your favourites
You might display the sheet somewhere for children to refer to it

Further help

For more articles about mental health visit – ARTICLES

To learn more about child and adolescent mental health visit – COURSES

For resources to support child and adolescent mental health visit –RESOURCES